Reprinted with permission from Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and The Washington Post.
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 9, 2005; Page A03
BALTIMORE, Feb. 8 -- First lady Laura Bush visited a hardscrabble elementary school in a slowly gentrifying corner of this city Tuesday to promote community-based programs that help struggling young people -- especially boys -- avoid self-destructive choices.
Appearing at George Washington Elementary School, in a neighborhood of narrow rowhouses not far from the city's twin sports stadiums, Bush visited a first-grade class where the teacher keeps order with the help of a classroom management technique that researchers report has made a profound difference in academic performance.
The pilot program, called the Good Behavior Game, rewards children for staying on task in class. The students are divided into teams, and a point is given to a team for any inappropriate behavior displayed by one of its members. The team with the fewest points each day wins a reward.
It is a basic concept, but researchers who have tracked the progress of students exposed to the strategy over the past 20 years in two dozen schools across Baltimore found them far less likely to drop out of school than were similar students in other schools.
"The Good Behavior Game is a great example of a simple, inexpensive intervention that has a dramatic impact on a child's behavioral and academic development," said Bush, a former teacher and librarian.
The first lady's visit here is part of her effort to focus attention on small programs that help at-risk children. In coming months, she plans to travel across the country to highlight community and faith-based programs that have proven effective in helping young people stay out of trouble or straighten out their lives.
In his State of the Union address last week, President Bush announced a three-year, $150 million program to help young people in some of the nation's toughest communities avoid gang life.
Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said: "This initiative seeks to promote positive youth development and help at-risk youth avoid the lure and attraction of gangs so that they can find more productive use of their time and, in a way, to develop to their full potential."
The effort, which will make grants to faith-based and other community organizations, is nominally headed by Laura Bush and represents a growing shift of social service funding from traditional anti-poverty groups to a wide range of church-related and other community organizations.
The proposed 2006 budget the president released Monday contains $385 million -- a $150 million increase over the current budget -- for a range of programs to mentor children, help former prisoners and drug addicts, and provide support for young mothers. That fund, which makes grants to community groups, is slated for an increase, even as the White House is recommending cutting funding for many traditional antipoverty programs.
"I think the president has chosen to go with the programs he thinks are the most effective and, of course, he has continued to maintain a strong belief that partnerships between government and America's armies of compassion mean a lot in the lives of our poor," Towey said.
In her remarks here, Laura Bush underscored the serious difficulties facing many of the nation's young men. Boys often fall behind girls academically beginning in elementary school. As they grow up, boys are far more likely to become enmeshed in the criminal justice system, less likely to go to college and more likely to end up in prison. More than 90 percent of the nation's 750,000 gang members are male, the White House estimates. "Boys especially are at a greater risk than girls for violence, learning disabilities and juvenile arrest," she said.
A decade ago, many Republicans ridiculed President Bill Clinton's midnight basketball programs as an ineffective crime-fighting tool, but the Bush administration now argues that many young people can be steered away from trouble through intervention programs provided by committed teachers, religious leaders, community volunteers or sports coaches.
The school program that the first lady visited at George Washington Elementary, where 90 percent of the students are poor enough to receive free or reduced-price lunches, is funded by a small grant from the National Institutes of Health, said Sheppard Kellam, director of the Center for Integrating Education and Prevention Research in Schools. Kellam, who has tracked the results of the Good Behavior Game, echoed Laura Bush's praise for the program, calling the outcomes "astonishing."
"Learning to be a student is not always intuitive," he said. "It has to be taught."
While he did not expect any additional federal money to flow toward the program as a result of the first lady's visit, he said that the publicity her appearance generates would help move the pilot program into classrooms nationwide.