Tag: Marian Wright Edelman

A Disgraceful Race to the Bottom

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

GAORe-Posted from Marian Wright Edelman’s CHILD WATCH® COLUMN on the Children’s Defense Fund site.  For further reading, see the archive of her weekly writings.  

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last month, “K-12 Education: Discipline Disparities for Black Students, Boys, and Students with Disabilities,” reminds us once again that suspensions and expulsions continue at high rates and offer grave risks to students. The report by this federal monitoring agency reviews data from the Education Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection on school discipline trends across the country, provides a more in-depth look at discipline approaches and challenges faced in five states, and reviews past efforts by the Departments of Education and Justice to identify and address disparities and discrimination. Continue reading “A Disgraceful Race to the Bottom” →

The Cost Benefits of Healthy Children

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

marian wrightFrom Marian Wright Edelman in a recent article on the Flint water scandal:

Children and families everywhere would benefit immediately from stronger, clearer and consistent national standards for measuring, monitoring, and reducing lead exposure that are enforced. The incalculable child harm from lead poisoning should be reason enough to act now with great urgency and persistence. And the nation’s bottom line would benefit too. Every dollar invested to decrease lead hazards yields an estimated return of $17:1 to $221:1. These cost benefits exceed the return on vaccines long considered one of the most cost-effective public health interventions.

Child Poverty Is Not An Act Of God

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From Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities:
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Just released U.S. Census Bureau data reveal 45.3 million people were poor in America in 2013. One in three of those who are poor is a child. Children remain our poorest age group and children of color and those under five are the poorest. More than one in five infants, toddlers, and preschoolers were poor during their years of greatest brain development and vulnerability. Black children saw no decrease and continue to have the highest child poverty rates in the nation. In 20 states  more than 40 percent of Black children were poor and nearly one in five Black children were living in extreme poverty with an annual income of less than half of the poverty level or $33 a day for a family of four.

Continue reading “Child Poverty Is Not An Act Of God” →