ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 18, 1996 TAG: 9603180025
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SHOULD Roanoke city pat itself on the back because its school-dropout rate is only 2 percent, compared with the overall state rate of 4 percent? Or that the city's violent-death rate for children, 20 per 100,000, is below the statewide Virginia rate of 32 per 100,000?
It may be tempting to do so - until you look at other statistical indicators in a comprehensive new report that show the city's children faring worse than those in the region and state as a whole.
Not that all other indicators are bad. Fewer Roanoke children were arrested for violent crimes in 1995 than in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Richmond, Portsmouth, Newport News or Hampton. A higher percentage of schoolchildren passed the literacy-passport tests in Roanoke than in Lynchburg, Danville, Charlottesville, Alexandria and Petersburg. In the areas of juvenile-crime prevention and education, Roanoke is doing something right.
But the report, ``Kids Count in Virginia,'' a state-specific spin-off of the national Kids Count studies, uses some 160 different measurements to show how Virginia's 1.5 million children are doing, community by community and statewide. If its many numbers are to have value - to elected officials, educators, judges, social workers, health professionals, business, church and civic leaders, and parents - the comprehensive report must be read comprehensively. The interconnections must be recognized.
For Roanoke city, certainly, no pride can be taken in this latest confirmation that out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy is a more serious problem here than in the state as a whole. Roanoke's 1995 rate of teen births, 79.6 per 1,000 births, is nearly double the state rate of 40.6.
Other grim numbers that can't be ignored: Thirty-one percent of Roanoke families with children are headed by single women, compared with 17 percent statewide. Thirteen percent of Roanoke's families live below the poverty level, compared with 8 percent statewide. Nineteen percent of Roanoke teens are not attending school and didn't graduate. This compares with 10 percent statewide, is the 10th highest of all Virginia localities, and is higher than any other sizeable Virginia municipality.
Now, to bring the picture into focus, connect the dots: Children living in homes where the father is absent are five times likelier to be poor than homes where the father is present, and 10 times likelier to be extremely poor. Children living with single mothers are twice as likely to drop out of school as those living with both parents, and significantly more likely to end up in juvenile-corrections facilities. Girls being raised by single mothers are three times more likely to become unwed teen mothers - thus beginning anew the cycle of poverty, school truancy, school dropouts and juvenile crime.
What this should tell the city is that relatively low rates of dropouts and juvenile crime may not hold under a barrage of problems in the making - more single-mother homes, more children living in poverty - resulting from the high teen-pregnancy rate.
Meanwhile, a city task force on teen-pregnancy prevention - appointed 27 months ago - has dawdled. At long last, recommendations may be forthcoming next month; they're long overdue.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB