[Senate Hearing 111-1163]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 111-1163
THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN CHILD:
SECURING OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
EXAMINING THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN CHILD, FOCUSING ON SECURING OUR
CHILDREN'S FUTURE
__________
NOVEMBER 18, 2010
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
TOM HARKIN, Iowa, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
PATTY MURRAY, Washington RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
JACK REED, Rhode Island JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon TOM COBURN, M.D., Oklahoma
AL FRANKEN, Minnesota PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado
JOE MANCHIN, West Virginia
Daniel E. Smith, Staff Director
Pamela A. Smith, Deputy Staff Director
Frank Macchiarola, Republican Staff Director and Chief Counsel
______
Subcommittee on Children and Families
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut, Chairman
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
PATTY MURRAY, Washington JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire
JACK REED, Rhode Island JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina TOM COBURN, M.D., Oklahoma
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming (ex
TOM HARKIN, Iowa (ex officio) officio)
Averi Pakulis, Staff Director
David P. Cleary, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
?
C O N T E N T S
__________
STATEMENTS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2010
Page
Dodd, Hon. Christopher J., Chairman, Subcommittee on Children and
Families, opening statement.................................... 1
Alexander, Hon. Lamar, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Tennessee, opening statement................................... 4
Mikulski, Hon. Barbara A., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Maryland....................................................... 5
Sanders, Hon. Bernard, a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont.. 6
Casey, Hon. Robert P., Jr., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Pennsylvania................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Edelman, Marian Wright, President, Children's Defense Fund,
Washington, DC................................................. 11
Prepared statement........................................... 13
Garner, Jennifer, Artist Ambassador, Save the Children, Los
Angeles, CA.................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 19
Edelman, Peter, Professor of Law, Georgetown Law Center and
Faculty Co-Director, Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality,
and Public Policy, Washington, DC.............................. 20
Prepared statement........................................... 22
Satcher, David, M.D., Ph.D., Director, The Satcher Health
Leadership Institute and Center of Excellence on Health
Disparities, Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA......... 26
Prepared statement........................................... 28
Blank, Helen, Director, Leadership and Public Policy, National
Women's Law Center, Washington, DC............................. 30
Prepared statement........................................... 33
Casserly, Michael, Ph.D., Executive Director, Council on Great
City Schools, Washington, DC................................... 41
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Bennet, Hon. Michael F., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Colorado....................................................... 52
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.:
Debra L. Ness, President, National Partnership for Women &
Families................................................... 64
Tracy L. Wareing, Executive Director, American Public Human
Services Association....................................... 65
Response to questions of Senator Hatch by Marian Wright
Edelman.................................................... 66
(iii)
THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN CHILD: SECURING OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE
----------
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2010
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Children and Families,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:34 a.m. in
Room SD-430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Christopher
J. Dodd, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Dodd, Alexander, Mikulski, Reed, Sanders,
Casey, Hagan, and Bennet.
Opening Statement Of Senator Dodd
Senator Dodd. The committee will come to order. Will my
witnesses join the witness table this morning?
I want to welcome all our guests here this morning, as well
as our witnesses, and our colleagues, obviously, and our
staffs.
We've got everyone together here? There you go. You're
right there. Helen, you're right next to--Helen, sit down. Come
on.
[Laughter.]
Helen and I have known each other an awful long time. We
talk that way to each other. She used to tell me to sit down
all the time.
Ms. Blank. I always told you what to do.
Senator Dodd. There, you go.
Well, again, thank you all for being here this morning. I
appreciate it very, very much.
This is the last in a series of four hearings the
subcommittee has held over the last year on the status of the
American child; and this will be the last of those hearings.
I'm very grateful to my colleagues who are here, as well as our
witnesses who will give us their thoughts this morning on this
most compelling of issues.
Lamar Alexander, my good friend, is with us as well. We've
done a lot of things together here over the years.
