Kids’ Share 2011: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2010

July 26, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

The Brookings Institution and The Urban Institute

The fifth annual Kids’ Share report represents a milestone in the analysis and reporting of federal expenditures on children because the available data now spans 50 years, from 1960 to 2010.

In 1960, the largest federal contributions to families with children came from the dependent tax exemption, Social Security benefits and education. However in 2010 the dependant exemption has far less of a relative value, and Medicaid, the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit have become the three largest federal expenditures on families and children.

Federal expenditures in 2010, which is the most recent year of data available, seemed to be affected by the recession of the latter half of the decade as well as by long-term trends. In response to the recession and the increased unemployment rate, the federal government increased its expenditures on children.

The children’s share of the federal budget was 11 percent in 2010, which is slightly higher than it was in 2009, and significantly higher than it was in 1960. However, this increase might only be temporary as the children’s share of the federal budget is expected to decline to less than 8 percent of the total federal budget by the end of the next decade.

Between 2010 and 2015, outlays on children are expected to fall from $374 billion to $339 billion, which is a decrease of 9 percent.

Together, Medicaid and the three child-related tax provisions accounted for 47 percent of the total expenditures on children. Among the other largest federal spending programs on children are Social Security, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), several education-related programs, and the Child Nutrition Program.

There was also a temporary increase in spending on some programs because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which was enacted in 2009. The act had a large impact on education outlays, with both Title I schools and special education programs showing substantial outlays from ARRA funding. In addition, it is estimated that about two-thirds of the new $53.6 billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF), which was established by ARRA, was spent on K-12 education, $17 billion of which was spent in fiscal year 2010.

A large majority of the state and local spending on children in 2008, the last year for which data is available, was on education, with a significantly lesser amount of spending on health and other costs. State and local spending on education averaged about $6,853 per child in 2008 (spread across all children under 19 years old, and including those not in school). Expenditures for health were more evenly split among state and local governments and federal spending with the federal government providing 59 percent and state governments providing the remaining 41 percent. In addition, health spending accounted for 11 percent of total public investments in 2008.

 

This is NOT the full article

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

Secondhand Smoke and Sensorineural Hearing Loss in Adolescents

July 22, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Archives of Otolaryngology

Secondhand smoke, the perils of which continue to grow, has now been linked to possible hearing loss in adolescents.

Although exposure rates vary across regions and by other factors including race, socioeconomic status and gender, about half of the nation’s population is exposed to secondhand smoke and the detrimental effects of SHS have been shown across all demographic groups.

When exposed to tobacco prenatally and while in childhood, SHS has been linked to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), increased asthma severity, behavioral and cognitive problems, otitis media (OM) – or ear infection – and low birth weight, among other maladies.

In the auditory system – which is the sensory system for hearing – SHS is a known risk factor for OM. In addition, recurrent acute OM is more common in the nearly 60 percent of children exposed to SHS in the United States.

Secondhand smoke exposure might also have an impact on auditory development, leading to sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), according to this new study reported in the Archives of Otolaryngology.

To conduct the study, data was analyzed from 2,288 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19, from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES 2005-06). Participants were evaluated during a home interview to determine family medical history, current medical conditions of the participants, medications being used, whether smokers lived in the households, and general socioeconomic and demographic information.

The researchers found that SHS exposure has been linked to diseases in the United States affecting everyone from the young to the elderly. This particular study found that SHS is found to be associated with hearing loss in adolescents in the United States.

In multiple variable analyses, controlling for gender, race, age and poverty, exposure to tobacco smoke was associated with a 1.83-fold increased risk of hearing loss among adolescents.

 

This is NOT the full article

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

The Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation

July 21, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

 

Urban Institute

This new evaluation by researchers from the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center (UI-JPC), RTI International (RTI) and the Center for Court Innovation (CCI) is the first long-term study of drug courts for adults. The study lasted for five years and examined 23 courts and six comparison jurisdictions in eight different states.

The main goals of the evaluation were to test whether drug courts reduce the use of drugs, crimes and other problems of their clients in comparison with offenders not exposed to drug court; address how well drug courts work, and determine the factors that make drugs courts more or less effective than regular courts in achieving desired outcomes; explain how offender attitudes and behaviors change when exposed to drug courts and how these changes could explain effectiveness of drug courts; and examine whether  drug courts generate cost savings.

