“We know what the causes were,” said Leslie Boissiere, vice president of external affairs with the Casey Foundation, known for its , which evaluates child well-being and other measures in each state. “There were significant pandemic-era policies in place, notably, the Child Tax Credit, which was allowed to lapse. Rising costs have also had a significant impact,” she said. are also a factor. Families with workers in low-paying jobs are particularly vulnerable in the current economic conditions.

To make matters worse, cuts to Medicaid, the and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) , said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus Children.

“Children 0 to 3 years old,” Lesley added, “have the highest poverty rate of any age group.”

Measuring child poverty doesn’t involve checking children’s tax returns or bank accounts. Little kids don’t have those. It depends entirely on the financial circumstances of their household, and often their parents. The Casey Foundation, and most other institutions tracking child poverty use the , which counts government benefits to gain a broader view of well-being, rather than the , which relies principally on wages. 

Poverty has serious consequences for learning. “In this period when a young child’s brain is in a rapid period of development, poverty is an impediment to that development,” Boissiere explained. “It increases the risk of behavioral and emotional challenges both at home and in school. And it creates a long-term barrier to a child’s ability to reach their full potential.” 

She elaborated: “If you think of what poverty means for a child, it means I’m constantly worried that I’m going to have enough food to eat. I’m not sure where my next meal is coming from. I may not live in healthy housing conditions. And it’s difficult for a child to focus when those things are on their minds.”

Over the long term, she noted, “There’s a direct impact on the children, but there’s also a direct impact on communities, and ultimately there’s a direct impact on the long-term health of our economy, because children today are the workforce tomorrow.”

Against this troubling backdrop, three pathways have emerged in the fight against child poverty — though none alone can fill the gap left by federal cuts.

States Taking Action

“The federal government sets the policies,” explained Boissiere. “And states implement those policies. And so the implementation can have a direct effect on how kids and families are impacted.” She noted that states can also pass their own child tax credits and earned income tax credits. In New Mexico, for example, anti-poverty programs and policies like reduced child poverty by 19 percentage points between 2022 and 2024, according to the Casey Foundation.

Maryland is pioneering another way that states can help their youngest residents thrive with its . The program provides grants to community partners in regions throughout the state where child poverty rates are especially high. 

The initiative has $19 million in grant funding to 28 high-poverty communities in 12 counties. Two strategies make ENOUGH unique: intentionally listening to community organizations and allowing them to “quarterback” the efforts; and harnessing philanthropic capital through the which is boosting the public funds, with $100 million committed for the next six years.

The investments include high-quality child care and education programs in South End, a community in , and , a cross-sector partnership in south Baltimore aimed to bolster education, community wellness, housing and economic health. as “a promising example for how other states can work across silos, enact evidence-based policies, and partner with local communities to reduce child poverty.

Gov. Wes Moore acknowledged the policy headwinds at a recent event kicking off ENOUGH’s second year, in which residents, officials and nonprofit leaders gathered in Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhood to hear about the initiative’s progress. Moore condemned recent federal budget cuts as “the single largest rollback of poverty-fighting programs in modern history.” 

He continued: “Now, at a time when the federal government is effectively telling communities of color and children living in poverty, ‘You’re on your own,’ Maryland is stepping up and doubling down. ENOUGH is about making government work better for the people it serves and ensuring that Maryland’s decade is written by our communities, not simply for them.”

Addressing a group of reporters after his remarks at the event, Moore recalled his service as CEO of New York’s Robin Hood Foundation. “I ran one of the largest data-driven poverty-fighting organizations in the country. We led with data, and that’s really the same type of mantra that we have here.” 

Philanthropy Filling Gaps

Like state and city governments, foundations and philanthropists can play a role in reducing the harm caused by cuts to programs that support working families, but cannot make up for the gaps in federal funding. There are a number of prominent grantmakers focused on child poverty, including the William T. Grant Foundation, the Ballmer Group, W.K. Kellogg Foundation — and their efforts to address a range of issues including early education, child welfare, racial equity, housing and family economic security make a difference. Giving USA, which tracks charitable giving, that nearly $180 billion of the $592.5 billion donated in 2024 went to human services and education. Much of that went to organizations helping children in the United States, though the categories extend beyond this population.

Reflecting on the present moment, Boissiere described the Casey Foundation’s approach: “We do our part to support the ecosystem, both in terms of supporting local organizations, but also making sure that public resources are available and that decision makers have access to data to try to help inform smart choices on behalf of kids.” 

Even if donors step up their giving significantly, nobody expects the generosity to come close to making up for — not even the recently announced from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The gift is designed to put $250 into the so-called Trump accounts of 25 million children living in ZIP codes where the median family income is below $150,000. Because account holders cannot make withdrawals from the accounts until they are 18, however, the program does not directly influence the child poverty rate today.

Advocates Pushing for Change

The nationwide advocacy community — which also includes organizations like the , , , , the — isn’t giving up on pushing for the federal programs that have been proven to lift families and children out of poverty.

Recommendations from the include rental assistance to reach more people who struggle to afford housing and expanding the Child Tax Credit for the who don’t get the full credit because their families’ incomes are too low.

To this list, Lesley from First Focus adds making SNAP more generous for families with young children, when parents may be earning less because they are . He also said administered by Social Security for children who have experienced the death of a parent should be automatic, rather than requiring an application process.

In a , Lesley argued that advocates should prioritize children over families. The family-first frame, he writes, “has ignored the power of empathy and the perceived deservingness of children, muted the moral urgency of our arguments and made children invisible in policy discussions. It arguably has led to fewer resources for children and families alike.” Pointing to a , Lesley underscored that children are a winning issue with voters.

Real changes result from states directing resources toward solutions, foundations increasing their grantmaking, and advocacy organizations analyzing data and taking steps to build awareness or prompt policy change. But that may not be enough to support the sustained structural transformation necessary to conquer child poverty.

The reality of such a high poverty rate among the youngest and most vulnerable Americans is the result of policy choices. Research that it’s not because the U.S. has higher rates of single parenthood or because low-income Americans don’t work hard enough for a decent income. Instead, where other countries make robust investments in government programs, particularly those that benefit parents and children, the U.S. . And yet poverty has been found to have on children’s development and well-being. The stories below expose the result of this disinclination to invest in families with babies and young children — as well as what happens when efforts to do things differently are abruptly abandoned.

Various data sources all illuminate the same trend: homelessness among children under age 6 has been climbing in recent years, driven by a mix of systemic factors, with disturbing consequences for the country’s children.

During the pandemic, universal, free school meals were a lifesaver for parents like Lynnea Hawkins, who no longer had to pull together complicated paperwork and send it in with her son, making him a target for torment. But then Congress ended the program, forcing parents to once again face shame and stigma to participate — or forego free meals for their children altogether. 

Even when Congress passes a new program aimed at helping families afford the basics for their children, it doesn’t always reach them. Erika Marquez’s family was eligible for the new Summer EBT benefits rolled out in 2024 to help parents get through the lean summer months, but her husband couldn’t figure out how to sign up, so they missed out. “It’s just hard when you hear your child say, ‘Mom, my stomach is rumbling,’” she said.

Even long-established programs with solid track records aren’t always safe. At the end of 2023, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, needed more money to stay available to all low-income pregnant people and new parents, but Republicans threatened to break a 25-year track record of fully funding it. 

The often threadbare American safety net leads to some disturbing outcomes, such as the fact that nearly half of our nation’s families are struggling to afford diapers. Some change their children less often than they should to make the diapers they do have last, while others go without diapers at all. 

Some states have taken bold steps to do more to address child poverty. In 2021, Connecticut became the first state to create “baby bonds,” depositing $3,200 in an account for every baby whose birth is covered by Medicaid so that it can accrue interest and create wealth for them later in life.

A new state-by-state report shows Indiana’s child well-being ranking has dropped — in part due to Hoosier kids’ , as well as increased rates of youth deaths.

Although Indiana continues to rank in the bottom half of states for its rates of teen births and children living in high-poverty or in single-parent households, those numbers are showing improvement.

The ranked Indiana 27th among states, three places lower than last year. It’s still a slight improvement, however, compared to 2022 and 2021, when the state ranked 28th and 29th, respectively.

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In specific categories covered in the latest report, Indiana came in 15th for economic well-being, 17th in education, 31st in family and community, and 32nd in health.

“Indiana has significant opportunities and challenges ahead in supporting the well-being of our children,” said Tami Silverman, president and CEO of the Indiana Youth Institute.

“We should celebrate the progress we’ve made, especially in economic well-being areas such as parental employment rates and housing affordability; and we must acknowledge the disparities that persist for our kids,” Silverman continued. “Every child in Indiana should have access to quality education, regardless of their background or circumstances. By addressing these disparities head-on, we not only invest in the future of our children but also in the economic prosperity of our state.”

The report is prepared by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in conjunction with organizations across the county, including the Indiana Youth Institute. It rates states in 16 wide-ranging areas, which are lumped together under the categories of health, education, economic well-being, and family and community support.

