Word: reforms
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Tennessee was supposed to be a national model for welfare reform. And so it was until the state ran into a basic truth about putting poor people to work: You can't reform welfare if you don't have good day care. So the story of Tennessee's success in one area--62% of its welfare recipients have moved into jobs--is also the story of its struggle in another. It is a story of day-care warehouses' stockpiling kids and sucking in rich government subsidies while paying barely trained caregivers less than $12,000 a year...
Last month Tennessee at last reformed its reform, adopting the most sweeping changes in child care in state history. But that move came with a hard lesson: money without oversight and accountability may do more harm than good...
...care explosion hit Memphis hard. About 9,000 children in Shelby County (which includes Memphis) received subsidized care before welfare reform; by 1999, the number was 21,000. Centers relying on those $85-a-week kids could soon be found on almost every corner of the inner city. For a few local entrepreneurs, it was a windfall. For example, Koinonia Child Care Center, run by the Rev. Roosevelt Joyner, has doubled in size since reform and today receives more than $1.7 million a year in child-care subsidies. Says Joyner: "The reforms put a lot of minority people who would...
Then, starting last fall, the district instituted a reform known as controlled school choice. It resembles other popular forms of school choice, such as vouchers and charter schools--only there's a twist. While Vicksburg parents took their pick of three schools closest to their home, the district used race as a consideration in making assignments, to achieve diversity in each school. After the numbers were crunched, 85% of parents got their first choice of school. Even more eye popping: the schools now boast near equal head counts of black and white students...
...nicely played too--particularly by Willis, who neatly nails both his character's funny nastiness and his unsentimental reform once he begins to recover from his emotional amnesia. One doesn't want to oversell The Kid. It's a modest little fantasy. But it's also well made, unpretentious and refreshing--like a cool and fizzy bottle of soda pop on a hot summer...