CFK Weekly—March 11, 2002

We encourage distribution of this information! If reprinting in whole or part, please attribute it to Connect for Kids (www.connectforkids.org).

GROUND-BREAKING DATA ON HOW CHILDREN ARE FARING
**Children at Risk: State Trends 1990 ? 2000

WILL PRESIDENT BUSH'S BUDGET HAVE ENOUGH FOR KIDS?
**Congressional Budget Office Analyzes President's Budget, Updates Figures
**Benton Foundation Finds Bush Budget Reversal on Digital Divide
**An Economic Evaluation of the 2001 Tax Cut Law

PUBLIC OPINION, EFFECTIVE MESSAGES
**Dads and Daughters Poll on Dating
**Public Attitudes and Messages for Early Childhood Education
**Web Cast Available Online
**Message Memo on Early Childhood Investment
**Silent Revolution: How U.S. Newspapers Portray Child Care
**Mothers' Views of Work-Family Trade-Offs  from Welfare to Work

TEACHING CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
**Educating Children with Disabilities
**The Shortage of Special Education Faculty
**Special Education Advocates Hail Graduation-Test Ruling
**PTA Issue Brief on Disabilities Act

RESOURCES FOR COMMUNITY BUILDERS
**Partners: Working with the Business Community to Recruit Resource Families:
**New Searchable Database of Out-of-School Time Evaluation Profiles

WELFARE REFORM
**One-Page Fact Sheets on Welfare Reform
**Employer Demand for Welfare Recipients by Race
**Welfare Ban for Drug Felons Harms Children
**Assessing Policies To Promote Marriage Among Fragile Families
**Vermont Advocates Gain State Safeguards for Children
**Welfare Benefits for Non-Citizens
**Congressional Testimony on Welfare Reform

REFORMING SCHOOLS AND IMPROVING LEARNING
**Children's Reading and Mathematics Achievement in Kindergarten and First Grade
**Scientifically Based Teaching? What does it Mean?
**Testing Rules Would Grant States Leeway
**Cleveland School Vouchers: Where the Students Go
**The New Challenge for School Boards

KEEPING THEM HEALTHY
**New National Poison Control Hotline
**Children Bear the Heaviest Burden of Environmental Disease
**Inner City Asthma Study
**Dental Health Comes Last
**Problems With Access to Dental Care for Medicaid-Insured Children
**Just the Facts on Dental Health
**Teen Tipplers: America's Underage Drinking Epidemic

EDUCATION BY THE NUMBERS
**Digest of Education Statistics 2001
**Raising Achievement and Reducing Gaps in Mathematics

FOCUS ON THE STATES
**State-by-State News

SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
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NEW ON CONNECT FOR KIDS

** The Halls Are Alive?
In three elementary schools in Tucson, AZ, music fills the air every day as part of an intensive effort to use musical arts education to improve learning and achievement. Virginia Kippelen reports on Opening Minds through the Arts.
http://www.benton.org

**Meeting the Welfare Reform Challenge
When welfare reform became law in 1996, it brought new flexibility and new challenges to state and local welfare systems. In some cases, officials have responded with creative new programs to help families move from welfare to work. Kenneth Finegold of the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project, takes a look at some of these models.
http://www.benton.org

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GROUND BREAKING DATA ON HOW CHILDREN ARE FARING

**Children at Risk: State Trends 1990 ? 2000
Nationally the child poverty rate is down, but in quite a few states the proportion of children living in poverty has actually risen over the last decade. This new Kids Count report uses the latest census data to document enormous diversity across the states, with some improving on many more indicators than others. There are also wide state differences on specific indicators.

Broad and widespread improvements in child well-being during the 90s are surprisingly modest given the economic boom, according to Kids Count spokesperson William O'Hare: ?I'm concerned that some of the progress and policies that led to these improvements in the states are vulnerable to cutbacks as state budgets face crises.?
http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/c2ss/
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WILL PRESIDENT BUSH'S BUDGET HAVE ENOUGH FOR KIDS?

