A report card marked with too many C's and D's is not something to boast about. Unfortunately, those are just the kinds of grades America brought home yesterday, earning an overall C- in America's Report Card 2012: Children in the U.S., released by Save the Children and First Focus.
While a C- isn't an F, as a grade assigned to our country for the overall well-being of its children, it's far from good enough. That's why, yesterday morning in Washington, D.C., we gathered with Bruce Lesley (President, First Focus), former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) to release the report and to urge America to do better for our kids.
Commissioned by Sens. Dodd and Casey, America's Report Card provides a snapshot of children's needs, assigning grades in five areas:
The presidential candidates keep talking about building a more prosperous and more competitive nation -- a much-needed priority, considering the report assigned our country a D on economic security for children -- yet, during the first presidential debate, neither candidate mentioned the poverty epidemic affecting 16 million kids. That's nearly one in four children who know all too well what it means to go without.
Why, then, are children being left out of the conversation during an election season in which the economy is the primary issue?
Children don't have access to the political process the way adults do. They don't appear on cable talk shows, contribute to political action committees, or vote.
We understand the election's emphasis on reducing the deficit, but that is not mutually exclusive from reducing poverty. Research shows that childhood poverty costs our nation $500 billion per year, while a meaningful investment in children's education in the earliest years would add $2 trillion to our gross domestic product within a generation.
Why make this type of investment? Kids living in poverty are 18 months behind developmentally by age four. They're less likely to be reading at grade-level in elementary school. As they get older, they are more likely to drop out of high school and be trapped in the cycle of poverty as adults. As a country, we invest billions in trying to remediate these children but an upfront investment is a much wiser one.
As Lesley put it, "We grade kids all the time. It's time to take responsibility as a nation for the decisions that determine whether kids can succeed. We can't be satisfied with a C-, but raising the grade means getting involved, voting for kids, and holding politicians accountable."
Let's summon the political will to invest in our children. If the candidates are truly serious about building a stronger America, then a meaningful debate about ending childhood poverty must become part of the conversation.
Read the complete report here.
It is producing broken, bullied people and bullies who move onto becoming cops and the kind of rats who cause entire companies to implode with scandals and theft and so many other things that never get reported.
The sooner it is gone the better. Hopefully the bullied kids will become adults who see their property tax bills and realize what a waste of money it is to fund these bully galleries that serve public education workers and no one else.
I know this will offend a lot of people but it is the truth. Rich or poor, if parents don't teach and encourage their kids to learn, their kids will likely suffer. The real issue is educating the parents to this reality.
The authors focus on changing the statistic issues that give rise different outcomes, as opposed to the reasons those statistical issue result in different outcomes. That is the problem.
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But that's a big part of the problem. It's not "our" children. Our children do just fine in their private schools and their over-scheduled lives with soccer, music lessons, and play dates. It's "their" children, the children of the despised poor, the children of the 47%, who are getting left behind.
And that won't change until we denounce and reject the dog-eat-dog system that has been imposed on us for so long. Until ordinary Americans are more outraged by people like Romney than by "Obamaphone" recipients, we will continue to sink into plutarchy.
Tell me, since we doubled spending on education in the past 25 years (adjusted for inflation) why has the return been lower test scores? If this is the case why on earth should I be called upon as a taxpayer to throw even more money on the problem? Few people know that the SAT was adjusted in the 90's to give an almost 100 point boost to test recipients because the scores fell so far below the national goals.
Sickening.
They should be run like a business, at least we would expect a return for our money.
Looking at the records and seeing evidence of underfunding requires myopia amounting to willful blindness. And what exactly would you rather spend the money on, military expeditions to assorted deserts?
The USA is 7th in adult literacy, 27th in math scores, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force and number four in exports. We rank 13th in starting a business, 47th in press freedom, and ranked dead last, in net trade of goods and services.
We lead the world in number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of guns per capita and defense spending, waste generation, pollution, homicides, drug consumption, medical cost and I'm not certain on this but probably also voter ignorance..