One of the most significant findings from the study is that these court programs can significantly decrease criminal behavior and drug use, because participants sensed that their judge treated them more fairly, showed greater interest and respect for them, and gave them more opportunities to talk during court proceedings.

The study found few differences among multiple categories of offenders– defined by social ties, demographics, mental health, prior drug use, and criminality– in terms of the magnitude of drug court impact. Findings indicated that nearly all categories of offenders benefit comparably from drug courts, which the researchers said could suggest that widespread drug court policies to restrict the eligibility to a narrow subset of the population might be counterproductive. In addition, drug courts also affected criminal behavior among most of the same subgroups. There were also no subgroup-based differences in the rate of positive drug tests.

 

This is NOT the full artcle

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

Achievement Trends of Schools and Students in Arizona’s Title I School Improvement Program

July 20, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Institute of Education Sciences (IES)

This report describes how Arizona public schools found to need improvement under Title I of No Child Left Behind are distributed across various levels under the improvement scheme, compares trends in reading and math proficiency for students attending schools at each level and examines patterns of movement in and out of school improvement status among Title I schools. It also shows that even schools that didn’t meet their annual goals have shown marked rises in their test scores.

The report primarily addresses the following research questions and objectives about Arizona students and public schools—how many schools are struggling to meet improvement guidelines, where the schools are located and how various schools moved in and out of various improvement categories from the 2005-06 school year to the 2008-09 school year. Schools in “improvement” may be spread across various levels, based largely on how many consecutive years a school has failed to improve test scores. The number of years of “failure” triggers various levels of assistance to the schools and students.

Overall, the study found that the percentage and number of Arizona schools in improvement (that is, failed to meet yearly goals) are increasing. Of Arizona’s 1,912 public schools in the 2008-09 school year, 62 percent (1,181) received Title I funding. Among those 1,181, 26 percent were in improvement. That compares with the 2005-06 school year, when 56 percent of public schools received Title I funding and 14 percent of those were schools in Improvement.

In 2008-09, more Title I middle schools were deemed in need of improvement (52 percent) than high schools (39 percent) and elementary schools (18 percent).

During this same time period reading and math proficiency increased for students in all three school types (based on their school type in 2008-09). In 2008-09, Arizona Title I schools in improvement had student proficiency rates of 43 percent to 61 percent, Title I Schools not in improvement had rates of 60 percent to 71 percent and non-Title I schools had proficiency rates of 76 percent to 84 percent. However, since the 2005-06 school year, the schools in improvement made proficiency gains of 5 percentage points to 9 percentage points, more than  Title I schools not in Improvement (3 percentage points to 7 percentage points) and non-Title I Schools (less than 1 percentage point to 4 percentage points).

Among the 978 schools receiving Title I funding throughout the period of study, more schools, both by percentage and number, entered the school improvement program than schools that left the program.

This is NOT the full article

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

National Postsecondary Enrollment Trends Before, During and After the Great Recession

July 14, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

 

National Student Clearinghouse Research Center

 

This report spotlights national and regional college enrollment trends among traditional-age, first-time students during the fall semester of each year from 2006 to 2010 – before, during and after the recession.

It categorizes the total enrollment and changes across years by institution sector and control; enrollment changes across the years nationally and by geographic region; full- and part-time enrollment by institution type and geographic region; and first-year persistence and retention rates based on individual student pathways across institutions.

Results of the study show that changes in college enrollment accompanying the recent recession, and among traditional-age college students have not been as pronounced as many had previously believed.

At the same time, postsecondary institutions faced challenges including shifts in enrollment patterns, cuts in funding from state governments, and general uncertainties regarding financial aid practices.

Although there were consistent increases in community college enrollments from 2006 to 2009, they decreased slightly from 2009 to 2010 among traditional-age college students. The enrollment declines in 2010 seem to follow an enrollment surge at many community colleges in 2009. The findings show the need for continued state support for community colleges and also enhanced structural development within the two-year public college sector.