**Congressional Budget Office Analyzes President's Budget, Updates Figures
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has revised its predictions about the federal deficit and currently projects the federal government would run a surplus of $5 billion this year and $6 billion next year. CBO estimates that President Bush's budget would reduce projected surpluses by $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years. The proposed budget would increase defense spending by $483 billion over the next ten years and reduce nondefense or domestic discretionary spending by $188 billion.
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=3299&sequence=0&from=7

**Benton Foundation Finds Bush Budget Reversal on Digital Divide
The Bush administration has abandoned the decade-long national fight to bridge the digital divide, argues Tony Wilhelm, director of the Communications Policy Program at the Benton Foundation. According to Wilhelm, the administration's proposed FY 2003 budget has stripped over $100 million in public investments previously available for community technology grants and IT training programs--programs that offer real payoffs to rural communities, the working poor, minorities and children.
http://www.benton.org/press/2002/pr0211.html

**An Economic Evaluation of the 2001 Tax Cut Law
Economists at the Brookings Institution who are analyzing the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 conclude that the largest tax cut in 20 years will do the reverse of what many proponents argued. Instead of stimulating the economy, William Gale and Samara Potter argue that the new tax law may have already dampened the economy in 2001 and early 2002, and is likely to inhibit future economic growth.

The researchers argue that rather than benefiting working families, the law hurts middle- and lower-income households, distributing the greatest tax benefits to the wealthiest households, shifting the tax burden to middle and lower-income households, and constraining public spending for programs serving lower-income families. They conclude that the regressive impact of the tax cut law, coupled with its effect on reducing economic growth, will prove fiscally unsustainable and impose significant costs on future generations.
http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/views/articles/gale/200203.pdf
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PUBLIC ATTITUDES, EFFECTIVE MESSAGES

**Dads and Daughters Poll on Dating
It may not be a scientific sample, but this Dads and Daughters poll offers a pretty good portrait of how girls feel about their fathers and dating..
http://www.dadsanddaughters.org/front_porch_poll.htm

**Public Attitudes and Messages for Early Childhood Education
Public attitudes toward the effectiveness of government and the importance of parenting influence how people perceive calls for more investments in early childhood education programs, according to a polling summary from the Early Childhood Education collaborative.
http://www.earlycare.org/pollingtellsus.htm

**Web Cast Available Online
If you missed the live Web cast of the Early Childhood Education collaborative symposium on effective messages in February, you can listen to it online.
http://www.stratosphere-nyc.com/vcnet/ccmc

**Message Memo on Early Childhood Investment
The collaborative has developed a generic message memo to help advocates make the best case for public investments in early childhood education.
http://www.earlycare.org/messagememo.htm

**Silent Revolution: How U.S. Newspapers Portray Child Care
Child care is so big it touches the hearts and strains the pocketbooks of 10 million American families, but according to this report from the Berkeley Media Studies Group, newspapers are paying scant attention to child care. On the business pages, child care, a $5.4 billion-a-year industry in California, is all but invisible. When child care is covered, however, newspapers now portray it as a social good, even as a chance to ?level the playing field? for working poor families. http://www.bmsg.org

**Mothers' Views of Work-Family Trade-Offs from Welfare to Work
Policy makers and politicians are debating how to improve welfare-to-work policies, but few have the opportunity to listen directly to welfare-reliant mothers. Through in-depth interviews Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation found that while women expressed high hopes for improving their families' circumstances and self-respect through work, in reality few earned wages high enough to meet their family's basic needs or provide extras that improved the quality of their lives. http://www.mdrc.org/NextGeneration/Working_paper_series/NG_WkgPpr_4/NG_Summary4-6.htm
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TEACHING CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

**Educating Children with Disabilities
In 1975 Congress passed legislation, known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which laid out the rights of children with disabilities to attend public schools. This report from the American Youth Policy Forum and the Center on Education Policy finds major accomplishments on behalf of the 11 percent of school children who have disabilities, documenting some positive outcomes and improvements, but major challenges remain. E-mail aypf@aypf.org for a print copy. Cost: $4

**The Shortage of Special Education Faculty
The shortage of qualified special education teachers now equals that for math and science teachers, and undermines schools' abilities to improve academic outcomes for special education students. This report from the Higher Education Consortium for Special Education offers an assessment and recommendations.
http://hecse.uky.edu/articles/shortage.html

