The Annie E Casey Foundation released its 27th annual Kids Count Data book Tuesday, with national and state-specific data about child poverty levels, economic instability, education and health.
Delaware maintained its overall ranking of 25th in the nation for overall child well-being in this year’s report.
And Laura Speer, Associate Director of Policy Reform and Advocacy for the Casey Foundation, says for the most part Delaware reflects many national trends. It’s seeing increases in the number of children in poverty and living in high-poverty areas. It also has a growing number of kids living in single parent homes or with parents who lack secure employment.
“The employment of parents is the number one factor impacting the child poverty rate," Speer said. "So the fact that we still have 30% of children whose parents lack secure employment in 2014 is a major problem if we want to get these families back on track.”
She says the economy still hasn’t recovered from the recession and she says it isn’t uncommon for states to maintain the same ranking year to year.
“Unfortunately these are metrics that don’t change very dramatically year-to-year number one, and number two since this is a relative ranking there’s often times there might be improvements in one state but if other states close to them also improve there’s not a lot of shifting,” she said.
But she says there are a couple of areas where Delaware is lagging behind the national average are in the education arena: specifically the number of eighth graders not proficient in math and the number of high school students who don’t graduate on time.
70% of Delaware eighth graders were not proficient in math in 2014 compared to the 68% national average, and 23% of Delaware high school students did not graduate on time compared with an 18% national average.
On the brighter side of things, Speer says teens today are positioning themselves for success in many ways. They’re more likely to graduate from high school than any other group of teens before them, less likely to have a birth in their teen years and less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol.
However, Speer adds that this same group of young people continues to face odds related to rising costs of higher education.
"We know that college is becoming increasingly unaffordableand the jobs that are going to pay them enough to support themselves require that college education," Speer said. "So this is something that even though these young folks are breaking lots of records, they’re facing really even a higher bar in terms of success in the long run.”
Speer says the affordability issue – and the need to expand access to higher education for low-income students – remain critical, as family income is now more highly correlated with college completion than academic ability.
Low-performing, high-income kids are now more likely to obtain a college degree than high-performing, low-income kids.
Director of Kids Count in Delaware Janice Barlow adds that the academic disparity between low-income and high-income kids is alarming.
"There's been a marked difference between test scores for kids in poverty and not in poverty with those in poverty faring worse consistently across all testing models," Barlow said.
Delaware released its Kids Count report about a month ago, and Barlow says this is the first year the data is based on the Smarter Balance testing system. Previously, the Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System was used and before that, the Delaware State Testing Program.
