Poverty has the greatest influence on a child’s poor performance in school.

Senator Bill Ferguson said that at the Greater Baltimore Committee’s forum on the 2018 General Assembly session this morning.

I’m aware that poor children enter kindergarten with a much smaller vocabulary than middle class kids.

A Republican colleague at today’s forum put the blame elsewhere.

“Teenagers should delay parenthood until they are older,” she told the audience.

Yes, the children of such single parent families are far less likely to succeed in the classroom and elsewhere.

But how should we address the problem of teen parenthood?

One way, but not the only way, is family planning.

Over the years, I’ve supported greater access to contraceptives, as well as efforts to make it more likely that an absent father will play a positive role in his child’s life.

I’m going to ask my Republican colleague how she would address teenage parenthood.

I doubt that she supports family planning.

Nonetheless, perhaps we do have common ground.