Gaps in reading and math

The education portion of the — focused on student achievement — reiterates low numbers familiar to Hoosier education officials.

Just 32% of fourth graders nationally were at or above proficiency in reading in 2022, the latest year for which numbers were available. That was down from the 34% who were proficient in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scores were even worse for eighth grade math. Nationwide, only 26% of eighth graders were at or above proficiency in math two years ago, down from 33% in 2019.

In Indiana, one-third of fourth graders performed at or above proficiency in reading — a four percentage-point decrease from the 2019 rate of 37%, the report showed.

Further, only 30% of Indiana eighth grade students performed at or above proficiency in math, marking an 11% decrease from 2019, ranking the state 11th nationally.

Among Indiana fourth graders in 2022, Black students had an average reading score that was 23 points lower than that of white students. Students eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) had an average reading score 18 points lower than those not eligible for NSLP, according to the KIDS COUNT report.

Meanwhile, eighth grade Black students in Indiana had an average math score that was 31 points lower than white students. Hispanic students in the same grade had an average math score that was 19 points lower than their white peers.

The Casey Foundation report contends that the pandemic is not the sole cause of lower test scores, though. Rather, the foundation says educators, researchers, policymakers and employers who track students’ academic readiness have been ringing alarm bells “for a long time.”

U.S. scores in reading and math have barely budged in decades. In Indiana, state education officials have repeatedly pointed out that Hoosier literacy exam scores have been on the decline since 2015.

During the 2024 legislative session, state lawmakers took decisive action as part of an ongoing push to improve literacy and K-12 student performance.

Paramount among the new laws passed was one to .

Stats on youth health and family life

Health-focused portions of the report show that — after peaking in 2021 — the national child and teen death rate stabilized at 30 deaths per 100,000 children and youth ages 1 to 19.

But in Indiana, the death rate has continued to rise. While 29 deaths per 100,000 Hoosier children and youth were recorded in 2019, the rate increased to 36 deaths in 2022, per the report.

The Indiana Youth Institute (IYI) has already drawn attention, for example, to such as depression and suicidal ideation among the state’s youth. According to IYI data, one out of every three students from 7th to 12th grade reported experiencing persistent sadness and hopelessness. One out of seven students made a plan to commit suicide.

The most recent data available additionally show that nationwide and in Indiana, the child poverty rate improved and economic security of parents increased back to pre-pandemic levels.

Between 2018 and 2022, roughly 113,000 — or 7% — of Hoosier children were reportedly living in high-poverty areas. That’s a drop from 10% between 2013 and 2017, according to the report.

From 2019 to 2022, teen births per 1,000 declined from 21 to 17, and the percentage of children in single-parent families also dropped from 35% to 32%.

Still, some gains

Advocates pointed to “some bright spots” for Hoosier kids and their families in this year’s national report, as well:

Between 2019 and 2022, more parents (75%) had full-time secure employment in Indiana — which surpassed both the national average and that of the four neighboring states: Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.

In 2022, fewer children (22%) lived in households that faced a high housing cost burden, spending 30% of their income solely on housing expenses, in comparison to the national average (30%).
In 2022, more Hoosier teens (95%) between the ages 16 and 19 were either enrolled in school or employed, an improvement from 93% in 2019.
Far fewer children under 19 (5%) were also uninsured. Indiana saw the fifth-highest decrease nationally in uninsured children between 2019 and 2022 — a 29% improvement.

The report offers several recommendations for policymakers, school leaders and educators that include chronicling absenteeism data by grade, establishing a culture to pursue evidence-based solutions and incorporating intensive, in-person tutoring to align with the school curriculum.

“Kids of all ages and grades must have what they need to learn each day, such as enough food and sleep and a safe way to get to school, as well as the additional resources they might need to perform at their highest potential and thrive, like tutoring and mental health services,” said Lisa Hamilton, president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “Our policies and priorities have not focused on these factors in preparing young people for the economy, short-changing a whole generation.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

“Perhaps it’s the cell phones?” we wonder. “And the TikTok?” 

Sure, screens — and how kids engage with them — are part of this story. And yet, and especially, America tolerates levels of child poverty compared to peer nations. because of their families’ low incomes. And yet, as has become custom, Congress recently missed a bipartisan opportunity to do something about this shameful, persistent American problem. 

To explain this latest congressional stumble, we need some history. In 2021, the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan cut U.S. child poverty rates by significantly expanding the . Critically, the expanded credit was administered in , giving families a steady stream of new resources instead of a once-annually infusion at tax time. As Dr. Shantel Meek and I put it in , “[M]easured against its goal, the expansion of the child tax credit is one of the great policy successes in recent memory. Few other big federal ideas have so suddenly achieved precisely what they intended.” 

But the measure expired after one year, and to reinstate it have floundered in Congress. 

Then, this year, a bipartisan group of House representatives drafted a giving progressives a partial reinstatement of the expanded credit in return for a handful of corporate tax breaks prized by conservatives. The bill passed with in the House, but — at least partly because of conservative concerns that it might help President Biden in an election year. “I think passing a tax bill that makes the president look good — may allow checks before the election — means that he can be reelected and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts,” . 

Whatever else you think is causing young Americans’ pessimism these days, it pales in comparison with the impact of this sort of cynicism. Put aside the hand wringing about culture wars and polarization and “woke” indoctrination embedded into K–12 history curricula. U.S. kids don’t distrust Congress because their schools tell them an honest account of America’s complicated past. They Congress because, when confronted with a tested policy solution to that affects their lives, elected representatives dither and find politically expedient excuses. 

Make no mistake: the case for providing cash support for families with young children is empirically airtight. Researchers have known since at least that families’ socioeconomic resources significantly shape children’s educational performance and outcomes. that increases in family income produce better developmental, academic and life outcomes for children. As a policy matter, regular cash transfers to families like the Biden Administration’s expanded child tax credit —known as “child allowances” — a to . 

At this point in the waves of evidence, conservatives sometimes argue that, sure, perhaps there’s a case for investing more funding in low-income families, but only if we apply conditions and require that it be spent on particular things. Won’t families “waste” new resources unproductively? But this, too, is cynical and baseless political posturing: analysis showed that families .

And yet, here we are, stuck. Legislative failures like these are the operational definition of a failing democracy. When democracies struggle to do simple things that we know would improve citizens’ — especially children’s — lives, they’re undermining their main institutional selling point. If representative government cannot accurately represent the public’s interest by identifying and addressing its problems, why bother with the messiness of organizing our political lives this way?
U.S. kids are not alright. But it’s not just because they’re living in an information sphere increasingly shaped by technology. Without a shift to a more pragmatic approach to these problems, that trust will only continue dropping — however well legislative sclerosis serves conservatives’ short-term political needs.

But being awakened in the middle of the night by sharp pains was new for Coreano and their family. Rats had begun to bite them in their sleep. Later that morning, they went to their Kensington school and pretended nothing happened.

Chronicling the life of Corem and two other Puerto Rican students from Philadelphia, author Nikhil Goyal presents harrowing accounts of childhood in his latest book . 

Readers see Corem, Ryan Rivera and Giancarlos Rodriguez grow up overpoliced and underfed. By the time they reached high school, the system threatened to close some 37 schools, and only after , shuttered 24. 

In some cases walking an hour one-way to school without transportation after an eviction left them displaced, Corem, Ryan and Giancarlos give low-income children a human face and serve as a cautionary tale. The Census Bureau has revealed the rate of childhood poverty has doubled, and the country will soon see pandemic-era relief for families, schools and come to an end. 

“If we believe that schools should be equitable and humane and child centered, then we’ve got to be willing to fight for an agenda that will end poverty,” said Goyal, who for the last two years served as the senior policy advisor for Senator Bernie Sanders on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and Budget Committees. 

Their stories illuminate exactly how economic instability and harsh discipline policies impact children’s ability to learn safely, making the case for change, particularly as educators nationwide grapple with how best to support students academically after pandemic disruptions.

Making economic stimuluses like the Child Tax Credit permanent, Goyal added, would mean “the lives of educators and school staff and counselors would be a lot easier.” 

Named one of 2023’s best books by the New Yorker, also illuminates how school policies governing students can disproportionately shape entire futures, particularly for students of color who are more often suspended and expelled than their peers. Zero tolerance discipline policies, for instance, put children like Ryan Rivera in juvenile incarceration and harsh schooling isolated from friends for years, after being pushed to light a trashcan on fire at 12 years old.

In conversation with The 74, Goyal reflects on school closures, community schooling, chronic absenteeism, and what policies stand to make a difference for the nearly living in poverty nationwide.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You frame childhood poverty as a crisis to be — why release this book now? What’s happening?

The Census Bureau released its — child poverty more than doubled. More than 5 million children are plunged into poverty. It was the single largest increase in poverty in recorded history, just an astonishing development in public policy that I think deserves enormous attention as well as a full-throated response from people in Washington and people in power. 