During the recession, private-sector colleges appear to have maintained their market share of student enrollments more effectively than predicted. This could be for various reasons, including better targeted recruitment efforts; state budget cuts and financial strains faced by the public four-year colleges; and the likelihood that families able financially to send their children to expensive private schools were not as affected by the downturn.

The recession appears, however, to have caused a noticeable shift in students’ choices regarding whether to enroll full- or part-time. Nationally, four-year institutions saw very little change in the proportion of students enrolling full-time. However, the proportion of students enrolling full-time at public community colleges increased slightly during the recession. Although these particular findings are not dramatic, they do suggest that students who might have otherwise attended four-year institutions instead enrolled full-time at community colleges.

 

This is NOT the full article

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

Four Times More Florida Deaths from Legal, than Illegal, Drugs

July 08, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

 

Florida had four times as many deaths from legal drugs as illegal drugs in 2009, according to a report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published today, signaling what it says is a need for more attention to prescription drug abuse.

By 2007, unintentional poisonings in Florida had grown to be the second leading cause of injury-related death, after motor vehicle accidents. Of all unintentional poisonings, 93 percent were drug overdoses.

Of all overdoses occurring in Florida between 2003 and 2009, about 86 percent were unintentional, about 11 percent were suicides and 2.6 percent were of undetermined intent.

From 2003 and 2009 in Florida, the number of annual deaths that showed lethal amounts of one or more drugs increased 61 percent from 1,804 in 2003 to 2,905 in 2009 – when drug overdoses caused eight deaths each day. In addition, the overdose death rate in Florida increased 47.5 percent during the same time period.

Between 2003 and 2009, death rates from all drugs, except for cocaine and heroin, increased. The death rate for prescribed drugs increased just over 84 percent, with the greatest death rate increase stemming from oxycodine (264.6 percent).

Since 2007, Florida has seen the rapid increase of hundreds of pain clinics that prescribe large quantities of oxycodine and alprazolam (Xanax), some of which is ultimately used for non-medical purposes, according to the report, part of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.  Many of the customers of such pain clinics often travel to Florida from Appalachian States such as Kentucky to obtain the drugs for resale in their home states, the report states.

 

This is NOT the full article

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

Affordability and Transfer Critical to Increase Bachelor’s Degree Completion

July 06, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education

The importance of the U.S. having more college graduates and the role that community colleges must play in producing such an increase are addressed in this new report. It places particular emphasis on states with rapidly growing young populations where ethnic groups and low-income students with low rates of college participation and completion are most highly concentrated.

The report states that too many college students will not make it to get their degree because of rising tuition costs and ineffective transfer policies.

The students at the highest risk levels are those who begin their college education at a two-year institution, often because of financial necessity. Students from underrepresented racial groups are more likely to enroll in community colleges as their first postsecondary institution. On a national level, 50 percent of Hispanics start at community college. This rate is 31 percent for African-Americans and 28 percent for Caucasians.

The report states that this problem is likely to get worse in coming years because of the projected increase of high school graduates in states such as Arizona, Texas, and California, where more than half of post-secondary education students currently are enrolled in two-year higher education institutions.

Over the last 20 years, tuition at public two-year colleges has increased far more rapidly than the inflation rate, according to the report. But at the same time, family incomes, when adjusted for inflation, have actually declined over that same time period.

This combination puts extreme pressure on states to make up the difference in financial Aid, but the report notes that states’ efforts have been inadequate. The remaining shortfall falls back on students who then need to work more Job hours to be able to afford college and means they are forced to take fewer classes – both factors make them less likely to complete any kind of college degree.

 

This is NOT the full article

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

Blacks, Native Americans Highly Overrepresented in Foster Care, Report Shows

July 05, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Most states continue to place high rates of African-American children in foster care, said a recent report on race and foster care by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Justices (NCJFCJ).

The report, Disproportionality Rates for Children of Color in Foster Care, breaks down the disproportionality rates of children in foster care for each state in 2004 and 2009. Disproportionality is calculated in this study by taking the population of children in foster care for a particular race and dividing it by the proportion of the same racial group in the child population.

