CFK reports from: The Library of Congress
Event: The Education Policy Forum
Organized by: The American Educational Research Association, and The Institute for Educational Leadership
Where/When: Washington DC, Friday, September 9, 2005

Report by: Julie Garfield

Members of various child advocacy organizations congregated at a monthly forum hosted by The American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) to discuss the findings and implications of Children: Key National Indicators of Well Being, 2005. Prepared by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, the biennial report, released this past July, summarizes data as part of a long-term effort to track changes in the quality of life for children in the United States.

Of the four key focal points of the study (economic security, health, behavior and social environment, and education), presenters and discussion participants paid close attention to health and education indicators. Edward Sondik, of the National Center for Health Statistics, highlighted the 7 key indicators of health. The good news, he reported, is that the data suggests that general health status, as measured by parental reports of their children's health between 1984 and 2003, has improved. Perhaps more important than the general statistic is that the health gap between children below and those at or above the poverty level decreased during the studies period of time. Data on other indicators, such as obesity, were not quite as positive. But it's not as easy as thumbs up, thumbs down-- as Sondik pointed out "indicators are not isolated." For example, low birth weight, an indicator of children's health, is largely contingent on the quality of resources like pre- and post-natal care.

Tom Snyder of the National Center for Education Statistics presented information on education indices, choosing to delve further into a discussion on the variability of the findings. High school academic course-taking was selected as an indicator because previous research has shown a strong relationship between the level of difficulty of courses students take and both academic achievement (as measured by performance assessments), and academic/career goals for the future. However, Snyder pointed out that while these data suggest that high school students are in fact taking more advanced classes, academic achievement test scores are not improving accordingly. Overall, Snyder affirmed that the data indicate stagnation in American education as scores show no significant improvement, and education gaps remain more or less the same.

Likewise, the discussion that ensued focused on highlighting the obstacles that stand in the way of using these data. Issues concerning confounding variables such as GED students, dropouts, and incarcerated youth became the forefront of discussion. In the end, the forum that initially sought to answer the question, "how are we, as a nation, caring for our children?" ended up posing the question, how do we, as a nation, create a method to effectively measure how children are faring?

For easy access to America's Children: Key National Indicators of Children's Well- Being 2005, visit http://childstats.gov .

For Information on the Education Policy Forum visit: www.aera.net