The increase in child poverty coincides with the expiration of the expanded Child Tax Credit, economic stimulus payments, expanded unemployment insurance, and a number of other programs that have enormously benefited children and families, whether in terms of food assistance, or housing assistance, or Medicaid access. 

We’re also at this moment where a lot of districts throughout the country are facing dropping enrollments, facing fiscal cliffs with the end of ESSER funds. People are anticipating a lot more consolidations, and possibly something like what happened in Philadelphia where a school system weighed closing dozens of schools. What are some lessons that school leaders might glean from what happened in Philadelphia? 

In 2013, the school district proposed closing some three dozen. The argument was that the district was bleeding in a major fiscal deficit. In the book I cite a major report by Boston Consulting Group, commissioned by the district to evaluate the fiscal state of schools. One of the recommendations was a mass closure of schools. They also recommended a mass firing of teachers and other school staff and a very market-oriented approach to public education. The key recommendation was taken up by the school district, against the wishes of students and parents and educators and unions, who were an incredibly robust coalition. 

Pew Research and others have found that school closures haven’t actually yielded the balance of savings that the architects originally envisioned. They cause a lot of displacement, educational instability. And, and in many instances, students are not actually necessarily attending so-called “higher performing schools” after their schools shut down. 

I read about Fairhill School, this extraordinary school in the poorest neighborhood of Philadelphia, which had been serving generations upon generations of children of the working class. This was a school that had been deeply underfunded. And in spite of that, they were still able to provide children with a nurse, a safe environment. 

Their test scores weren’t as good as suburban districts, sure. But does that mean that we should necessarily be closing a school like that which has been an anchor of the community? I don’t think so. I think if we provide public schools with equitable resources, and the type of respect that they deserve, so many of the issues that folks might point you to in public education, I don’t think would exist. 

The charter movement has capitalized on this. But if you go back to the history of charter schools, and you go back to Minnesota and some of the earliest charter schools, these were laboratories of progressivism. We’re gonna bring innovation, bring the best, experiment with interesting ideas in pedagogy and curriculum and instruction and the teaching force. See what works and then bring the best ideas into the public system. That is the model that I would prefer, where charter schools work in tandem with public schools, not as competition.

Something I appreciated while reading is that you give these trends and the political events around them a human face, from the war on drugs and no tolerance policies for violence that led to thousands of incarcerated youth. What’s currently underway that you think might be on track to cause more devastation? Particularly for Black and brown children?

I think there’s a dramatic rise in the privatization movement. We’re seeing a dramatic increase in the voucher schemes as well as charter expansion. In Philadelphia alone, nearly 40% of children attend either charter schools or cyber charter schools. There’s cities all over this country where traditional public schools have become dismantled, and we’re seeing a rise of the private sector intervening in public education. There’s obviously some really amazing organizing and efforts by teachers unions and advocacy groups like Journey for Justice fighting back against those policies all over the country.

What’s at stake, if these models are to continue at the scale that they have? What would be the impact for students, based on your research and experience with Philadelphia?

If we continue down this path, where more and more charters replace traditional public schools, where voucher programs siphon even more dollars away from the public system into the private system, particularly the religious sector, then I think that’s one of the most grave and profound threats to American democracy. I think the foundations of American democracy are found in public education. I think it’s one of the areas of our society that has not been fully transformed and taken over by the market.

Look at health care, look at energy, look at housing. By and large, public education has withstood a number of those assaults over generations, but I think public schools are facing their most serious threats. The pandemic didn’t help. We can debate about school closures, the efficacy of that or not, but I think the reality is that they breed a distrust among parents who were rightfully frustrated about making sure that there was a place for their children to be during the day and be educated. 

One exception to this threat you’ve identified to the traditional public system is the expansion of 3K and pre-K programs in many cities. 

The early childhood education space is very fascinating to me. Public dollars might go to both public providers as well as private providers, and you’re seeing that there’s not a sustained level of federal dollars. A lot of those private providers cannot remain open because their margins are so low. 

There is a growing interest from states all over this country as well as cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they have poured an enormous amount of money into public pre-K. We’re talking about an area of great optimism. I am deeply encouraged by efforts by states and cities to expand early childhood education, because it is not only the right thing to do, it is good for our economy and society.

At one point in the book, you say their story is one of survival, where 18th birthdays are not rites of passage, but miracles. That it’s a story of social contract in tatters. In this reality, where so many children grow up in poverty, what are some best practices for school systems?

I think every school should be turned into a community school, where they have wraparound services, social and health supports. Universal free school meals, extended hours, restorative justice, well paid teachers and staff and modernized infrastructure. 

There are incredible examples of community schools all over this country. I will point to Cincinnati as the gold standard for community schooling, because they’ve converted virtually all of their public schools into Community Learning Centers. I am always struck by the fact that they have dentists and mental health professionals and other medical staff and doctors who are literally based in the school itself to provide care to students. 

We have to recognize that the issues and challenges that young people experience in their homes and in their communities don’t get left behind when they go to school every day. It affects their ability to learn. It affects their relationships with their teachers and counselors, and their relationships with their peers. 

We’ve got to really recognize that poverty and economic insecurity is the root cause of many of these educational inequalities. That schools can be places where children can get access to healthcare and all their social support. I’m very encouraged by that trend across the country. And the research shows that community schools have a positive impact on absenteeism, on truancy, on graduation rates, and student engagement. 

It’s the idea of, meet people where they’re at, provide them with the basic, basic building blocks for dignified life and you will see many of the social problems that once existed, either be reduced or eliminated.

were chronically absent by the end of the last school year, and we’re hearing more and more about school avoidance. What does Corem’s story reveal about this trend and its links with mental health, which is what some believe to be a root cause right now? 

It’s a great crisis. I would say that Corem has a harrowing, fascinating story with a lot of lessons. Today Corem uses they/them pronouns. When they were growing up, they lived with their mother who was disabled. They endured consistent housing and food insecurity. They would run out of food. They had to endure evictions. They moved in some years, twice or three times, which meant that they had to constantly switch schools and never really settle into one school. That meant Corem’s academic performance faltered. 

I know they’ve suffered from absenteeism at times, not due to their own failings, but simply because they were deprived of the basic necessities of a decent life. They didn’t have the tools and resources that would allow him to get to school on time every day. There’s one moment in the book where the landlord tells their mother that sorry, we just sold the house and you have to leave immediately. 

That means, in the middle of the school year, they have to walk more than an hour from the new home to the old school. Their mother was able to get them a public transit pass, but it just goes to show homelessness and housing insecurity are huge obstacles to consistent and regular school attendance. 

There’s a lot of research to show that homeless students in particular make up a significant part of the population that is going to be absent. As emergency rental assistance winds down and now we’re more than two years since the end of the national eviction moratorium, our families are really suffering through the housing affordability crisis. And I think we see that play out with children.

The federal pandemic-era child tax credit expansion lifted millions of children out of poverty in the second half of 2021. But Congress allowed it to expire at the end of that year, and new U.S. census data shows the child poverty rate in 2022, erasing the record gains that were made.

“It wasn’t surprising because we knew this was coming,” said Megan Curran, policy director at . “But still, when you see the magnitude of the change, and you know how many kids that represents, it’s still shocking.”

Now states are stepping in. Since the federal enhancement ended, several states have launched or expanded their own child tax credits.

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(New Jersey, New Mexico and Vermont in 2022, and Minnesota, Oregon and Utah this year), while five more have expanded their existing credits, to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan tax policy nonprofit. Currently offer child tax credits, and several others saw bills introduced this year.

“Child poverty has often been thought of as this status quo that can’t change,” said Curran. “But one of the most powerful lessons to take out of the horrible pandemic is that our policy decisions really matter, and we can make a huge difference in a short amount of time.

“We know what works and we know how to do it. This is a solvable problem.”

A new approach

In 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act temporarily expanded the federal child tax credit, increasing the maximum credit to $3,000 per child ages 6-17 and $3,600 per child under age 6. It was a significant bump from the previous $2,000-per-child credit.

The temporary expansion gave the credit in monthly cash payouts to about 6 in 10 U.S. households with children, rather than as one lump sum after taxes. And it to all low- and middle-income families making less than $150,000 for married couples ($112,500 for single parents). The previous credit excluded income earners at the lowest end of the spectrum.

After the payments began, the nation’s child poverty rate dropped by half in 2021 to a historic low of 5%, , according to researchers at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a charitable organization focused on child well-being. The expansion , according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which found that most parents said they used the credit payments on .

“You saw this whole host of data coming from all sorts of places, showing these payments were having a positive and immediate effect on families’ basic needs, and how they were able to care for their children,” Curran said. “You were seeing particularly significant gains for families with lower incomes.”

While the federal tax credit expansion did lift children out of poverty in the short term, some analysts argue it could have had negative long-term effects if made permanent.

“What we worry about, with good reason given the evidence, is that a lot of families will receive that extra money and it will cause them to work less or to not work at all,” said Scott Winship, senior fellow and director at the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility at the , a center-right public policy think tank. Winship said a permanent expanded child tax credit also might discourage marriage and result in more families headed by single parents.

