Born to the Wrong Parents

It’s part of our national character to believe that any one of us can, as the saying goes, “grow up to be president someday.”

The historic election of Barack Obama as our first African American president seems to reinforce that notion.

But not all America children can grow up to be president. The deck is stacked and the cards have been dealt.

Not to be coy, but some babies made the mistake of choosing the wrong parents, born on the wrong side of the class divide.

Is one’s class at birth one’s destiny? Let’s hope not.

But hardheaded analysis of reality tells us that the inequalities in opportunity are far too great for any individual to overcome them on his or her own.

That’s why a collection of federally sponsored education programs known as TRIO exist, and why they must continue to exist. But a lot politicians, even many liberals, don’t get it.

Just ask Dr. Arnold Mitchem, President of the Council for Opportunity in Education, which administers the TRIO programs. Created during Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society, TRIO is a collection of three programs -- Upward Bound, Talent Search, and Student Support Services.

The basic idea behind TRIO is simple: kids born to the wrong parents need some extra support to getting on a path to college and staying on that path until they earn a bachelor's degree.

Writing in Inside Higher Education this past summer, Mitchem, the legendary advocate for low-income and disadvantaged students, warned that Obama's higher education budget foolishly places too much stock in Pell Grants while shortchanging the sorts of TRIO services that low-income students need to actually make the Pell Grants an effective expenditure of taxpayer dollars.

"Simply put," Mitchem says, "the Obama administration’s definition of student aid is far too narrow. What is desperately needed instead is a more comprehensive view of student aid that reflects the recognition that low-income and first-generation students face multiple barriers — class, cultural, informational, academic, and social — to postsecondary education, and not just a lack of funds. Merely providing financial resources through mechanisms like the Pell Grant alone will not solve the problem of getting first-generation and low-income students through college."

The counselors, teachers and other professionals who work the trenches of helping kids born to the wrong parents know these things. They see how disadvantage amounts to far more than not having enough money.

Disadvantage is also intangible. Some children, of course, are born to the right parents. These are the parents with the college degrees who teach their kids how to open their eyes to the world beyond home, school, and neighborhood.

It’s about information – who’s got it and who doesn’t. It’s about knowing the lingua franca of the well-educated citizen. It's knowing where and what Harvard is (yes, some students, however bright, don't know). It’s knowing that a community college degree comes before, not after, a Bachelor's degree. (And yes, some students don’t know this basic fact.)

These are not facts one learns in school. Schools don’t teach this stuff. Parents do, and middle-class parents and their politicians assume that all children are exposed to these facts because they were exposed to these facts.

Children born to the wrong parents don’t get this information at home. In our education system, they’re out of luck.