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May 31, 2002
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Leave
No Child Behind:
Pretty
Words but Little Substance, So Far
By Jean Pagano
President
Bush’s State of the Union address in 2002 championed the cause of
‘Leave No
Child Behind.’ The basic notion of Leave No Child Behind, as detailed
in the
Act to Leave No Child Behind (S. 940 / H.R. 1990 – not the
Administration’s
scaled-back H. R. 1) is to: a) get every child ready for school through
full
funding of childcare and Head Start; b) lift every child
from
poverty, ½ by 2004, all by 2010; c) ensure that every child and
their parents
have health care; d) end child hunger by expanding food programs; and,
e)
ensure that every child can read by grade 4 and can graduate from
school and be
able to work and live. These are just a few points from the Act. Yet
the financing
for these programs to help the nation’s children is sorely lacking. The President’s Tax Cut plan allots 47.1% of
the tax cut to the wealthiest 5% of Americans, whereas the bottom 20%
enjoy 0.9% of the tax cut. According to the Children’s Defense Fund, if
the
President’s Tax Cut plan were instead deployed to aid the children that
are not
to be left behind, it would pay for: a) health insurance for every
uninsured
child; b) Head Start, preschool, and quality child care for every
eligible
child who needs it; c) help rebuild crumbling schools and reduce class
sizes in
the early elementary years; d) help 10 million needy individuals,
mostly in
needy families, get food stamps; e) provide housing vouchers to 3.6
million children
living in families with ‘worst case’ housing needs; and, f) help
provide
services to protect millions of abused and neglected children. Instead,
in
families that need the most, the average tax cut is $66.00.
While
the President touts ‘Leave No Child Behind,’ his budget offers the smallest
budget increase in the last seven years. Pretty words make for great
speeches,
yet action is what will help the children of America. As of December
2001,
there were 4,735 children in the state of Minnesota on waiting lists
for
childcare assistance. In California, the number is 280,000 children on
waiting
lists. The Administration says that people who receive assistance need
to work
more hours. However, the 2003 budget does not offer any addition money
for
childcare. Monies that are spent today to benefit children today pay
tremendous
benefits tomorrow. For every dollar spent on childhood inoculations
saves $16
down the road in treating the diseases. For every dollar invested in
children
today, saves $7 dollars tomorrow by ensuring that children will be
literate,
employed, and enrolled in post-secondary education. Increasing
childcare
subsidies to poor and near-poor mothers increases work participation
rates. The
lifetime cost of allowing one child to drop out of high school and into
a
future of crime can cost society millions of dollars.
The
President’s 2003 budget includes funds for building four Native schools
– one
of them being a school on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North
Dakota. Yet
these funds are merely a token: there are many, many Native schools
that are
sorely in need of repairs and renovations. Yet, there is little money
for these
schools. Instead, one can be sure that newspapers across Indian Country
and
America will tout the four new Indian schools.
Here
are some statistics from the Children’s Defense Fund that describe how
Minnesota fits into the overall picture of the health of the nation’s
children:
Minnesota
ranks second best for children living in poverty at 9.3% (the District
of
Columbia is worst at 30.9%). Minnesota ranks fifth best for preschool
children
living in poverty at 11.5% (D.C. is worst at 32.1%). Minnesota ranks
second
best in allowing families earning poverty-level wages to continue
receiving
some form of assistance. Minnesota is tied for seventh best, with
California,
for low percentages for low birthweight babies, at 6.1%. Minnesota is
tied for
fifth best for births to unmarried parents at 25.9%, and is sixth best
for the
teen birth rates at 30.0%. 82.4 percent of two-year olds are fully
immunized in
Minnesota, third best in the nation.
There
are a total of 1,286,894 children under the age of 18 in Minnesota,
397,581
under the age of six, and 889,313 between the ages of 6 and 17. In
Minnesota,
108,000 children are totally without health insurance. Another 295,649
are
enrolled in healthcare under the Medicaid umbrella. Child abuse and
neglect
statistics tallied 11,113 cases in Minnesota in 1999. 9.4% of those
children
were Native children, 26.3% black, 3.8% Asian and 58.7% white.
There
are children in need all across America, and there are also children in
need
here in Minnesota, in our own back yards. It is time to champion the
programs
that help our children by providing life to the programs with funding.
A dollar
wisely spent today on our children will pay huge benefits tomorrow, not
only
for ourselves, but for all citizens collectively. It is truly an
investment for
the future. |
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