I recall very vividly several years ago, a report, I think
out of a children's hospital in Tennessee, talking about the
condition of that child, maybe the first generation--and you
correct me if I'm wrong--but the first generation of American
children who may not live as well, or as long, or as healthy as
their parents after the 220-year history of our country.
This morning I'll make some brief opening comments. I'll
turn to Senator Alexander for any comments. We don't have a
huge gathering of colleagues here this morning, for all the
obvious reasons, but I'll turn to my two colleagues who are
here as well, if they have any brief opening comments they'd
like to make; and then we'll turn to our witnesses who are
here, a very distinguished panel of witnesses who have
dedicated their lives in many, many ways to the issue of the
condition of the American child.
Then we'll have some good questions and a good conversation
about what steps we ought to be taking.
I'd like to thank all of you for being with us this
morning. I would especially like to thank our distinguished
panel of witnesses, and I look forward to their testimonies.
You know, this is the fourth, as I said a moment ago, and
final hearing in a series of hearings that I've held in this
subcommittee over the last year to examine the state of the
American child. This will be the last hearing that I'll chair
in the Health Committee. It is fitting that I end my career in
this committee on the most rewarding subject matters I've been
engaged in for 30 years, and that is the condition of the
American child and their families; those affecting children,
their families and their futures.
This subcommittee has been able to lead efforts to increase
the well-being of our most vulnerable population; and I truly
hope that the work of this subcommittee continues in the next
Congress, as I'm confident it will.
The subcommittee on children and families has been a vital
forum for focusing on the needs of children, and is the only
body in the U.S. Senate that has this as its sole focus. This
subcommittee has held many titles over the years, including the
Subcommittee on Children and Human Development, the
Subcommittee on Children and Youth, the Subcommittee on
Children, Family, Drugs and Alcoholism; however, I think the
current title, Children and Families, is the most appropriate,
and it indicates where our focus needs to be, on children and
on their families.
We've learned a lot over the last year, through this series
of hearings, about the state of our children. We've heard from
national experts, the Federal agencies that house children's
programs, State leaders on children's issues, and programs at
the State level that are actively working and making a
difference improving the lives of our children, as well.
Unfortunately, much of what we've heard this year has
painted a sobering picture; and I think all of us are aware of
the struggles of our children and their families. We've learned
that 17 percent of America's children are obese, that more than
80 percent of fourth graders are eligible for a free lunch--in
fact, scored below the proficient reading levels, as well, and
that more than one in five children lives in poverty, which is
the highest rate since 1996.
The recession, of course, has made the already difficult
lives of millions of children and their families even harder.
An estimated 8.1 million children under the age of 18 live in
families with an unemployed parent. Approximately 43 percent of
families with children report that they are struggling to
afford stable housing. And nearly one in four children in our
Nation relies on food stamps for nutrition.
Unfortunately, we've become too accustomed to hearing these
statistics, but in my strong opinion we cannot become numb to
them. Each of these numbers represents a real child; it
represents hunger, homelessness, or suffering. And as a father
of two young children, I find this morally offensive, and so
should we all.
Despite this dim outlook, we know from history that it is
possible to address these seemingly enormous problems. We've
made headway on improving children's lives in the past, and I
believe very firmly we can do again.
In January 1964 Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty
and asked Sargent Shriver to lead the effort to head the Office
of Economic Opportunity. Sarge Shriver appointed Dr. Robert
Cooke, a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins University, to head a
steering committee of 13 specialists, including Dr. Ed Zigler,
to identify what should be done for young children. That
steering committee issued the Cooke Memorandum, which supported
the creation of Project Head Start.
When President Johnson introduced Head Start as part of the
War on Poverty, he said that 5-year-olds are the inheritors of
poverty and not its creators; and unless we act, these
children, he said, will pass it onto the next generation like a
family birthmark.