**Special Education Advocates Hail Graduation-Test Ruling
Education Week reports on a California ruling with national implications: A federal judge has ordered California to make accommodations for students with disabilities on its high school exit exam and to develop an alternative form of the test for some special education students.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=25exit.h21

**PTA Issue Brief on Disabilities Act
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is up for reauthorization this year. The National PTA offers a summary of the original 1975 legislation and key issues regarding reauthorization.
http://www.pta.org/ptawashington/issues/idea.asp
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RESOURCES FOR COMMUNITY BUILDERS

**Partners: Working with the Business Community to Recruit Resource Families
Kids in foster care need resource families: foster, adoptive, kinship and respite families. This handbook is designed to help community agencies work with business partners to recruit and sustain more such families. Each section provides a checklist of key questions that agencies need to answer, additional ideas and program highlights that illustrate how each technique has been used in practice.
http://www.casey.org/cnc/recruitment/partners.htm

**New Searchable Database of Out-of-School Time Evaluation Profiles
The Harvard Family Research Project has launched a database of out-of-school time evaluation profiles so service providers and evaluators can get detailed information on evaluation options and methodologies.
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/projects/afterschool/evaldatabase.html
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WELFARE REFORM AND TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE FOR NEEDY FAMILIES (TANF) REAUTHORIZATION

**One-Page Fact Sheets on Welfare Reform
The Center on Law and Social Policy has prepared one-page fact sheets on the links between welfare reform and such issues as child welfare, child support, strengthening marriages and reducing poverty.
http://www.clasp.org

**Employer Demand for Welfare Recipients by Race
According to this Urban Institute report, a four-city survey of 750 employers suggests not all welfare-to-work parents will be able to easily obtain employment in all times or places, even if most seem to have little difficulty gaining such employment currently. The findings suggest that policymakers need to ensure the adequacy of the ?safety net? for all recipients ? strengthening the unemployment insurance program, increasing the availability of community service jobs and modifying work requirements and time limits under the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families system.
http://newfederalism.urban.org/pdf/discussion01-07.pdf

**Welfare Ban for Drug Felons Harms Children
The LA Times reports on a study by the Sentencing Project of Washington, DC, which found more than 92,000 women -- 40 percent of them in California -- have been barred from receiving funds under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program because of their drug convictions.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000015172feb28.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dcalifornia

**Assessing Policies To Promote Marriage Among Fragile Families
What works best to encourage marriage among low-income and fragile families: Higher cash benefits, more liberal acceptance of welfare applications, more effective child support enforcement or efforts to increase education and employment of low-income parents? Actually the father's employment status outweighs the effects of all these other approaches, according to this report from the Princeton Center for Research on Child Well-Being.
http://crcw.princeton.edu/rh/WP02-02-FF-Mincy.pdf

**Vermont Advocates Gain State Safeguards for Children
Vermont child advocates used successful policies in Arkansas and Missouri to persuade the Vermont legislation to include several added protections for children in its welfare legislation. The Vermont law identifies as its goal ?to protect children by providing for their immediate basic needs.? It requires case management services to help welfare-to-work families learn about and access all benefits for which they qualify, and mandates an evaluation every three years to assess the well-being of children in the program.
http://www.childadvocacy.org/camad.htm

**Welfare Benefits for Non-Citizens
This Brookings policy brief reviews the rationale for excluding legal immigrants from welfare reform benefits and the resulting hardships on these families and their citizen children.  Perhaps the most important finding is that authors Michael Fix and Ron Haskins, who is currently advising President Bush on TANF reauthorization, agreed that ?the bottom line is that at least some modest restoration of benefits, including some that provide eligibility to post-1996 entrants, seems destined to have major support from Congress and the Bush administration.?