Two pieces of   from economists at the University of Chicago concluded that if the expanded child tax credit were made permanent, between 1.3 million and 1.5 million workers would exit the labor force. A 2021 analysis of census data from Columbia University researchers found that the temporary expanded benefits during the pandemic didn’t discourage parents from working, but Winship said the results if people thought the expanded credit was going to be permanent.

“It takes time for a lot of these behavioral changes to develop,” he said. “I don’t think 2021 is a very good test of what would happen in the long run.”

Winship added that he doesn’t think state-level child tax credits are a good idea, but that he’d rather see states experiment with different approaches to reducing child poverty than the federal government.

Who’s left out?

Now that eligibility for the federal credit has reverted to its pre-pandemic rules, low-income families are no longer receiving the full tax credit afforded to middle-income families.

For example, a married couple with two children per year to qualify for the maximum $2,000 child tax credit; a single parent with two children would have to earn $29,400 to qualify, according to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy. That means children whose parents get paid at or near the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour don’t qualify for the maximum credit.

About a quarter of children nationwide do not qualify for the maximum $2,000 credit because of their parents’ income. That includes a third of rural children; half of kids with a single parent; 40% of Black and Hispanic kids; and 90% of kids in households below the federal poverty level, which is about $30,000 per year for a family of four.

“We have programs for folks who struggle financially, but nothing replaces having your own funds to solve your own problems,” said Mercedes Elizalde, director of advocacy at , a Latino-led advocacy organization based in Portland, Oregon.

Her organization advocated for Oregon’s new child tax credit, which gives an annual benefit of up to $1,000 per child up to age 5 for families who earn up to $30,000 per year. She said the Latino communities her organization supports tend to have a high proportion of families with young children.

“Having a tax credit that is specific to lower-income families and specifically helps families with multiple children is really beneficial when we know a two-kiddo household in our community is still pretty common,” Elizalde said.

She said she expects to see families use the funds for basic needs like food, clothes for school and utility bills.

“This is a way of buying shoes when their kiddos outgrow them or being able to cover a copay for a doctor’s visit,” she said. “It’s those little bits of money that are hard to plan for because you’re not always sure when you’re going to need them.”

Helping low-income families

Several states creating or expanding child tax credits have specifically targeted low-income families that fall through the gap in federal eligibility requirements.

“It’s a proven intervention,” said Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Aisha Gomez, who chairs the House Taxes Committee. Her committee put forward the child tax credit bill that became law earlier this year. “Poor people aren’t poor because they don’t work hard. Giving a little bit of extra money to folks who are experiencing poverty and aren’t being taken care of in our economy works, so we were happy to pick up where the feds unfortunately left off.”

Minnesota now offers a tax credit of $1,750 per child under 18 for single parents with incomes below $29,500 per year and married parents making below $35,000. The credit was passed as part of an omnibus tax bill that received no Republican support, but Gomez said she’d like to think if the tax credit had been a stand-alone bill that it would have received some GOP votes.

“Child poverty is one of those issues where I think there’s pretty widespread agreement that we have a role as the government to intervene when our system is failing families so acutely,” she said.

“What we’ve noticed is not only is there a huge explosion of interest [from states] in creating child tax credits in the last two years,” said the Center on Poverty and Social Policy’s Curran, “but there’s been interest in trying to craft them in a way that fixes some of the gaps the federal credit has historically had.”

Curran said her organization has been contacted by lawmakers in several states who said they were interested in child tax credits because they saw the significant poverty reduction that came from the federal expansion: “That really caught peoples’ attention.”

In nearly every state, a combination of the existing federal tax credit and a state credit up to $2,000 would slash child poverty rates by at least a quarter, to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Elizalde said Latino Network will focus its efforts now on making sure people know about the new tax credit so they can take full advantage.

“This is going to be very impactful,” Elizalde said. “In a couple of years, we hope we can go back to the legislature and say, ‘Let’s increase that income cap and help more families.’ ”

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A notable exception comes from New York City, where a supportive policy context has made a notable difference in mothers’ ability to participate in the labor force — and findings from the latest Early Childhood Poverty Tracker document that reality.

In 2017, New York City introduced its free 3-K for All program to a few districts, prioritizing districts with the highest need for pre-kindergarten. The city gradually unrolled the full-time 3-K program to other districts until it was available to all by 2021. Although it wasn’t part of the program’s design, the rollout created an excellent opportunity to measure the difference this policy move made for mothers’ workforce participation.

The , launched in 2012 as a collaboration between the foundation and , provides a dynamic snapshot of poverty in New York City. Building off that work, the (ECPT) launched in 2017 to study 1,500 families with children from birth to 3, using repeated surveys to look at the challenges and resources for these same families during their children’s critical early years.

“New York is a laboratory of policy change, whether it’s paid sick leave, paid family leave, universal pre-K or universal 3-K,” says Dr. Jane Waldfogel, co-director of Columbia University’s Population Research Center and a co-author of the latest Poverty Tracker report on the city’s 3-K for All program. “Because we’re following the same families over time and our sample is representative of the population of New York City, it’s ideally suited for measuring the impact of policies as they roll out. In the Early Childhood Poverty Tracker, we had a sample of families with young children as universal pre-K and then 3-K were rolling out.”

Eunho Cha, a Columbia School of Social Work doctoral student working with the Robin Hood/Columbia team on the ECPT, wondered aloud if the 3-K program would have an impact on mothers’ labor force participation. That question and subsequent analysis grew into the recently released September 2023 report, “Spotlight on 3-K for All: New York City’s 3-K for All Supports Mothers’ Labor Force Participation.”

Among the report’s key findings:

• Once children became age-eligible for the program, mothers living in districts with higher 3-K availability were more likely to be in the workforce than those who lived in districts with lower availability.
• Mothers with greater 3-K availability had higher rates of full-time employment.
• Even after the 3-K years, mothers who had more access to 3-K continued with higher rates of labor force participation and full-time employment.

The report used information from 12 ECPT surveys collected between late 2017 and early 2021, focusing on 438 families whose focal child was age-eligible for 3-K in the 2019–2020 academic year. Of these families, 43 percent lived in one of the 12 school districts where 3-K was rolled out and 57 percent lived in districts where it was not yet available.

The surveys looked at mothers’ labor force participation — whether they were working full time, part time, freelance or self-employed, or looking for work — and tracked mothers who were earning income from their employment. One measure included only mothers who were working full time, an indicator of stable employment that was of particular interest because it is often associated with higher wages and benefits.

When children in the 3-K districts became age-eligible for the program, their mothers’ labor force participation increased by seven percentage points compared with only two percentage points among those in non-3-K districts with children of the same age. Mothers’ participation in the workforce dropped when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, but throughout 2020 and the first half of 2021, participation remained higher among mothers in 3-K districts.

“It’s great to see that it was not just a temporary effect, but that the effect persists past the 3-K years,” says Waldfogel. “It could be because mothers having been employed in the labor market puts them in a better position to be employed subsequently. Also, the availability of 3-K sets up family routines and arrangements around mothers’ employment.

“We were really happy to see that it was a lasting effect.”

Researchers also found that families in the 3-K districts spent an average of $450 less per child per month on child care.

“The ability to spend those dollars on food, rent, books or household expenses, especially as inflation is putting such pressure on families, really underscores the benefits of these programs,” says Sarah Oltmans, Robin Hood’s chief of grant strategy, who works with the Columbia team on the ECPT.

Tracking Poverty, Promoting Change

Since its inception, the Poverty Tracker has deeply scrutinized what it means to be poor in New York City, providing many more layers than the official poverty measures of the U.S. government, which capture only income poverty. Oltmans points out that income poverty doesn’t tap into measures of financial or material hardship. A family might have a certain income on paper but run out of food at the end of the month, have their utilities shut off or be unable to afford child care so they can go to work. These measures provide a dynamic, nuanced picture of poverty and, as the 3-K report demonstrates, can also show where changes in policy result in big changes in individuals’ lives, even for the city’s smallest residents.

The Poverty Tracker surveys have provided an evidence-based, data-driven resource for Robin Hood and other advocates to be able to talk to policy makers and community leaders about what works, Oltmans says. The reports are published in academic journals and presented at conferences, but they are especially tailored for rapid release, so they reach decision makers, whether in New York City or beyond.

That rapid deployment may be especially needed now. Funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package the U.S. Congress passed in March 2021, ended in September. The funding has been widely used to support child care and early education programs throughout the country, including New York City’s 3-K program. Robin Hood and other advocates are working to make sure sustained support continues for these types of programs and the 3-K report is a prime way to show such programs’ benefits, Oltmans says.

Still More to Learn

The researchers warn that the findings of the 3-K study can’t be considered a stand-in for the rest of the country because of wide variations in individual circumstances.

“Some studies of the impact of free preschool on mothers’ employment report findings similar to ours,” says doctoral student Cha. “Others show that there is little effect and find that mothers are not as responsive to free child care. But in the context of New York, we did find that lowering child care costs makes meaningful changes in mothers’ decision to work.”

