Thank God not just for Mississippi, a state traditionally in the cellar when it comes to this league's standings and so makes Arkansas look good if only by comparison. But now let us also give thanks for Arizona, Nevada, Louisiana and New Mexico--all of which are doing even worse than Arkansas when it comes to their kids' welfare. So says the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has taken on the largely thankless task of ranking the states of the Union by how well the kids are doing. And the foundation reports that this state's at-risk kids are doing poorly when judged by four criteria: health, education, family and community, and economic well-being.
This is a failing report card no matter what spin it's given, and We the People of Arkansas should refuse to endorse it. Instead let's send it back and demand an explanation from the appropriate authorities. Question No. 1 from many quarters might be: How can any evaluation of the education of at-risk kids' educational opportunities fail to mention the strong and growing attraction of charter schools in this state? The growth of charter schools may be the best thing that's happened to basic education in Arkansas in many a year. Has this been factored in?
"The reality is that we haven't made major progress on child poverty in many years," says Rich Huddleston, executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, and his views are echoed by Laurie Speer--who oversees the annual Kids Count project by the Casey Foundation.
Here's hoping all of our experts will encourage the best Department of Health, Education and Welfare ever devised in this country: the American family. For who else would be more devoted to their kids than mom and pop? Already too much of their roles has been usurped by government.
Kids who drop out of school seem to do even worse than others, perpetuating generational poverty in a dismal, repetitive cycle that goes from illegitimate birth to unhappy adulthood. Happily, the teen birth rate in Arkansas has been dropping steadily for years, as it has most everywhere else in this country. Not only that, but the abortion rate has dropped to the lowest level since Roe v. Wade. So things are improving not only for kids, but those who will become kids.
It's long been said in connection with real-estate values, that there are three priorities to consider in this order: location, location and location. When it comes to an administration's looking ahead not just to the next election but the next generation, there are also three priorities to consider. They are--in this order--education, education and education. Including moral education if a forward-looking state is to develop generations of citizens capable of governing themselves and providing a bright future for generations to come. And not just producing people to fill job slots. A robotized electorate is not one suitable for this republic or any other.
Unhappily, the kids of families who've been caught by bracket creep in the state's income-tax structure may find they earn too much to be eligible for Medicaid but not enough to buy private health insurance. Happily, the number of kids in Arkansas who are covered by health insurance is now at an all-time high thanks in great part to ARKids First, a program that got started in 1997. Which was quite an improvement from the early 1990s, when as many as a fifth of this state's kids lacked basic health-care coverage. "That's one of the really good things in this report," as Rich Huddleston acknowledges.
So thank you, Rev./Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose administration ushered ARKids into law. Governor Huckabee signed the bill authorizing ARKids First by scrawling his gubernatorial signature on the bill with a crayon. Seldom has so much good been done in such high spirits. If the state's current governor and legislature--and governors and legislatures to come--would follow his example in spirit and in deed, then surely future reports on the state of the state's kids would be a lot more cheerful than this latest one.
Editorial on 06/16/2017