Passing this birthmark has gone on for far too long. It's
time to, again, put a very specific and targeted focus on our
children and the future of our world.
Head Start, Early Head Start have now served 27 million
children and their families since 1965 in its creation,
providing young children and low-income families with
comprehensive early education, health, nutrition, child care
and social services.
Over 20 years ago a National Commission on Children was
established which laid out a plan to address the needs of
children. Out of that effort came recommendations for the
creation of several vital programs, such as the Earned Income
Tax Credit, and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
With more than one in five children living in poverty in
the early 1990s various policies enacted under the Clinton
administration, with the support of many, in a bipartisan basis
in Congress, helped reduce the child poverty rate by more than
25 percent in our country. That rate is, obviously, still too
high. But no one can argue about the difference the child's tax
credit, the work initiatives and expanded health insurance for
low-income children made in the lives of millions and millions
of our young Americans.
Our children are clearly in crisis, we all know that. As
each of our witnesses in these hearings over the past year has
told us. However, we've seen how a focused and concerted effort
to care for these children most in need can work and produce
results.
We must do this again, and now is the time to do it.
That is why today my colleague, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania,
who's with us, and I, will introduce a bill establishing a new,
permanent National Council on Children. We need a body that
regularly and closely examines the needs of American children
and their families, and identifies solutions to improve their
lives.
There's a lot of talk in this community, obviously, about
reducing the deficit. We all understand that. And children's
programs can seem like some of the easiest to cut, as they
often have been. But now is not the time, in my view, to cut
these critical ideas and programs that have proven over, and
over again how effective they can be in working for children
and their families to see that they get back on their feet
again. Investing in children and people makes sound business
sense and will produce substantial savings, in my view, in the
future.
We will never, in my view, cut the deficit--in fact, the
long-term deficit, without investing in the next generation of
Americans. And we cannot possibly expect to see any of the
statistics I've just listed turn around unless we focus our
efforts toward doing just that.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about what
needs to be done, in the future, to reverse the existing
downward trends which are so troubling, and that is occurring
in our Nation's communities.
As all of you know I'll not be here next year, but I intend
to continue, in one way or another, fighting on behalf of our
children and their families in the days ahead. And I look
forward to hearing from my colleagues.
With that, Senator Alexander, the floor is yours.
Opening Statement of Senator Alexander
Senator Alexander. Thanks, Chris. I'm here today to pay my
respects to the witnesses, and to thank you for coming. It's a
very distinguished group. I'm especially glad to see my friend,
David Satcher from Nashville, who has now escaped to Atlanta
for a while, but we're glad to see him.
I especially want to use this occasion to thank Chris Dodd
for his career and his focus on children and families. We're
going to miss Chris' infectious congeniality, and his hard
work, and his good humor--he's an extraordinarily good
legislator.
He's had a focus here, and it's been on children and
families, and that focus, even though there are many different
ideas about how to get where we want to go, has always been
unwavering. I thank him for that, and I thank him for his focus
on these four hearings that emphasize that.
I have other hearings this morning I'm going to have to
attend. I'm reading all the testimony, but I wanted to make
sure I was here to say that, and to thank the witnesses.
We have worked together, as he said, on important issues. A
lot of this can be bipartisan; the Preemie Act is one, to try
to understand why so many babies are born prematurely; we
really don't know that. The more we knew about that, the more
we could do about it.
We worked on School-Based Health Clinic Establishment Act.
It ended up in a bill I didn't support, but I still liked the
proposal. That sometimes happened here.
Senator Dodd has a personal interest in the Food Allergy
Legislation, which is part of a legislation currently being
debated on the Senate floor today. We worked together on that
to try to come up with legislation that respected the
responsibilities of States and the responsibility of families.
Some of the best work, I think, was done on Head Start.
It's maybe our most popular program. It's amazing to think
about Head Start envisioned by a president who was once a
first-grade teacher in Cotulla, TX. I know Cotulla, TX pretty
well; and it's a great American story to think of someone going
from teaching first-grade there to the Presidency of the United
States--and then this program.