In less urban or in rural areas, the researchers say, the costs of getting the child to and from child care may be so expensive as to make even free child care unaffordable. In some states, free 3-K or pre-K means part-time or half-day programs, which can do little to give the mother sufficient time to get the child to care, go to work, then turn around and pick them up again.

Though New York City’s free 3-K program is an ambitious and important beginning, the researchers stress that there’s more demand for child care throughout the city and more work to be done in aligning child care programs with parents’ work schedules.

Even though New York City’s program has helped lighten the load for some mothers in the workforce, Waldfogel stresses that the issue isn’t limited to families in poverty or even those with lower incomes.

“Every parent in the country goes through this worry,” she says, “because child care is a private issue in the U.S. You talk to any politician about any family issue and the first question they raise is child care because that’s what they’re hearing from their constituents — from middle-income constituents and even high-income constituents.

“Everybody is aware of it and complains about it, but somehow we still haven’t gotten over the hurdle of doing something about it.” 

In April 2020, just a few weeks into the pandemic, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha that said: “To expect resilience without justice is simply to indifferently accept the status quo.” With the imminent launch of , an ambitious program to eradicate child poverty in Flint, Michigan, the pediatrician aims to show the country and the world how to build a resilient community at a systems level. The program will scale up the promise of unconditional cash allowances as well as establishing new child care centers, expanding home visiting and partnering with groups like and .

Early Learning Nation magazine caught up with Hanna-Attisha, associate dean for public health in the MSU College of Human Medicine and director of the Michigan State University-Hurley Children’s Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative, to learn more about her new organization, her thinking and what drives her.

Transformative change is possible. Hanna-Attisha came to national prominence in 2015 by calling attention to the dangerous levels of lead in Flint’s drinking water. It was a long struggle, but she persisted and organized and eventually, she won over the skeptics and brought about reform. “We all would love to see overnight change,” she admits, “and it can get frustrating when that doesn’t happen, but in this work, it’s important to recognize the long game.”

After she testified before Congress on the dangers to children of the more than , Congress dedicatedin the 2022 National Infrastructure Act. As another example, she points to the that is now part of the U.S. Farm Bill. “If we can do it with water and nutrition,” she says, “we can do it with democracy and community building. It just takes a different way of looking at things.”

If things can change in Flint, they can change anywhere. Hanna-Attisha’s outspoken advocacy on the Flint water crisis prompted the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control to create the to monitor how residents are doing after the water crisis.

The emblem of the initiative is the Sankofa, the mythical African bird that’s flying forward but looking back and holding an egg in its mouth. “That’s what Flint is,” she says.  “We are determined not to be defined by the crisis, but rather to be defined by what we can do next.”

It’s not just about Flint. The city where and where, she says, the middle class was born, . The lead crisis was only the latest in a series of man-made disasters to befall Flint.

Hanna-Attisha describes Rx Kids as “a society-wide hug for an entire city.  We’re saying, ‘We see you, we hear you’.” And yet she maintains that the project goes beyond the residents of Flint and extends to reframing the narrative on poverty at a scale that hasn’t been tried before. “This is not about one city,” she contends. “It’s about shining a spotlight on how we could do better for all children.”

It’s not just about the cash, either. Inspired by the success of guaranteed income experiments like the and the Abundant Birth Project, Rx Kids will “prescribe” Flint families $7,500 in cash, including a one-time $1,500 payment to expectant mothers.

“It’s going to be coupled,” she says, “with arts and humanities and storytelling. And joy, as much as possible.” By running the program in a values-driven way, she aspires to rebuild the social contract and to have an impact on things like civic engagement, voting, crime, violence and trust in government.

Social entrepreneurship runs on trust. Top-down leadership has abused minority communities in Flint and around the world. That’s why everything Rx Kids does goes hand in hand with community. “We’re trying to do things in a way that restores self-determination and participatory democracy,” Hanna-Attisha says, citing a recent design retreat conducted with the participation of a mothers advisory panel. “They share their lived experiences of how hard it is to make ends meet, how hard it is to raise a family with limited resources,” she recalls.

She’s also building common cause with those she terms unlikely partners, including lawyers and CEOs. “When we break down silos,” she says, we find, ‘Oh my gosh, I had no idea this person cared about early childhood, about economic justice.’ When we make that tent bigger with partners who share our same passion, it allows us to advance this work.”

Immigrants make America healthy. Along with , Hanna-Attisha was born in another country. Her family, she notes, fled the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. “We came for the American dream, and I grew up grateful every day, but also cognizant of what bad people in power can do to vulnerable populations,” she says.

Her 2017 New York Times editorial, “” excoriated President Trump’s ban on travel from Muslim countries to the United States. Needless to say, the Covid pandemic raised awareness of—and appreciation of—immigrants working in health care. In the process, she hopes that the country will rethink its immigration policies and attitudes toward immigrants.

Reading recharges. When the pediatrician/activist/author/entrepreneur needs to recharge her batteries, she reaches for a book. “Reading is my escape,” she says. “It’s my source of knowledge that I didn’t get in school, and it’s also how I am able to see and appreciate the world. Literature and the humanities help us develop our empathy. We can step into the shoes of others.”

The page on her personal website includes books on Michigan history, Arab-Americans, the environment and the Spanish Civil War, among other subjects. Recent favorites include Matthew Desmond’s and T.J. Klune’s (two very different titles).

Young patients still give her life meaning. Despite her growing responsibilities with Rx Kids, Hanna-Attisha still sees patients once a week. “My clinical time is joy,” she says. “Hanging out with kiddos is what grounds me. It gives me the drive to do the policy stuff and the population-level stuff.”

There is widespread agreement about the nature of the challenges facing America’s schools, teachers and students as the country tries, gingerly and in fits and starts, to get back to normal after COVID-19. But as for what to do about those challenges, opinions are mixed — and more than a little contentious.

That tension has rocketed across our opinion pages this past year, fueling debate and perhaps (we hope) guiding discussion of the best ways to help kids, schools and educators recover as the pandemic finally recedes. Here are the top 18 essays we published this year:

Schneider: Inside the New Data That Suggest American Education Still ‘Runs on ‘Lies’

Grade Inflation: In March, the results from the most recent High School Transcript Study were released — and unfortunately, wrote Mark Schneider, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, they support the charge that schools routinely mislead their students. Many data points, if they were true reflections of reality, “should lead us all to celebrate the success of our students” — but the evidence “shows a disconnect,” he writes. “We see ‘inflation’ in course grades and course titles but stagnation in student performance.”

Educator’s View — I Understand My Students Because I’ve Been There: 

Child Poverty: When contributor Kristina Eisenhower was in fifth grade, her teacher told the class to bring in $1.25 for a pizza party. She couldn’t scrounge the money and was afraid to ask her father, who worked a 7-to-5 job and barely made ends meet. When she told her teacher she had only had 62 cents, she was sent to the cafeteria to eat lunch instead of celebrating with the class. Sixteen years later, that memory is still clear. But as an elementary school teacher in a Title I school, Eisenhower understands her students and their struggles. And no child who ever came through her classroom has ever had to miss a party, whether they brought money or not. 

Teens Have Changed Their Higher Ed Plans — & Survey Shows They May Never Go Back

Postsecondary Education: A recent survey asked a representative pool of 1,000 teenagers to compare their post-high school graduation plans before the COVID-19 pandemic with what their intentions are now, two years later. Their answers should worry institutions of higher education — because the next generation appears less interested in the traditional college pipeline. Interest in enrolling in a four-year college dropped 14%. And those students may never come back. Contributors John Kristof and Colyn Ritter have the breakdown.

When Grades and Test Scores Don’t Add Up, Who Can Parents Trust?

Grade Inflation: Contributor Alina Adams’s daughter is a straight-A student at her New York City public high school. But on one of the two state Regents exams she took this year, she didn’t even score well enough to qualify for “mastery” of the subject. Adams’s daughter isn’t alone in this disconnect; it happens all over the country. Grade inflation has been a problem for decades, and with COVID canceling standardized tests, it’s gotten even worse. But those scores are a second opinion of sorts. They either confirm the teacher’s view of your child, or they should at least inspire parents to look closer. 

How 232 Schools Across America Are Challenging 5 Big Assumptions About Education

Innovative Schools: Plenty of the challenges being confronted by schools, writes contributor Chelsea Waite, are actually enduring structural flaws that long pre-date COVID-19. “Fortunately, a diverse array of communities are working to reinvent schooling in pursuit of their visions for thriving young people and families,” Waite writes. “The learning environments they’re designing and redesigning don’t all look the same — in fact, far from it. But what they have in common is challenging key assumptions about schooling to create more equitable, joyful and responsive learning environments that reflect community values and priorities.” These learning environments are now the focus of a growing national effort called The Canopy Project — a dataset documenting the practices of 232 schools with lengthy track records of innovation. 