In his proposals for reauthorizing the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families legislation, however, President Bush continued to exclude legal immigrant families.
http://www.brookings.edu/wrb/publications/pb/pb15.htm

**Congressional Testimony on Welfare Reform
On March 7, Cynthia Fagnoni, of the General Accounting Office, testified before Congress on how states are using TANF flexibility to adapt work requirements and time limits to meet state and local needs.
At the same subcommittee hearing, Mark Greenberg of the Center on Law and Social Policy testified that ?while work has increased, there are at least three work-related concerns that need to be addressed in reauthorization: how to increase employment among those families with the most serious barriers; how to help families get better jobs; and how to ensure that low-earning families receive needed health care and child care assistance and have enough income to make ends meet.?
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/humres/107cong/hr-11wit.htm

U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Secretary Thompson will testify on welfare reform and TANF reauthorization before the full Ways and Means Committee on March 12.
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REFORMING SCHOOLS AND IMPROVING LEARNING

**Children's Reading and Mathematics Achievement in Kindergarten and First Grade
According to the latest results from this national longitudinal study of young schoolchildren, the learning advantages for children who enter kindergarten better prepared for learning persist through at least first grade. Children who have specific cognitive knowledge and skills, who are read to frequently, who possess positive approaches to learning, and who enjoy very good or excellent general health seem to perform better in reading and mathematics after one and even two years of formal schooling than children who do not have these resources when they enter school..
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002125

**Scientifically Based Teaching? What does it Mean?
The ?Leave No Child Behind? law that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act attached federal funding to scientifically-based teaching methods. At a recent U.S. Dept. of Education symposium, a reading specialist spelled out what ?scientifically-based? methods mean when it comes to reading.
http://www.ed.gov/nclb/research/greer.html

**Testing Rules Would Grant States Leeway
Education Week reports that states would have significant flexibility in meeting new federal testing requirements under draft regulations released by the U.S. Department. of Education last week. By deciding to issue separately its regulations for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act's mandate for  ?adequate yearly progress? the Department sidestepped for now one of the most contentious parts of the legislation, but also one of its key elements.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/newstory.cfm?slug=25rules.h21

**Cleveland School Vouchers: Where the Students Go
According to this Policy Matters Ohio report, the percentage of students attending religious schools under the Cleveland Voucher Program has risen to more than 99 percent, with just 25 pupils attending non-religious schools in December 2001. The Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of using public funds to support religious schools. This study bolsters constitutional scholars' concerns that Cleveland's program violates the Constitution.
http://www.policymattersohio.org/WhereStudentsGo.pdf

**The New Challenge for School Boards
In a column for the Education Commission of the States, Donald McAdams of the Center for Reform of School Systems contends that no center of power is better positioned to provide leadership for education reform and improvement than school boards. Nowhere is effective leadership and good governance more crucial than in the nation's urban districts.
http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/33/35/3335.htm
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KEEPING THEM HEALTHY

**New National Poison Control Hotline
In observance of National Poison Prevention Week (March 17-23), the Council on Family Health urges Americans to know the new nationwide toll-free number for poison control centers: 1-800-222-1222. The council is offering free emergency telephone stickers with the new number.
http://www.cfhinfo.org/pressRoom/pressreleases/2-21-02_Emergency_Stickers.htm

**Children Bear the Heaviest Burden of Environmental Disease
Three million children under the age of five die each year due to environmental hazards and accidents, the World Health Organization reported at the the International Conference on Environmental Threats to the Health of Children, the first major event held to address this issue. http://www.oneworld.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi?roo=1680&url=http://ens.lycos.com/

**Inner City Asthma Study
This six-year study released by the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology found that improved communications between physicians and families concerning their child's asthma, along with identifying and removing asthma triggers such as cigarette smoke or cockroaches from the child's home, helped reduce emergency room visits and asthma symptoms for inner-city children.
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/newsroom/releases/aaaai.htm

**Dental Health Comes Last
Poor families are paying a higher portion of their children's dental care expenses out-of-pocket than middle-income families because their children are not receiving the dental care they are eligible for under state Medicaid programs, according to research published in Pediatric Dentistry. Since dentists cannot accept out-of-pocket payments for services covered by Medicaid, families either did not report their child as Medicaid eligible, or the dentist they sought care from was not a Medicaid provider. E-mail Sarah
Seewoester (sseewoester@aapd.org) to request a faxed copy.