We strengthened Head Start, I believe, and included within
the new authorization Centers of Excellence, to focus on the
Head Start Programs that are doing the best job. We spent a lot
of money on Early Childhood Development from the Federal
Government; the numbers are in the $20 billions a year.
Most of us got on Head Start--it's on other things as well.
The communities that are doing the best job of taking all the
Federal money and focusing on it to help children are the ones
that we hope other communities will model; and the Centers on
Excellence do that.
I thank you for the hearing, Senator Dodd. I thank you for
your service and your friendship. We have no doubt that in the
next phase of your career the focus will include children and
families.
Senator Dodd. I thank you, Lamar, very much, for that very
kind remark; and I, too, have enjoyed working with you. By the
way, the statistics on premature births, as a result of our
legislation, are actually declining.
That bill is up for reauthorization, so I'm counting on you
to get it done as I leave. I'll be watching, carefully, here,
too, from the bleachers.
Barbara, any thoughts? Comments?
Welcome.
Statement of Senator Mikulski
Senator Mikulski. Well, yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We're
not taking opening statements. I was going to ask a point of
personal privilege, because for me, today, being with you, it
is a privilege, and it is personal.
To our witnesses, I want to thank you for coming, and look
forward to hearing your testimony.
But, like other colleagues here, we have to note this
passing of the torch. Indeed, there has been a torch. We want
to thank you, Senator Dodd, for your steadfast leadership. You
never failed children; you never faltered in being their
advocate; and you always found a way, regardless of what party
was in power, to continue to serve these children.
You and I came to the Congress together; we served in the
House together; we served in the Senate. I think you're just a
real champion. I think all of America's children owe you a debt
of gratitude; all of American families, from the legacy of
Family and Medical Leave; safe, affordable availability of
child care; and the list goes on.
I know in about 2 weeks we'll be having a tribute to you,
and we'll commemorate every single item.
But for me what has been so inspirational is, again, the
way--when I came to the Senate, I was the first Democratic
woman, and for 8 years, the only Democratic woman here--that
you didn't see the children's issues as like a girl's issue.
Oh, Barb's here, and we're going to give it to you, to
stovepipe it, to ghettoize it, and so on.
You set the standard that it's men and women in it
together; and it's not about gender; it's about the agenda, to
keep on fighting. You've done this with such grace, such honor,
such ingenuity. You've always had a fantastic staff that have
worked with all of us. It's been, indeed, a pleasure.
As a social worker, I want you to know I pledge my efforts
to continue the standards and the trust that you have
established.
My very first job out of graduate school, at the University
of Maryland School of Social Work, was a social worker in the
Head Start Program. I was a child abuse social worker. I was a
foster care social worker. And, you know what, I still am. And,
now a social worker with power.
I think all of us here, want to pledge to you that what
you've established, we're going to continue. I hope, over the
next day or two, to talk to Senator Harkin about assuming the
leadership of this subcommittee.
Senator Dodd. Good.
Senator Mikulski. And to take, really, my passion, my
experience with your legacy, and to meet these challenges; God
knows, that our children are going to count on us. But, they're
going to count on the men and women of the Senate to really
stand up for them. And we want to stand up for them the way
that you've done.
As I said, this is not going to be an Irish wake.
Senator Dodd. No. We love Irish wakes.
Senator Mikulski. I can assure you we're not going to do an
Irish wake for you or a Polish wedding for me.
[Laughter.]
We're going to make a wish. I think all of us on the
committee would just like to give you a round of applause.
[Applause.]
Senator Dodd. Ah, that's very nice, thank you. Thank you.
That's good. OK, thank you.
I'm tempted to just keep on hearing from my colleagues, but
we have some witnesses here this morning as well, and I'm
delighted all of them are here.