New Edunomics Calculator Estimates COVID Learning Losses by District, and Costs of Catching Kids Up

Learning Loss: Our friends at Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab launched an eye-opening new tool that will allow parents and policymakers in 8,000 school districts to estimate how much help area students will need in recovering from COVID learning losses, how much that learning acceleration might cost in the form of tutoring, and how these costs compare with the federal relief funds recently distributed to the district. Read more about how these estimates are calculated, and give the calculator a spin for yourself — all you need is a state and district name.

New Studies Show Charter Schools Drive Gains for All Public School Kids

Charter Schools: Thirty years ago, when the charter school movement was just getting off the ground, devotees of big-city school systems worried that these new options would drain critical funding, hurt the kids who were left behind and make a system in which race played a central but often unacknowledged role even more unjust. Yet, in recent years, it has become increasingly clear that concerns about charter-inflicted damage are misplaced — as demonstrated by a pair of new studies that find broad and statistically significant gains for all publicly enrolled students as charter schools expand. Contributors Michael J. Petrilli and David Griffith take stock of the new research.

Parents: The focus on tutoring, summer school and extended days to make up for lost learning reveals perhaps the biggest blind spot in education, says contributor Alejandro Gibes de Gac, because engaging families is the only wide-reaching, cost-effective and culturally responsive way to increase instructional time and accelerate learning recovery. Parent involvement is the most powerful predictor of kids’ academic success, yet policymakers and administrators focus almost exclusively on improving schools — where students spend just 13% of their waking hours. Ignoring the role parents play in their kids’ learning leaves the door wide open for inequity to run rampant.

There Is No ‘Big Quit’ In K-12 Education — But Schools Have Specific Labor Challenges

Teacher Shortages: Economists have dubbed it the Great Resignation: millions of employees quitting their jobs to seek higher pay and better working conditions. Is this Big Quit happening in education? Says contributor Chad Aldeman, the data suggest the answer is no. While turnover rates are setting new highs in the private sector, they look pretty normal in public education. That doesn’t mean there are no labor challenges in K-12, but those issues are smaller in magnitude than what the private sector faces, and they are much more about specific schools and particular roles within schools. Districts, Aldeman writes, should respond accordingly with solutions — including those involving targeted pay hikes — tailored to the actual challenges schools face. 

Science of Reading: The new NAEP reading scores showed that the need for immediate, effective action has never been more urgent. While districts invest their federal COVID relief dollars in expanded learning time and intensive tutoring, say contributors John B. King and Jacquelyn Davis, they must not neglect their collective responsibility to strengthen core instruction for all children. The best lever to accelerate learning in America is to use the science of how children learn to read. The human brain is wired to speak and absorb language — but not to read. Most kids need instruction in phonics, vocabulary and background knowledge to grasp the written word.

Grants to Expand Tutoring & Other Innovations for Students

Tutoring: Effective tutoring is one of the few educational interventions with a strong research base. The best approach: student groups of four or fewer meet multiple times a week with a trained and consistent tutor, using high-quality curriculum. But high-impact tutoring is hard to scale. How do you find enough skilled adults to work with millions of students in small-group settings? And how can schools know whether the high-tech tutoring products they buy are effective? In this essay, contributors Kevin Huffman and Janice Jackson describe a grant program that aims to promote effective innovative strategies for bolstering student learning.

Rethinking Teaching: Amid the debate about looming teacher shortages, a fundamental point is missed, says contributor Brian Greenberg: Even if schools could go back to the old approach of a single teacher in front of a class, they should not. A better approach than the status quo is possible, and innovative educators are working on creative solutions that focus more attention on each student, expand the impact of the best educators and reshape the teacher’s role. Here, the CEO of the Silicon Schools Fund notes some advances worth paying attention to. 

What Will $50 Billion in COVID School Relief Funding Buy?

Federal Relief Funding: Nearly a year after Congress approved $122 billion in COVID relief aid for elementary and secondary education through the American Rescue Plan, school districts and charter organizations have targeted their spending on three priorities: academic recovery, staffing, and school facilities and operations. A new analysis by FutureEd, an independent, nonpartisan think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, is the first to detail how $50 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds (ESSER III) is flowing through 3,056 school districts and charter organizations educating 60 percent of the nation’s public school students. Contributors Bella DiMarco and Phyllis W. Jordan examine spending in seven major categories and 78 subcategories.

Learning Loss: The new NAEP scores quantify how much of a catastrophe pandemic-era school policy and practice was. But too many leaders are not mustering the political courage to level with parents about the scope of the problem. Schools have obfuscated about what learning loss even means. Some states have dragged their feet on releasing test score data; in others, school officials minimize the exams’ importance. This new round of NAEP data, says contributor Andrew Rotherham, should end any hesitancy about telling parents where things stand and what must be done. It removes the last excuse for not providing an honest accounting — now. 

Time to Change the ‘When’ & ‘Who’ of College

Higher Education: While the pandemic accelerated the nationwide decline in college enrollment, the crisis has been building for decades. Even as a college degree has increasingly become a prerequisite for stable, living-wage jobs, the cost in both money and time has become more and more prohibitive. Addressing these fundamental failures, say contributors Dumaine Williams and Stephen Tremaine, means questioning some of the very fundamentals. For example: Why should a college education start at age 18, and only after a student graduates from high school? In this essay, the dean and executive director of Bard Early Colleges describe programs around the country that start low-income students on the path to college while still in high school and give them tools to help them persist through graduation.

Most Students Who Left College During COVID Want to Return — But Many Can’t

College Pipeline: A National Student Clearinghouse report shows total post-high school enrollment fell by about 685,000 students in spring 2022. In the wake of COVID-19 losses and disruptions, U.S. colleges and universities have lost 1.3 million students over the past two years. Why? A recent Gallup-Lumina Foundation study shows that while there is great demand for and interest in higher education, many students can neither access nor afford it. In this essay, contributor Courtney Brown of Lumina sheds some light on these barriers — and what can be done about them.

Mental Health: The mental health crisis among America’s youth was a slow-burning fire that is now raging in the wake of COVID-19. New research from the Walton Family Foundation and Murmuration shows that more Americans born between 1997 and 2012 are grappling with depression, hopelessness, addiction and suicide than older generations. The symptoms often go unnoticed, revealing themselves in awkward dinner table silences and closed bedroom doors. But the pandemic has exacted a toll too heavy to ignore. Contributor Caryl M. Stern, Walton’s executive director, breaks down the numbers and points to some organizations with innovative ways to help.

Bilingual Education: U.S. schools enroll more than twice as many Latino students as they did in 1995, federal data suggest, and by 2030, Latinos will make up roughly 30% of public school enrollment. These students bring a rich diversity and an array of strengths to the classroom, 74 contributor Conor Williams writes, but also a long history of being segregated and not well served. Williams suggests three ways educators can meet the needs of this rapidly growing student demographic: diversify the teaching force, ensure widespread access to bilingual education and prioritize their enrollment in early education programs.

Being a low-income child in the U.S. is daunting and outright depressing. Living in a family with income below the poverty line as a child is associated with lower levels of educational attainment, poorer health in adulthood and lower lifetime earnings than more affluent children attain. However, can blunt these negative effects of poverty and bring poor children closer to equal opportunity and equal access to extracurricular activities like piano lessons and baseball clubs, afterschool tutoring, healthy meals at dinnertime, mentorship and more quality time with their loved ones. All these things taken together not only level the playing field for disadvantaged kids, but help them thrive and flourish into adulthood.

Families across the country are facing unprecedented challenges, forcing them to make hard choices at the grocery store, the gas pump, in housing and for child care. The National Parents Union’s found the majority of families were extremely concerned about the rise of everyday costs and that Child Tax Credit monthly checks made a difference. Of the 68% of parents who received an expanded Child Tax Credit, said it had an impact on their family’s financial situation and their bottom line. Interestingly enough, although parents are not certain the midterm election results will have a net positive impact on their family, kids’ education and the economy, they are very clear on actions the federal government could take: in our December poll support restoring the expanded Child Tax Credit.

It is not a surprise the Child Tax Credit expansion resulted in an unprecedented reduction in households experiencing food insecurity: 14.8% of households in 2020 experienced food insecurity, compared with 12.5% in 2021. This means that as a result of the expansion, 2.5 million fewer children lived in households that experienced food insecurity, even though the since October 2021.

Housing costs have also risen exponentially. In 2021, , the largest increase in 34 years of data collected. A by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that 70% of Child Tax Credit recipients used their payments to supplement their housing costs — and evictions dropped dramatically as a result.

These factors, and more, have a direct impact on learning. Generation A is experiencing an education emergency, as more students are reading, writing and doing math below grade level than before COVID-19 struck. This year’s showed the largest declines in math ever reported. Kids are in need of extended learning opportunities — quality programs and extracurricular learning opportunities to help them catch up. The Child Tax Credit would give families the breathing room that they need to hire tutors, pay for sports teams and dance classes, and provide their children with access to joyful moments of learning to complement classroom learning that they might not otherwise have.

