ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores curriculum, literacy, and learning within two programs that serve school-age mothers in the Midwestern United States. The stigmatization of school-age mothers as students ‘at-risk’ has been noted by researchers who have worked with this population as entrenching a basic skills curriculum in many schools for pregnant and parenting teens. The existence of schools such as Eastview is still common in the United States, and the ability to create such programs emerged from Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law that prohibited the exclusion of students from their education programs on the basis of pregnancy, parental status, or marital status. Westside is an alternative school that educates teen parents alongside their non-parenting peers. The student services coordinator completes attendance paperwork for many of the mothers who receive government daycare funds as long as they are enrolled in school.