Any quick comments--not on this subject matter. Bernie any
thoughts on the subject matter, I appreciate it.
Statement of Senator Sanders
Senator Sanders. Very briefly, this is a great panel, and
thank you for assembling it.
Thank you, Chris, for the work that you've done with kids
for so many years.
Let me be very blunt and to the point. Compared to the rest
of the industrialized world, we are failing, failing, failing
our children. The way we treat our children in this country is
a national disgrace.
How can we be proud and serious as Americans, when in this
great country we have, by far, the highest rate of childhood
poverty in the industrialized world?
How can we be proud that 30 percent of our kids are
dropping out of high school? In Vermont, I'm told half of those
kids end up within the jail system.
We are building more and more jails, and yet, we are not
giving educational opportunity to kids. Our child care system
is a disaster.
In my State it is virtually impossible for a working-class
person to find decent quality, affordable child care. We pay
child care workers, who probably do more important work with
young people than college professors. Many of them leave child
care to get a boost in salary by working at McDonald's; all
right?
We have, in this country, the most unequal distribution of
income. I recommend the piece by Nick Kristof in the New York
Times today called ``Hedge Fund Republic--top 1 percent earns
23 percent of all income in America.''
We have people here in the Congress who think good public
policy is to give $700 billion in tax breaks to the top 2
percent, and you've got hundreds of thousands of children who
are homeless in America today.
If this great country has a future, there's one thing we
have got to do, is completely change our attitude toward kids;
they are the future of America, and we cannot continue to
ignore them.
Chris, thank you for the work----
Senator Dodd. Thank you.
Senator Sanders [continuing]. You've done, but we've got a
heck of a lot of work in front of us.
Senator Dodd. Yes, you do.
Anyone else here? If not, we'll go to our witnesses, Kay
and Bob.
Statement of Senator Casey
Senator Casey. Chris, thank you very much--Mr. Chairman, I
should say. I was hoping you'd be 5 minutes late today, because
I was going to be sitting in for 5 minutes, but it didn't work
out that way.
We're grateful, grateful for our witnesses who have labored
in these vineyards a long, long time. We can learn a lot today;
that's why I won't provide an opening. We'll submit it for the
record.
But, I was thinking today, in the scriptures there's a line
that goes something like: ``A faithful friend is a sturdy
shelter.'' The children of this country will always need,
especially now, at a difficult time for our country, a faithful
friend. The question is, will this Senate, will this
government, will this country be that faithful friend?
They have had that faithful friend in the person of Chris
Dodd for all these years, and for that, and so many other
reasons, we're going to miss him; we're going to continue to be
inspired by his work; and we're going to continue to call upon
him to help us.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Senator Casey follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Casey
Thank you, Senator Dodd, for holding this hearing today. On
this last hearing of the Subcommittee on Children and Families
this Congress, I want to thank you for your outstanding
leadership on children's issues over the past three decades
here in the Senate.
No one has done more to represent children. You started the
Children's Caucus here in the Senate, along with Senator
Specter, and, since that time, have worked tirelessly to
advance legislation to strengthen American families and help
children.
Be it the Family Medical Leave Act, Head Start and the
Child Care Development Block Grant, the Child Abuse Prevention
and Treatment Act, the Children's Health Insurance Program--or
any number of other programs--you have helped to lay a
foundation for American families to thrive and be protected
when times are tough, as they are now.
This is work that will live on well after your time here
and that I am committed to continuing.
I am delighted to be partnering with you on the Children's
Act of 2010--a piece of legislation that, I believe, will
provide us with an opportunity to help a new generation of
children and families.
This legislation will establish a National Council on
Children comprised of experts in children's issues--people with
deep knowledge and on-the-ground experience--who can help our
Nation, and leaders in the public, private and non-profit
sectors, understand what can be done to ensure that this
generation of kids has as many if not more opportunities to
succeed as previous generations, even in spite of the unique
challenges they face.