**Problems With Access to Dental Care for Medicaid-Insured Children
Dental disease is the most common health problem in this country, yet even those with public insurance have difficulty gaining access to primary dental services, according to this report in the American Journal of Public Health. Caregivers who successfully searched for providers, arranged for an appointment, and found transportation often had to contend with additional barriers, including long waiting times and disrespectful and discriminatory behavior from staff and providers because of their race and public assistance status. http://www.ajph.org/content/vol92/issue1/

**Just the Facts on Dental Health
Dental care affects school attendance and performance, according to this fact sheet from the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools.
http://www.healthinschools.org/cfk/dentfact.asp

**Teen Tipplers: America's Underage Drinking Epidemic
Alcohol is the drug most used by children and teens in America by far, and it poses the greatest threat to their well-being, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. This new report found that a third of all high school students, or 5 million youths, say they binge drink at least once a month, and that the gender gap in alcohol consumption that used to separate girls and boys has disappeared among younger teens.
http://www.casacolumbia.org/newsletter1457/newsletter_show.htm?doc_id=103428

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EDUCATION BY THE NUMBERS

**Digest of Education Statistics 2001
The National Center for Education Statistics' Digest of Education Statistics, 2001 compiles statistical information covering pre-kindergarten through graduate school. Topics include the number of schools and colleges, educational attainment, federal funds for education, employment and income of graduates, technology and international comparisons in over 400 tables.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002130

**Raising Achievement and Reducing Gaps in Mathematics
Overall, the results reported in this National Education Goals Panel report for mathematics are encouraging. The majority of participating states and the nation as a whole showed statistically significant positive change in average scores, the scores for the top and bottom quartiles, and in the percentage of students scoring at the proficient level or higher. However, there was almost no progress in closing the gaps between the scores of majority and minority students or between the scores of students eligible and not eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
http://www.negp.gov/reports/RaisingAchievementReducingGaps.pdf
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FOCUS ON THE STATES

**State-by-State News

California
A special legislative hearing on Monday, March 11th from 2:00 - 5:00 p.m. at the California State Capitol will feature researchers from the National Academy of Sciences' "Neurons to Neighborhoods" project, who will discuss the importance of investing in the development of young children even during times of budget cuts. For more information, contact Andrea Price-Stogsdill (apricestogsdill@centerforhealthimprovement.org).

The Los Angeles United Way released the report "From Cradle to K: Ensuring
Success by Six for All L.A. Children."
http://www.unitedwayla.org/pfdfiles/c2krp1.pdf

Illinois
State advocates warn that early childhood education for Illinois' youngest children is in grave danger of vanishing under a plan in Gov. George Ryan's proposed budget for fiscal
year 2003.
http://www.voices4kids.org

Maryland
A new Maryland study found that only 49 percent of Maryland's kindergartners were rated "fully ready" to start school this year by their teachers, bolstering the case for increased state spending on early childhood education, according to some state officials.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7611-2002Feb26.html

Mississippi
Urban Institute's ?Recent Changes in Health Policy for Low-Income People in Mississippi" finds that in spite of recent progress, rapidly increasing budgetary pressures have made any Medicaid program expansions unlikely for the near future and may threaten earlier gains in eligibility and enrollment.
http://newfederalism.urban.org/pdf/HP_Mississippi.pdf

New York
The Women's Center for Education and Career Advancement has released the "Self-Sufficiency Calculator for the City of New York," a computer-based tool that allows working families to test their income eligibility for a variety of work supports such as Food Stamps, Medicaid, Public Assistance, WIC, Public Housing and Tax Credits, and gives clients vital information on how to access these subsidies and supports.
http://www.wceca.org

Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children's ?Working but Poor? found that two-thirds of Pennsylvania's poor families are working families.
http://www.papartnerships.org

Rhode Island
Rhode Island's unique approach to welfare reform -- the Family Independence Program -- is having a positive impact on the lives of Rhode Island families, according to a report by a coalition of groups that has been monitoring its impacts.
http://www.unitedwaysene.org

Washington
Urban Institute's "Recent Changes in Health Policy for Low-Income People in Washington" finds that Washington, once a leader among states in expanding coverage to the uninsured, now struggles to maintain many of these advances due to spending growth
constraints imposed by the I-601 ballot initiative, tax cuts and revenue shortfalls.
http://newfederalism.urban.org/html/HP_Washington.html

Keep in touch, everyone!

Jan
jan@benton.org