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July 24, 2012 | How Are Kids Doing? Three National Reports Released
Campaign rhetoric says children are our future, but July's data on their well-being and public spending on their behalf tells a different story.
In the SparkOpportunity Challenge, we asked young people to come up with "shelf-ready" ideas to improve the job market in their communities. Our next challenge will spark creative ways to tell a story in the form of an infographic using this year's KIDS COUNT data. The challenge will encourage the public, and politicians, to pay attention and respond not with rhetoric, but with a real commitment to improving the lives of children and families. The KIDS COUNT report comes out tomorrow (July 25), so check back soon for details on how to enter.
This week's news is not all discouraging. In a rigorous evaluation, a Chicago violence-reduction program proved to be not only highly successful, but also scalable and cost-effective. And a handbook finds that the future of Social Security is much stronger than many young people fear.
As for the fiscal cliff known as sequestration, the word for automatic, across-the-board federal funding cuts due to take effect as of 2013, recent polling finds more public appetite for asking the richest taxpayers to pay their fair share in taxes. Some long-time analysts think that there is still a chance that Congress will adopt a balanced approach to the budget, using higher tax revenues to meet our obligations as well as carefully targeted spending cuts. That would be good news for children, youth and families -- because sequestration is really bad news for them.
Jan Richter
We want your feedback and ideas. Email jan@sparkaction.org.
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| Annual Reports on Kids 
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| Washington, DC - Battle of the Budget
Impact of Sequestration on Federal Education Programs
Washington is playing hard ball on the budget. With the sequestration deadline for automatic across-the-board funding cuts to begin in 2013, the stakes in Congress' battle over the budget are higher than ever. The National Education Association reports that if Congress fails to pass a balanced solution to reduce the deficit, education funding would fall off a cliff, dropping to pre-2003 levels. To put this in context, America's schools have added 5.4 million students since 2003 and education costs have increased 25 percent, just for K-12.
Greenstein on the Fiscal Cliff
In this atmosphere of political hard ball, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Director Bob Greenstein explains that the sequestration cuts would trigger an economic downturn in early 2013. Greenstein thinks that the public outcry once the spending cuts hit, along with the austerity-driven recession they would likely trigger, would force Congress to agree on a balanced approach to the budget that includes revenue increases in addition to spending cuts, in the early weeks of 2013, if not before.
End Tax Cuts for the Rich
The public hates tax hikes, but new polling indicates that the public hates unfairness in the tax  code even more, which is why many are concluding that it's time for the richest 2 percent who have benefited from the Bush tax cuts for more than a decade to begin to pay their fair share.
The Benefits of Access: Eliminating Siloed Programs for Low-Income Americans
Winning adequate funding for programs serving low-income families is one battle. Reducing the barriers and red tape so that low-income families can take full advantage of supports to help them move out of poverty is another challenge. Timothy Warfield and Mark Schmeissing say Community Action Centers can play a key community role in helping families overcome the challenges of multiple, divided services.
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| Education News - Showing Results
The impressive results of a rigorous, random-assignment evaluation of "Be a Man: Sports Edition" show that the combination of group counseling, mentoring and special sports programs markedly decreased the number of arrests among participants, while grades and school attendance greatly improved, putting the boys on track to graduate at much higher rates than the control group. The program was also cost-effective, at around $1,100 per participant.
Video: Student Voices on Higher Education
In recent focus groups, community college students expressed some frustration that without clearly defined goals and a solid understanding of how to meet them, higher education was too difficult and expensive. They noted that more specific information on how to choose the right courses and achieve career goals is essential, but not so easy to find. Public Agenda reports.
The Center on Education Policy series on the successes and challenges facing schools receiving federal School Improvement Grants finds that replacing teachers and principals is the greatest challenge to education reform, while efforts to improve school climate are becoming more effective. Some schools struggled to increase learning time for students, while others reported fewer problems with this strategy.
The Obama administration has been focusing on STEM learning because it is closely associated with student success and economic growth. Last week the President proposed a new effort to boost student achievement in science, technology, engineering and math. See also last week's resources on improving STEM learning.
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| Youth Voices
Rock the Vote has officially launched a model in Washington state for modernizing the voter registration process by allowing voters to register to vote (from their phone, iPad or computer) completely online.
A Young Person's Guide to Social Security 
Social Security is the nation's largest anti-poverty program, but many young people fear it will not be there for them when they get older. The new edition of A Young Person's Guide to Social Security, by the Economic Policy Institute and the National Academy of Social Insurance, gives young adults the information they need to participate in debates about Social Security's future and explains why Social Security is not in grave danger, as often reported.
Job Hopping to a Career
If you focus on gaining new skills in each job, you can turn job-hopping into a career advancement strategy. One young person reports on her experience.
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| Webinars
July 24: How State and Local Advocates Stopped Cut Backs and Achieved Successes
At 3pm TODAY (Tuesday) the National Women's Law Center and CLASP will provide an update on recent efforts to protect and strengthen funding for child care and early learning programs.
July 25: Is Your School Passing the Pregnancy Test? A Webinar for Schools, Teachers and Advocates Working with Pregnant and Parenting Teens
This webinar explores a new report by the National Women's Law Center that ranks all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico on the extent to which their laws and policies help pregnant and parenting students succeed.
July 26: The Role of Teaching in a Learner-Centered, Digitally-Empowered Environment
Preparing all students to succeed in today's increasingly complex world requires a shift from a teacher-centric culture to learner-centered instruction that recognizes students' individual learning needs, according to a report from the Alliance for Excellent Education. |
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Caitlin Johnson and Thaddeus Ferber
SparkAction and the Forum for Youth Investment
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