New Census figures indicate that more than one in five
children in the U.S. is living in poverty, rising from 13.3
million in 2007 to 15.5 million in 2009.
This is not a remote threat. It is real. Parents have lost
jobs--we have the highest long-term unemployment rate since the
Great Depression.
The U.S. economy is creating jobs for the first time in 4
months, with an increase of 151,000 jobs last month.
This is good news, but we need to keep it up and we cannot
forget that children are still in grave need of help.
A new study from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia,
which looked at this recession and past recessions, finds that
even when the economy starts to recover, it often takes years
for families to bounce back--and in some respects, children
never fully recover.
Just to share one fact from the report: In 2008, 1 year
into the recession, 21 percent of all households with children
were food insecure--the highest percentage since 1995.
If a child does not eat, he or she cannot learn. If a child
does not learn, he or she will not be as able to graduate, find
a job and become self-sufficient and productive. This is a loss
of potential--or to use economic terms, human capital--that
hurts us all.
That's why when we are talking about what can be done to
grow our economy, we should talk about short-term actions we
can take, but we must think about the long-term too. That is
what I hope that this new Council will be able to accomplish,
as children are the future of this country.
I look forward to hearing from the panel today their
thoughts on what actions we can take to comprehensively address
challenges and improve the lives of children across the United
States.
Senator Dodd. Thank you, Bob, very much.
All right, I think we'll get to our witnesses here. This is
turning into a hearing--it isn't an Irish Wake which is--we
love Irish Wakes, by the way. I'm a big fan of them, I tell
you.
I'm going to introduce our witnesses, and they are a
remarkable group of people, and people I've worked with for
years, and years, and years; and so it's a very special day,
indeed, to have them here at the last of my hearings.
Beginning with Marian Wright Edelman, who's been a friend
for more than 30 years, founder of the Children's Defense Fund,
as all of you know in the room; the first African-American
woman to be admitted to the Mississippi bar. She directed the
NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Jackson; worked
on the Poor People's Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King
founded before his death; and has been just a remarkable
individual.
Countless times we've held, publicly and privately,
hearings and discussions. I know her family. Her husband's here
with us today, Peter. In fact, in a way, this is a homecoming,
I should point out to you, because Peter--I'll introduce in a
minute--actually worked for Robert Kennedy, who was on this
committee, and was sent down to Mississippi to do a little work
on poverty. And he met a nice young woman in Mississippi named
Marian Wright, and they became husband and wife.
So in a sense, Peter used to sit behind the chair here, and
that's how he met Marian.
Today, they're back again. And I thought, what an
appropriate conclusion bringing this full cycle, to have them
both here today to talk about the issues which they both are
committed much to.
Jennifer Garner is with us. Jennifer, we thank you
immensely. I've had, really, the privilege of getting to know
Jennifer and meeting with her and talking with her about her
commitment to these issues; and certainly is well-known as an
artist, and a very fine one, indeed, but decided to take that
celebrity status and do something with it beyond just the
awards and recognition you get for that work.
I commend you highly for that.
She has done a tremendous job working with To Save the
Children.
I mentioned earlier, of course, it was the enthusiasm and
the vitality of a guy named Sarge Shriver in the Johnson
administration that really had so much to do with igniting the
fires back in the 1960s to do so much.
Save the Children is run by Mark Shriver, who is in the
room with us somewhere. I don't see him.
Mark, why don't you just raise your hand? Where are you?
You're right there. Mark is here. I teased him. I was going to
threaten to bring him up and be a witness.
Mark is carrying on in the tradition of his dad and his
mother in making such a difference. I can't tell you what a
tremendous job Mark has done in leading Save the Children, and
the work they're doing; and Jennifer's work with them as well,
being an ambassador for Save the Children.
I gather, in fact, you're going to be, today or tomorrow,
going back to your home State of West Virginia to open up a
Head Start Program down there as well. And so, her commitment
goes back to her State, which certainly understands the issue
of wrestling with poverty and related issues.
