The USDA "Summer Food Service Program Map Machine" finds summer food program sites by zip code or other locators, detailing the characteristics of the local neighborhood and schools.

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics released its latest annual report, America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-being 2006 on July 14th. The report is a compendium of statistics from 21 federal agencies with the latest available data on 26 key indicators related to children's economic security, health, behavior and social environment, and education and on 9 background measures related to population and family characteristics. The 2006 Brief highlights selected information displayed in previous reports, reflects improvements to the summary list, and fills an important data gap in children’s mental health. View, download, and order a copy of the report from the Forum's website. The web site includes detailed data tables and figures (not in the Brief), previous reports and their related links, other Forum reports, and information about the overall structure of the Forum.

Nearly 7 to 9 percent of all children (ages 9 to 17) have a serious emotional disturbance, which means there are one or two kids with serious emotional problems in virtually every classroom, according to the report. This report also addresses mental health issues associated with children, adults, older adults and suicide prevention and highlights a variety of model programs that address the mental health needs of children and adolescents.

Pay for the nation's teachers is considerably lower than for other workers with similar education and skills, according to a new book by the Economic Policy Institute, "How Does Teacher Pay Compare?" And it's falling. Since 1993, teacher wages have fallen 11.5 percent relative to workers in jobs with similar requirements.

The recent Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa poll finds a growing consensus that adequate financial support is the number one problem facing schools today. Issues related to discipline and drugs dominated the poll as the major concern until 2000, when lack of financial support rose to the top. While the public continues to report it has too little information about the No Child Left Behind act to have an opinion, the evidence suggests that many agree with the goals of narrowing achievement gaps and raising performance - but not with high stakes testing, vouchers and other controversial aspects of NCLB's strategies for improving learning.

The number of uninsured Americans rose to 45 million in 2003, the highest level on record, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The availability of health insurance coverage under Medicaid and SCHIP was essential in a year in which employer-based coverage continued to decline.

The Coalition on Human Needs has compiled an easy-to-read series of tables depicting the newest Census data. Among the information presented: Even with incomes twice the poverty line ($37,320 a year for a family of four), families struggle to make ends meet. Nearly four in ten of America's children live in families with incomes this low.

This Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis examines new Census Bureau data on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in 2003. The full report also explores reasons behind recent developments and trends we're likely to see in 2004.

Connect for Kids has gathered national and state data to provide a context for the Census poverty/income figures released last week.

For the third year in a row, the number of Americans living in poverty grew, and many working families faced greater hardships as public services and wages eroded. An additional 1.3 million people were poor last year, many of them children, according to the Census Bureau's annual poverty, income, and health insurance data. More than 4 million more people live in poverty than did in 2000. The number of poor children has grown by nearly 1.3 million. In 2003, 5.6 million children were living in extreme poverty - earning less than $7,500 for a family of three.