CFK reports from: Child Well-Being: Their Present, Our Future
Event: A Briefing on America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Child Well-Being, released by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics
Organized by: America's Promise
Where/When: Washington DC, Thursday September 22, 2005

Report by: Amanda Kuryluk

Members from non-profit organizations and government agencies gathered at an annual policy seminar conducted by The Alliance for Youth to discuss the latest data on child well-being and how this data should be used to inform federal policy in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The briefing was to discuss the biennial release of America's Children: Key National Indicators of Child Well-Being, a compilation of statistics gathered by a collaboration of 20 agencies collectively known as the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics that provides data on education, health status, social development and other measures of how children are faring.

The panelists were asked to discuss whether the statistics indicated progress towards keeping the "Five Promises" to children that are identified by America's Promise as critical: adults who care, safe places, a healthy start, effective education, and opportunities for children to serve and give back. Of the five elements discussed, the panelists devoted most of their attention to education and health care.

The executive editor of Roll Call, Morton Kondracke, reported on current educational trends. Among several positive findings, Kondracke noted that the percentage of young people aged 16 to 19 who were neither enrolled in school nor working had declined to about 8 percent, from 11 percent in 1984.

And in grades 4 and 8, average mathematics scores were higher in 2003 than in any previous assessment. However, there is still plenty of room for improvement, Kondracke noted, with only 32 percent of 4th graders and 29 percent of 8th graders reaching the Proficient level in math. And there continues to be a persistent gap between the scores of white, non-Hispanic students and black and Hispanic students.

Kondracke blames the slow pace of improvement in educational outcomes on a lack of political will regarding children's issues. In order to fix this problem he believes an initiative must be created to help coordinate all youth-serving agencies, something that could be accomplished with passage of the proposed Federal Youth Coordination Act.

Like Kondracke, Rhonda Mims of the ING foundation believes that improving education must be a priority, especially in the age of globalization. She suggests looking at successful infrastructures in other parts of the world. "We want a qualified work force that may not exist in the future," said Mims.

Karen Kornbluh, Policy Director for Senator Barack Obama, presented encouraging information on health care. She reported that since 1996 health insurance coverage for children has increased to 89%. However, Kornbluh suggested that the increased percentage of children with insurance reflects an increased reliance of government-funded insurance programs such as Medicaid and SCHIP, while the percentage of children covered by private employer-sponsored programs is falling. Kornbluh argues that this trend reflects an American culture that is not supportive of families.

In discussing the implications of Katrina for children's health, it was noted in the seminar that after 9/11 disaster relief care was quickly made widely available to victims through Medicaid. This same method should now be used for Katrina victims as a way to alleviate the access problems victims are currently facing.