Jennifer, we thank you very, very much for being with us
here today.
Dr. David Satcher, you've heard, already, Lamar Alexander
make reference to. Dr. Satcher is the 16th Surgeon General of
the United States, 1998-2002; and as the Director of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1993 to 1998,
under his leadership the Department of Health and Human
Services took the bold step of establishing a national goal of
eliminating health disparities as one of two overreaching goals
for the United States to achieve by 2010. He's a former Robert
Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and Macy Faculty Fellow.
We're delighted, Doctor, that you're here with us today.
Helen Blank and I have known each other forever. I don't
remember a time not knowing Helen since I arrived in Congress.
Director of the Leadership and Public Policy at the National
Women's Law Center; her career is focused on expanding support,
especially for Federal and State levels, for positive early
care and educational experiences.
The Child Care Development Block Grant Program would not
have happened. I offered the legislation, but I had an ally
named Helen Blank, who really made all the difference in the
world years ago, working with Orrin Hatch, as my partner in all
of that, to develop that legislation.
While a lot more needs to be done, as Bernie points out
eloquently this morning, we established a program, but in terms
of providing the resource capacity and others, we still have a
long way to go. The structure is there, if we're willing to
provide the resources for it to make it happen.
Helen, we thank you very, very much.
Peter Edelman, I've already referenced; professor of law,
co-director of the Joint Degree in Law and Public Policy
Programs and the faculty director of the Center on Poverty,
Inequality and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law
Center; served in the Clinton administration as counselor to
the HHS Secretary, Donna Shelala, and then as Assistant
Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
I might point out he courageously resigned back in those
days when the Administration--over the issue of welfare reform,
as a protest over his belief that the law would move our
country in the wrong direction when it comes to children.
Unfortunately, facts have proven him to be correct, in my view.
Over a long career, Peter Edelman has been a champion for
our Nation's poorest children; and of the saving and
strengthening of the social safety network will be his
testimony today.
To have Peter and Marian here today is very, very special,
indeed.
Dr. Michael Casserly. Lamar introduced Dr. Casserly, and he
has been talking about you a lot, I can tell you, over the time
that he and I have been friends together.
Dr. Casserly is the executive director of the Council of
the Great City Schools, the Nation's primary coalition of large
and urban public schools. He has unified urban schools and
nationwide around a vision of reform and improvement. He's
currently spearheading efforts to boost academic performance in
the Nation's large city schools, and strengthen the management
and operations of those systems.
We thank you very much, Doctor, for being with us today.
Marian, we'll begin with you. I'll ask all of you to try to
keep your remarks down to about 5 minutes or so, and then we'll
submit and have for the record any testimony and supporting
documents and information to strengthen the record as well.
We thank you immensely, once again, for appearing before
this committee.
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN, PRESIDENT, CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND,
WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Wright Edelman. Well, I thank you immensely for all
you've done. If I might add, I came here today to thank you,
and to tell you we're never going to let you go, and you have
to remain a leading voice for children outside the Congress as
you have been inside the Congress.
I was sitting here thinking, the first time I think I ever
came to the Senate was in 1964 as a young lawyer to visit your
father on the Renewal of the Mississippi Summer Project.
I know how proud he would be of the extraordinary record
you have made. You have done him, as well as all of us, proud,
and I thank you. You have been a consistent 100 percent scorer
on the Children's Defense Funds, Children's Voting Record; and
again, I thank you for being that perfect student. We will miss
you so much. We are so grateful for all you've done; and we
will all put in the record on all you've done on children's
health, on child care and the Family Medical Leave Act.
We've also just loved you. You have just been somebody
who's accessible and easy to work with. And so, thank you.
So, all that progress said, we are, I think, faced with an
extraordinarily difficult time for children in America now.
