By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

NEW YORK – In the war against childhood illiteracy, could it be that one of the enemies is our very own federal government?

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Yes, says New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

In a recent column, Kristof concludes that the federal government’s Supplemental Security Income program – which is supposed to give a helping hand to families of severely handicapped children – is actually providing some low-income parents with a financial incentive to pull their children out of literacy programs.

Forty years ago, Kristof writes, most of the children in the S.S.I. program “had severe physical handicaps or mental retardation that made it difficult for parents to hold jobs.”

But today, 55 percent of the disabilities covered by the S.S.I. program are “fuzzier intellectual disabilities short of mental retardation, where the diagnosis is less clear-cut,” he writes.

In other words, our political leaders have expanded the S.S.I. program to the point that children can qualify for it by having learning problems in schools.  That results in the child’s family receiving a $698 monthly check from the government, until the child turns 18. No doubt this was done to help “working families.”

The S.S.I. program is producing disastrous results. Should an S.S.I. child start performing better in school, his or her family risks having their monthly check discontinued, explains Cornell University economist Richard V. Burkhauser.

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“It’s a terrible incentive,” Burkhauser says.

To guard against the loss of their meager monthly income, some parents are actually pulling their children from literacy programs. Children are having their very lives forfeited for a government check.

How perverse is that?

Unsurprisingly, a 2009 study found that nearly two out of three S.S.I. children “make the transition at age 18 into S.S.I. for the adult disabled,” Kristof writes. “They may never hold a job in their entire lives and are condemned to a life of poverty on the dole – and that’s the outcome of a program intended to fight poverty.”

Melanie Stevens, a Kentucky school district leader, says “the greatest challenge” that educators face “is how to break that dependency on government.”

“In second grade, they have a dream,” she says. “In seventh grade, they have a plan.”

Every teacher (hopefully) understands that literacy is the cornerstone of any education. Without it, children will learn virtually nothing, and will be completely unable to fend for themselves in the workaday world.

Instead of reflexively calling for more money, more programs and more services, maybe America’s “progressive” political leaders (i.e. teacher union bosses) should examine how these programs are actually working against the best interests of children, teachers, schools and the nation.

Instead of mindlessly engaging in class warfare (i.e. the California Federation of Teachers’ new “Tax the Rich” video), maybe America’s liberals  should do a little soul-searching about how their policies are ruining lives.

Kristof seems to have learned at least a mini-lesson from all this.

“This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency,” he writes.

In the case of childhood illiteracy, we’ve met the enemy, and he is us.