Who Benefits When Your Child Can't Read?

Every year, Montgomery County Schools graduates students who cannot read at grade level. Every year, the test scores come back, the county ranks near the bottom of the state, and the people in charge shrug, shuffle administrators, and move on. The community is told the problem is poverty. The community is told the problem is parents. The community is told the problem is anything except the people making decisions.

But here is the question nobody in power wants you to ask: Who benefits when the children of Montgomery County stay uneducated?

The answer is hiding in plain sight.

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The Numbers Don't Lie

According to the NC Budget & Tax Center's 2024 Economic Snapshot for Montgomery County, only 40 percent of students are proficient in reading and 38 percent in math. The median worker in Montgomery County earns $35,700 a year, just 71 percent of what a single adult with two children needs to meet basic living expenses. Thirty-nine percent of residents are considered low-income. Twenty-four percent of children live in poverty.

These are not random statistics. They are the predictable outcome of a system that has never been designed to produce a different result.

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Meet the Employers

Montgomery County's largest private employers tell the whole story. Look at who is hiring in this county:

Manufacturing. Lumber. A prison. Furniture. Footwear. Food processing. Rugs.

Not one technology company. Not one professional services firm. Not one employer that requires a college degree or even strong literacy skills to walk in the door. Every single one of these industries depends on a large, stable supply of workers who have no better options, workers who will show up, work hard, and accept wages that would never be accepted in a county where people had real choices.

A well-educated workforce does not stay in Montgomery County. It leaves. And the employers who have built their businesses here know that. They have built their entire business model around it.

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The Prison Is Not an Accident

The Southern Correctional Institution, a men's close-custody prison, is the fourth-largest employer in Montgomery County, with 311 employees. Let that sink in.

A prison employs more people in this county than most of the manufacturing plants. And who fills those prison beds? Research consistently shows that the strongest predictor of incarceration is not race, not neighborhood, not family structure, it is low educational attainment. Students who cannot read by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school. High school dropouts are 63 percent more likely to be incarcerated than graduates.

Montgomery County has a 24 percent child poverty rate and only 40 percent reading proficiency. It also has a men's prison as one of its top employers. These facts are not unrelated. The school-to-prison pipeline is not a metaphor here. It is an economic model.

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The Wages Depend on the Ignorance

Here is the economic logic that no one in power will say out loud: low-wage manufacturing and processing jobs require a workforce with no better options. The moment workers have education, skills, and choices, they leave, or they demand higher wages. Either outcome is bad for the bottom line of every factory, lumber yard, and food processing plant in this county.

The median worker in Montgomery County earns $35,700. The richest five percent of households earn an average of 29 times more than the poorest 20 percent. That gap does not exist by accident. It exists because the people at the top of this county's economy have a direct financial interest in keeping the people at the bottom exactly where they are.

When the school board fights against qualified teachers, pushes out a superintendent who demanded academic standards, and installs leadership that has no vision for college readiness, they are not making bad decisions. They are making decisions that serve someone. The question is who.

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The School Board Is the Gatekeeper

The Montgomery County Board of Education controls who teaches, who leads, and what standards are enforced in the county's schools. When that board removes a superintendent who was holding teachers accountable for actually teaching, it is not a personnel dispute. It is a policy statement.

The policy says: the children of this county do not need to be educated. They need to be prepared to work.

When a board member who owns grocery stores in four towns, Troy, Biscoe, Ellerbe, and Rockingham, sits on the school board that governs the children who will one day work in those stores, that is not a coincidence. That is a conflict of interest. The same children whose education he governs are the same workforce his business depends on. A well-educated, economically mobile workforce would demand better wages, better conditions, and better options. An undereducated one will take what it is given.

And when that same board member sends his own son to a charter school rather than the schools he governs, he is telling you everything you need to know about what he thinks those schools are worth.

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The Cycle Is the Point

Montgomery County's economy is built on a cycle that feeds itself. Underfunded schools produce undereducated graduates. Undereducated graduates take low-wage jobs in manufacturing, lumber, and food processing, or they end up in the criminal justice system, which is itself an employer. Low wages keep families in poverty. Poverty makes it harder for the next generation to succeed in school. And the cycle begins again.

The people who benefit from this cycle are not the workers. They are not the families. They are not the children sitting in classrooms right now, trying to learn with inadequate resources and a revolving door of leadership.

The people who benefit are the employers who need cheap labor, the landlords who need desperate tenants, and the politicians who need voters who have been taught not to ask too many questions.

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What Accountability Looks Like

The children of Montgomery County are not failing. They are being failed by a system that was never designed to help them succeed, run by people who have a financial and political stake in keeping things exactly as they are.

The first step toward change is naming what is happening. Not blaming poverty. Not blaming parents. Not blaming the children. Naming the people and the structures that benefit from the status quo, and demanding something different.

That is what MoCo's Voice is here to do.

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Sources: NC Budget & Tax Center, 2024 Economic Snapshot: Montgomery County. Montgomery County Economic Development, Largest Employers List. Harlow, C.W. (2003). Education and Correctional Populations. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Alliance for Excellent Education (2006). Saving Futures, Saving Dollars.

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MoCo's Voice is an independent community publication covering social justice, racial equity, and public accountability in Montgomery County, NC. Visit us at MoCoVoice.com.