There has been a national decrease in African-American disproportionality rates – the rate was 2.65 in 2004, and dropped to 2.36 in 2009 – but nearly every state involves a higher amount of African-American children in foster care than their population figures would predict. States with the highest disproportionality rates of African-Americans in foster care in 2009 were Wyoming with a rate of 6.0, Utah (4.4), Wisconsin (4.2), and California (4.1). Hawaii and Oregon were the only states where African-American children were actually under-represented in the foster care population.

Most states with high African-American disproportionality rates also remove a high rate of children, period, according to research by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, which calculates its state rate-of-removal index by dividing the number of children removed from their homes by the number of children living in poverty.

Of the 17 states with a rate above 2.5, only Illinois and Ohio have a rate-of-removal index below the national average of 18.3. Four of the 17 states – Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa and Colorado – are in the top 10 on the rate-of-removal index.

 

This is NOT the full article

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

How Young Americans Who Don’t Finish College See Their Chances for Success

June 30, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Public Agenda Report for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Although when in high school the vast majority of young Americans say they want to go to college, only about four in ten have earned any post-high school credential by the time they turn 35, according to this report, which is based on a survey of 611 respondents ages 26 to 34 who have at least a high school diploma or GED.

And, the report says, many young adults who later decide they do want to pursue a college degree don’t understand what it takes to finish and pay for college.

The first major finding from the study is that, in comparison to those young people with college degrees, people who possess only a high school graduates are less confident about their financial prospects and are much less likely to be on a stable, solid career path. Just 36 percent of those with only a high school education say it is very likely that they will be financially secure in their lifetimes. This is in comparison to 55 percent of those that are college educated expecting their lives to be economically stable.

The second result of the study showed that despite their worries about the future and mixed experiences with jobs, most high school graduates believe there are still ways to succeed at work without additional education. Fifty-seven percent of those studied say that there are “many ways to succeed in the job market without college experience.”

High school graduates are also less likely to say it’s a good idea to borrow money to go to college. The study found that 89 percent of all young adults interviewed agree that students borrow too much money to pay for college.

An additional finding of the study was that high school graduates are more skeptical than college graduates about the motives of higher education institutions. Surveys that were conducted show a growing skepticism about the way higher education institutions are run.

 

This is NOT the full article

FOR FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

Foster Care Agency, Florida DCF Make Changes after Girl’s Dealth

July 01, 2011 by Andrew AtwalTwins should never have been placed with adoptive family

The Florida agency responsible for supervising the foster care of 10-year-old brother and sister twins – one of whom was found dead in February, the other badly burned – says it is making numerous changes in its operations in an attempt to prevent anything similar happening again.

Our Kids of Miami-Dade/Monroe, a contract agency in charge of monitoring the care of Victor and Nubia Barahona as foster children, has come under intense scrutiny for not recognizing warning signs that the twins were not being cared for adequately by the couple who would become their adoptive parents.

Nubia was found dead in the back of her adoptive father’s pickup truck and Victor was found in the front seat of the truck, suffering from severe chemical burns, days after reports to a child abuse hotline indicated the twins might be being abused by their adoptive parents.

The adoptive parents, Jorge and Carmen Barahona, are charged with first-degree murder and child abuse in the death of Nubia and the injuries to Victor.

Changes planned by Our Kids focus better, more organized documentation of foster children’s lives, including the documenting of medical, school, Guardian ad Litem (GAL) and abuse reports made in between and during home visits.

A report prepared for the state after the death of Nubia Barahona stated explicitly that if better documentation of all case files had taken place, it could have helped the courts, caseworker, supervisor and Our Kids identify the problems occurring with the foster family and could have prompted immediate action to rectify the situation. For example, there was no documentation that the Barahonas had failed to tend to the children’s routine medical and dental needs. And there was no documentation of a psychologist’s discussion of a possible second evaluation of Nubia. Our Kids officials would not comment on any recommendation of another evaluation for Nubia.

Questionable behavior

More than 900 pages of court documents involving the two children were released after Nubia’s death and they contain reports of repeated questionable behavior by the Barahonas, both when they were the foster parents and as the adoptive parents, that should have prevented them from having custody of the children. In the months before Nubia’s death, there also were repeated abuse reports fom neighbors and parents of children in the same school the two children attended.

