I know that young women who become pregnant while in high school face significant problems -- and getting an education is one of them. We in the south aren't kind to our teenage moms. We tend to want them to disappear from our schools so they don't "corrupt" other young women. We don't provide the support they need to finish high school and raise their children at the same time, but then we blame them for their own poverty. Not really fair, is it? Nor does it make good business sense. World-wide research shows us that if we educate a woman, we improve the life of her family. We need to apply that knowledge when we make decisions about our own young mothers' educations.

When single mothers fail at mothering, it's not because because they are single. They fail because they are poor. Educate a woman, and you give her and her children a better financial future. Kelly White, Director of the Chicago Foundation for Women, says in Obama's Budget Could Do More for Single Moms, "If there's one thing I want to emphasize again, it's that when women are put at the center of solutions to this financial crisis, they rise up, and when women's lives improve, so do their families, communities and the national economy."

Caleb R. Johnson of the Selma Times-Journal reports on a program in Selma, AL, that is providing single moms with a second chance.

Left, Tomessa Blevins and her daughter Leandrea Givan and right Laronica Irby and her son Gabriel. Blevins and Irby participate in the Evenstart Program, a program designed to help single mothers receive a GED.

Left, Tomessa Blevins and her daughter Leandrea Givan and right Laronica Irby and her son Gabriel. Blevins and Irby participate in the Evenstart Program, a program designed to help single mothers receive a GED.

Laronica Irby could not drive a car yet when she quit school. At a tender 15 years old, Irby walked away from the world of blackboards, teachers and books.

Soon, she got pregnant. A high school diploma seemed as distant as the clouds. Diapers, bottles and pacifiers consumed her every waking moment. For two years, she hardly gave her education another thought.

Last summer she heard about a program designed for women like her - women who wanted a second chance.