The National Parents Union is asking all families and allies to join our fight by to support the restoration of the Child Tax Credit expansion and prevent 2.1 million children from falling back into poverty. Congress has until Thursday, Dec. 22 to pass an end-of-year tax package that could include relief for hardworking families as the 117^th Congress winnows down.

This is not about the entitlement state — it is about raising the bar for the quality of life of America’s children. An expanded Child Tax Credit, along with the ‘s new , are necessary policies for helping families overcome needless mental and physical challenges due to an inability to afford healthy food options. When Sen. Mitch McConnell insists that any end-of-year tax deal must prioritize defense spending over domestic policies, my question is: Why do lawmakers continue to stymie efforts to lift 4 million kids out of poverty? The country needs to fortify the future by prioritizing children — their health, education, resiliency. It is a moral imperative to create the conditions in which kids are free to experience joy, shielded from unnecessary suffering, and able to access resources that will positively impact their lives. 

Reinstating the Child Tax Credit expansion in the end-of-year tax package should be a no-brainer, a genuine and unprecedented demonstration that Congress — representing everyday, hardworking Americans — does indeed care about the wellness of the nation’s poorest children.

That is an improvement worth celebrating — on the face of it. But is this a lasting, structural and meaningful improvement? 

As the Census Bureau report notes, much of the change is attributable to anti-poverty policies put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, including those expanding the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to as much as $3,600 per child and allowing even families too poor to owe income tax to collect the benefit; expanding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); and creating stimulus funds. 

That means this rise in the fortunes of the nation’s children is at best ephemeral. As the pandemic subsides, COVID-era program expansions are inevitably sunsetting, and new economic pressures are increasingly dire. It is not a significant leap of logic to imagine that millions of families will quickly fall back into an unsustainable position as these programs are discontinued or even cut back. 

In other words, notwithstanding the ladder that the federal government briefly stuck into the hole in which low-income families found themselves during COVID, that hole is now getting deeper. The 8 million American children who are still dependent on government assistance are not only behind, they are badly behind, and likely to be more so in the years ahead. 

The good news of the past several years is that children of all races and ethnicities have escaped poverty in similar numbers. But structural economic obstacles have long confronted families of color, in particular, such as the lack of generational transfer of wealth. So it should come as no surprise that Black and Hispanic children under 17 years of age are overwhelmingly the beneficiaries of the subsidies that have made such a dent in child poverty. They are about 60% more likely than white children to be receiving WIC benefits (supplemental food, health care referrals, and nutrition education for at-risk women and their young children) and an average of 29% more likely to be eligible for free and reduced-price lunches at school. Black children are more than twice as likely as white children to benefit from the SNAP program, which allows low-income families to purchase healthy foods for their children. 

All of these programs were developed for working families who are still unable to secure an income above poverty level. The underlying conditions of poverty — the inability to earn a living wage despite full employment — lurk barely below the surface. In truth, we have still done almost nothing to address those conditions and help households transform their circumstances.

To be sure, pandemic-era program expansions have been crucial in enabling these families to sustain themselves. But temporary stability does no good without longer-term strategies for lifting people into more sustainable economic circumstances. As inflation grows and the economic situation worsens, we need constructive policies for building generational capital. Otherwise, insufficient or inconsistent subsidies will just restart, even deepen, the cycle of poverty. Because poverty is so entrenched, these temporary Band-Aid subsidies must be paired with policies and actions that use this brief respite as an occasion for radical surgery and, ultimately, genuine healing.

In addition to continuing basic supports — such as housing and food — the federal government must also use the momentum of this period of improvement to address poverty for the longer term. 

1. Low-income families’ economic stability must be supplemented by an infusion of opportunity.

Children who are safely housed and sufficiently nourished, given the right additional support, can focus on their education and believe in the future. To do this, they need safe, supportive schools with excellent teachers to inspire them. They need academic skills and enrichment as well as the thoughtful career advice that will enable them to seize the moment and secure better-compensated jobs. 

2.  Supports for young people must address their social, mental, and emotional well-being as well as their economic situation.

For children in poverty, particularly Black and brown children, external instability can lead to deeper, long-lasting stress and trauma. Community programs that specialize in their particular developmental and social needs can help young people create a strong self-image, encourage aspirations and build confidence. In addition to the skills to take advantage of their relative stability to move up the economic ladder, young people in this tenuous environment need strong mentors and role models. They also need access to the arts, to develop creativity and joy, and they need time to replenish their resilience. 

3. The underlying causes of poverty, especially working poverty, need to be sustainably addressed.

Subsidies save lives, but they do not compensate for the hopelessness an adult feels when she puts in a full week of work and still cannot earn enough to ensure her family’s health and safety. For families to break the cycle, children must have hope — and their parents and guardians, who are their primary role models, must be a key source of that hope. We must give adults not just subsidies,but also the means to improve their lives in long-term ways, for example, professional training to help them advance their earning potential, and better education and career mentoring for their children so they can start out on a more promising path.

It is already clear that the victory over child poverty between 2009 and 2021 is at best fragile and short lived. The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University reported earlier this year that the end of monthly payments under the Child Tax Credit had resulted in a dramatic increase in month-to-month child poverty rates. Now is the time to shore up the significant gains we have made with deeper, more strategic investments. 

The most crucial of all stimulus initiatives to end child poverty will be the ones that stimulate true opportunity, allowing youth to seize this moment, break the cycle and build their future.

Equally concerning and more deeply entrenched is the chronic stress associated with poverty — and that, too, affects millions of U.S. children. According to U.S. Census data in 2019, nearly one in six U.S. infants, toddlers and preschoolers lived in poverty, which in itself represents a form of chronic stress. Almost half that number are living in extreme poverty, which is an annual income of around $13,200 for a family of four. Children of color in the U.S. have been particularly vulnerable to child poverty, with Black and Hispanic children experiencing some of the highest poverty rates in the country.

Families in poverty deal with a cascade of stressful circumstances — unstable housing, financial insecurity, mental health issues, substance abuse and other forms of adversity — that add up and often don’t let up, hence “chronic.” The body’s automatic response in trying to adapt to this ongoing adversity means that even small children can experience changes in their brain chemistry that dramatically affect their attention and behavior.

Dr. Liliana J. Lengua, child clinical psychologist and University of Washington professor of psychology, says the stress experienced by children in poverty can disrupt the neurobiological systems that are the foundation of children’s social, emotional and cognitive development, including executive control and hormone stress responses. Executive control is the brain function that helps people plan, focus, learn and manage daily life. Adversity can also disrupt stress hormones like cortisol, which Lengua describes as a system that helps us “get up and go” and allows us to rise to the challenges we face.

A typical daily pattern of cortisol is one in which the level of cortisol rises on awakening, with the highest levels in the morning. The cortisol level declines through the day to its lowest levels in the evening. With those experiencing chronic stress, the body “downregulates” the hormone eventually after pouring out fight-or-flight cortisol for an extended period, which suppresses the energy, focus and oomph needed to tackle life.

A University of Washington longitudinal evaluated 306 children over more than 12 years, beginning when the participants were around 3. The children came from various racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, with 57% considered low income. Lengua’s team of researchers surveyed the children’s mothers about various risk factors that have been linked to poor health and children’s behavioral outcomes, such as family transitions, abuse or having an incarcerated parent. Then they tested the children’s executive function skills with preschool-friendly activities that measured their ability to follow directions, pay attention and follow instructions that ran opposite their impulses. For example, the children interacted with two puppets, a dragon and a monkey, but the researchers told them only to follow the instructions the monkey gave.

The children who did well on the tasks tended to have more typical stress hormone levels (measured via saliva samples), while children in families dealing with high adversity tended to have lower executive function and more disrupted hormone patterns. Preschoolers the researchers observed from lower-income households didn’t show cortisol elevations in the morning but had “blunted” levels throughout the day. These effects directly related to more behavior and social adjustment issues later when the children started kindergarten, the researchers found.

“What struck me in this study,” Lengua says, “was finding that our 3-year-olds were already showing income- and stress-related differences in their executive functioning and cortisol regulation. That finding was steady and it was persistent from 3 to 6. Those differences go on to predict later adjustment problems when the kids are 8 and 12. I just didn’t expect it to be so set when the kids were so young.

“The more financial insecurity, the more housing instability they have, the more stress the mothers experience, the greater the impact on their babies from a really early stage. We see that impact through the baby’s physiology and their emotional regulation,” Lengua says of her latest research with infants.

Past research has noted the effects of adversity and stress hormones on executive function, but Lengua says this newer study shows the “snowball effect” of low income and adversity on children, which increases their parents’ and family stress, which increases the children’s stress and their difficulties with self-control, which then affects how they interact with the world and how the world interacts with them. Being distractable, disruptive, impulsive, having trouble concentrating, having difficulty forming relationships with peers equal a recipe for continuing challenges in life.

The implications of this much stress on this many babies — and what that means for their lives, their families and our society — can be dismaying. But Lengua’s research also has identified factors that can mitigate these effects.