Dave Lawrence, a former Miami Herald publisher and one of three panelists who investigated the case said, “One hopes that all the facts, and as close to the truth as possible, emerge in the court case.”

He went on to say that he is convinced that there is real evil in this case, and that there were so many missed signals in the case that never were connected.

“Nubia’s death is simply tragic – and was preventable,” Lawrence said. “May we all learn something from this so there is a meaningful legacy to her life.”

According to court documents released in late May, Jorge Barahona told police he thought the twins were trying to harm him and their siblings with rat poison. He also said he was worried that Nubia and Victor were sexually abusing the other children in the family, an 11-year-old autistic boy and a 7-year-old girl, both of whom were also adopted. The other two adopted children are no longer in the Barahona’s custody.

An older girl, the couple’s biological daughter, also lived with the couple and the four adopted children in a three-bedroom, one-bath suburban Miami home. Dense shrubs and palm trees obscured the home’s windows; there were numerous security cameras and a four-foot tall entry gate.

Jorge Barahona also reportedly told police he believed Nubia was attempting to harm him by putting baby oil in his drinks.

Brother heard fatal beating

According to the arrest affidavit for Carmen Barahona, Nubia was beaten to death by her adoptive father on Feb. 10, which is the same day that a therapist called the DCF Hotline to advise workers that Nubia and her twin brother Victor were being tied up and locked in a room on a regular basis. The warrant states that Nubia was repeatedly punched and beat while she cried and screamed, until she was dead.

In addition to Nubia’s injuries, Victor, who was treated for a cleft palate when he was born, did not receive the necessary medical care while with the Barahonas, and as a result, he had incurred additional injury to his face and disfigurement.

Victor told police that days before his sister’s body was found, he heard his adoptive father punching Nubia and Nubia screaming for “a long time.” He also said that both his adoptive parents told him that Nubia had gone to California to visit her grandmother.

Nubia died on Feb. 10, and her body was discovered in Jorge Barahona’s pickup truck on Feb. 14. In that same truck, which Jorge Barahona used for his extermination business, Victor was found soaked in chemicals used for extermination. He is recovering from severe burns in another foster home, officials have said.

The Barahona’s 11-year-old autistic son told police that Carmen Barahona “is a nice woman but deep in the dark side, she’s mean.”

Officials of Our Kids said in a statement: “We take [the Department of Children and Families’] comments very seriously and are using the suggestions to drive improvement.”

Our Kids is a Miami-based nonprofit created in response to the privatization of foster care in Florida.  Its sole function is to lead and oversee a coordinated care system for abused, neglected, and abandoned children and their families in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties in Florida.

Our Kids monitored the welfare of Victor and Nubia Barahona before their adoption in 2009. They received the case from the Department of Children and Families (DCF) in 2005 – after the children had been placed in the Barahona home. The agency’s supervision ended when the children were adopted.

Our Kids’ new plan of action, which was approved by DCF after Nubia’s death, also involves the guardian ad litem office in Miami, DCF, Children’s Legal Services (CLS), police departments, and judges, among others, It primarily emphasizes the need to integrate services among all of the groups.

Planned changes

The Our Kids plan relies largely on new training procedures, including comprehensive training for both case managers and private investigators, including new training on how to interview children and families.

The twins were placed in foster care with the Barahona family by the Department of Children and Families and were transferred later to the supervision of Our Kids. Our Kids’ officials said that because the agency did not place the children with the Barahona family, they were unable to scrutinize the initial placement as it would if the agency had handled the initial placement.

“We will do our very best and will work tirelessly to do everything in our power to prevent such tragedies from ever happening,” said Kadie Black, government and community affairs liaison of Our Kids.

Our Kids’ plan also refers to implementation of what is called the Structured Decision Making (SDM) model in this work. The purpose of SDM is to provide child welfare case workers with the best tools and information possible in order to help make critical case assessments and decisions. The SDM incorporates the use of research-based risk assessment, which distinguishes it from other decision making models.

 

This is NOT the full article

FULL ARTICLE BEHIND YOUTHTODAY PAY WALL… CONTACT ME FOR FULL ARTICLE