Other than systemic changes — making certain all children’s basic needs are met and that families have shelter, sufficient food and adequate health care — the intervention that makes the biggest difference is how parents, particularly mothers, interact with their babies, she says. Mothers’ sensitive interactions with infants and preschoolers can help the child build core competencies that strengthen their executive function.

But that effect comes with a chicken-or-egg paradox. For a mother to be able to interact with her baby in ways that mitigate adversity, her mental health must be sufficient to the task. Many low-income mothers, who often have a family history of adversity, suffer from the very effects Lengua’s team observed in infants born into poverty — an intergenerational effect by which chronic stress keeps shaping childhoods from decade to decade.

, Lengua’s research team looked at specific parenting practices that fostered the behaviors that can mediate the effects of chronic stress, specifically practices that promote executive function and well-regulated cortisol responses. Their research indicates that children whose mothers demonstrated scaffolding — providing the child with the right mix of support and autonomy — and who encouraged their child’s ability to defer gratification saw the greatest growth in their capacity to cope.

“What this suggests,” Lengua says, “is that supporting mothers’ mental health and their parenting during pregnancy, particularly moms who have experienced or are experiencing significant adversity, can make a big difference in infants’ self-regulation and emotional development. Particularly during pregnancy and in the postnatal period, supporting moms’ ability to manage stress and build their own strength and ability to regulate their emotions can have a powerful effect.”

Providing the right balance of support and autonomy — “stepping in and stepping back” — is one of the most challenging parenting behaviors of all, she says. Parents, regardless of their socioeconomic background, are challenged by the idea of how much support to provide and when to let the child work it out on their own. But, she says, doing so is essential for children to develop their capacity for self-regulation.

The encouraging aspect of these findings, Lengua says, is that scaffolding and other behaviors characteristic of sensitive parenting can be taught and improved on.

“We’re seeking funding now for a randomized control trial of two different interventions,” Lengua says. “One is a mindfulness-based parenting program for parents with preschool kids and the other is a mindfulness-based prenatal and postnatal program for moms. The idea is that if we can help moms with their stress management and mental health during pregnancy, we may be able to impact the cortisol mechanism that affects kids’ social-emotional competence later.”

Though the team’s research is ongoing, it points the way to science-based interventions that can help break the intergenerational legacy of chronic stress, and prepare babies and preschoolers with tools for success.

Take the antipoverty provisions, for example. Researchers like Lawrence Aber have been exploring possible solutions for child poverty for decades. “Anybody who says ‘I did this’ is misrepresenting the reality,” says Aber, professor of psychology and public policy at New York University as well as co-director of . He credits a “community of inquiry” spanning academia and policymaking.

“It’s not one single study,” Aber explains. “Knowledge accumulates over the course of many studies.”

Aber’s research journey began at Yale University in the 1970s, studying under Edward Zigler (1930-2019), a pioneer of applying developmental psychology to social policy and often credited as one of the main architects of Head Start. Back then, Aber was curious about the causes and consequences of child abuse, neglect and maltreatment.

“We didn’t know the extent to which economic insecurity was a cause of maltreatment,” he recalls, “or just a correlated factor.” This inquiry led to broader questions about poverty and violence. Over multiple studies, at least one inescapable conclusion emerged: poverty causes damage to child development by means of toxic stress. “It’s not just a matter of correlation,” he emphasizes. “It’s causal. This is true regardless of race, but it’s especially acute for Black and Latino children.”

The immediate history of the anti-poverty provisions in the American Rescue Plan devoted to young children dates back to December 2015, when Congress commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to “identify evidence-based programs and policies for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.”

Generating ideas for how to cut child poverty in half is a bigger undertaking than any one discipline can manage, so National Academy convened a committee of 15 experts (including Aber), who specialize in public policy, economics, child welfare, developmental psychology and medicine. The committee invited outside testimony from universities, think-tanks and other organizations representing diverse political perspectives. Two public information-gathering sessions informed their work, as did 25 policy memos. Four years in the making, the 600-page , published in 2019, is a “consensus study report”—that is, it focuses on solutions that have come to be accepted by the research community.

“Ethically, you can’t conduct rigorous experiments by taking money away from people, thank goodness,” says Aber, “but there are different ways you can test giving money to families with children.” To alleviate poverty, the government can issue tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which have been proven to have the added benefit of encouraging work. It can simply give away money—in the form of unconditional (no strings attached) or conditional (conditioned on certain behaviors such as school attendance) cash transfers.

The commission adopted a set of “most of the above” recommendations (not conditional transfers, since there was not yet a sufficient evidence base on the efficacy). “If just one solution could do the trick,” notes Aber. “It would have been a simpler story to tell and an easier message for advocates to sell.” An expanded Child Tax Credit, functionally similar to a child allowance, is getting the most attention, but the expanded EITC, food and housing provisions all contribute to the ultimate goal of reducing child poverty by half.

Were it not for the pandemic, the Roadmap would have had a very different reception. It would certainly have influenced policy decisions, and elements of it might have appeared in legislation, but the pandemic’s massive job loss and economic fallout made the recommendations especially urgent. “Millions have been hurt through no fault of their own,” says Aber. “That shifts the moral calculus.”

Reflecting on the lessons the American Rescue Plan offers for his field, Aber notes that science is important, but it only gets us so far. “People nowadays like to say, ‘Do what the science tells you,’ but the most we can hope for is solutions that are inspired by and consistent with, not exclusively determined by, science.”

He also maintains that social sciences are not the domain of ideologues or those who expect tidy solutions. “If you want to work in this field,” he says, “you have to get used to the messiness of policy, where things like power and finances necessarily enter the mix.” He mentions a piece of advice Edward Zigler gave him when he was starting out in his career: We have to grow comfortable with acting in the face of ambiguity. “Yet, without the decades of research showing that poverty causes health and development problems and that child tax credits have been effective in reducing poverty, it is hard to imagine that the current legislation on child tax credits could have passed,” says Ellen Galinsky, chief science officer of the Bezos Family Foundation.

Aber makes it clear that the American Rescue Plan isn’t the final end goal on reducing child poverty. Most of the provisions are set to last only one year. Efforts are needed to ensure that it’s effectively implemented and more research is needed on its impact and on other solutions like improving school achievement that build upon its accomplishments.

Disclosure: The Bezos Family Foundation provides financial support to Early Learning Nation.

• Lawrence Aber, member of the report research committee
• Shelley Waters Boots, principal at SWB Strategic Solutions
• Adam Gamoran, president of the William T. Grant Foundation ()
• Jason Grumet, president of Bipartisan Policy Center ()
• Milton Little, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Atlanta ()

Below are our top five takeaways from the conversation.

1. Yes, poverty does cause negative outcomes for children. The WTGF, along with five private funders and the U.S. Congress tapped the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to create , which reported evidence and recommendations on how to cut child poverty by half within 10 years. The committee focused on causal studies and concluded that poverty does cause negative childhood outcomes. Aber explained the significance of this finding, “For 20 or 30 years, there have been arguments that poverty doesn’t matter; it’s only the correlates that cause the problems,” like single parenthood or idleness. Today it is definitive that poverty causes negative child outcomes, especially if it occurs in early childhood and persists over time.

2. Income inequality is expanding in the U.S. “In the early part of the 20th century, the top 10% of income recipients earned nearly half of all income received,” Gamoran explained. If income were evenly distributed, this group would get 10%. In 2013, this issue was declared by then-President Obama as the defining challenge of our time, and it persists today. Gamoran said, “The stock market and earnings from investments have continued to shoot up throughout this horrible pandemic, whereas earned income from jobs for many, especially low-wage workers, has plummeted.”

3. Current policies benefit the privileged. “All too often, U.S. policy is to hoard opportunities for the advantaged instead of extending them to the disadvantaged,” Gamoran said in reference to tax and labor market policies such as the mortgage write-off, child care and college savings credits. Persistent inequality is socially and economically harmful as it drains productivity and can be socially divisive. However, the focus cannot be on reducing inequality through policy alone. Gamoran said, “Effective programs and policies may help those who experience them, but they will not reduce inequality in a larger sense unless the structural conditions that create inequality in the first place are addressed.”

4. No single solution is sufficient for today’s challenges. To reduce child poverty and increase employment, the research committee recommended bundling packages that provide work and income support. Still, to ensure equitable impact, how these supports are distributed must be considered. Aber said, “It’s hard to benefit from a work policy if you’re structurally excluded from the labor force.” Those structural factors greatly influence the impact and success of anti-poverty programs. Boots pointed out, “It’s harder to work and be a caregiver if you’re struggling with mental health or behavioral challenges.”

5. Evidence must move to action. “Research findings and policy solutions are important,” Little said, “But all of us on the ground need to figure out a way in which we can move public will in order to fully make these things happen.” The sense of urgency is intense, Grumet maintained, especially considering that nearly 1 million kids have fallen into poverty since the pandemic began. All panelists recommended that local and state advocates and funders get more involved in understanding and supporting national agenda items that impact their homes and neighborhoods. “Local funders and local advocates cannot and should not underestimate the power they have to advocate for federal policy change,” Aber said.