They have only one childhood and that childhood is now. And
millions of our children in this Nation require emergency
attention in this recession- ravaged economy as poverty, and
including extreme child poverty, hunger, and homelessness have
increased to historic levels, if irreparable harm is not to be
inflicted on them and on our Nation's future.
I sound like a broken record, but the greatest threat, I
believe, to our national security comes from no enemy without.
It comes from our failure to protect, invest in, and educate
all of our children who make up all of our futures.
Children and the foundations of America's future, the
foundation is crumbling. You don't say you can't afford to take
care of it, and you don't deflect resources from what they need
in investment, to give tax cuts to millionaires and
billionaires. That defies economic, common and moral sense.
It's a disgrace that children are the poorest age group in
America, and the younger the children are, the poorer they are.
We rank highest among industrialized countries in relative
child poverty. That is unworthy of us. And we rate last in
terms of gun violence, in protecting our children and keeping
them safe.
Children in America are three times more likely to die from
gun violence than American soldiers in Afghanistan. I just
think that we need to focus on safety and national security
within, as well as from without.
Our Nation's schools: Many of our Nation's schools, public
schools are letting all of our children down. A majority of all
children in all racial and income groups cannot read or compute
at grade level in 4th, 8th, or 12th grade if they have not
already dropped out of school, and about half of our minority,
Black young people, are not graduating from schools.
Worrisome, as a Black woman and as a mother, the fact that
over 80 percent of Black and Hispanic children cannot read or
compute at grade level in 4th, 8th, or 12th grade, is just
beyond comprehension.
These children are being sentenced to social and economic
death.
And, you've got a child population, the majority of them
can't read and write in this globalizing economy, where is our
competitive workforce going to come from? I mean, I say these
things all the time, but I never can believe I'm actually
saying these figures, and they are reality and we had better
change them because they are the moral and Achilles' heel of
this country.
They got between rich and poor. We've already heard
eloquently of highs we've ever had; the combined net worth in
the United States, 408 billionaires is almost $1.5--$4 trillion
a year.
I can't believe that we're sitting here thinking about
giving them another tax break. This is more than the combined
GDP of 134 countries with more than a billion people.
I looked at 2008, because we really need to get our values
straight, saw that the highest paid American CEO took home over
$100 million, which is an amount equal to the salaries of 2,028
elementary school teachers, or 3,827 Head Start teachers, or
5,274 childcare workers.
We need to reset our moral and economic compass to invest.
We don't have a money problem; we have a values problem, a
profound one. We have profound priorities problem, and we need
to deal with this.
I just want to talk about the Cradle to Prison Pipeline
very briefly. I know I'm being warned with my gold light here.
This Cradle to Prison Pipeline, which is trapping one in three
Black boys born in 2001, one in six Hispanic boys born in
2001--is creating a new American apartheid; and prison is the
only thing--in fact, the only thing that this country will
guarantee every child, is a detention or a jail cell after they
get into trouble.
I can't think of a dumber investment policy.
We really need to reverse course and to guarantee them the
kind of prenatal and preventative health care, and mental
health care, and quality early childhood, and quality education
that we need if we're going to move forward. We can and must do
better.
I just want to make a few suggestions that I'm submitting
for the record, some suggestions of what we ought to do as we
reauthorize title I, and investing more in early childhood;
obviously, the Child Tax Credit, the Unearned Income Tax,
Poverty Prevention measures need to be there.
But in your National Council and your National Council of
Children, which I just heard about, I hope that one of the most
important things you can do is figure out how to get the
Congressional Budget Office to score prevention as a savings
and not as a cost, because we cannot win.
And, if we can figure out a way to have us quantify how
much is saved to cover it, and it's common sense, I mean, not
have children stay in long-term care, and not have them miss
healthcare.
If we could begin to quantify prevention, invest the
measure we're going to use to make our decisions, I hope that
the Council could take that one on. It would be one of the most
important things in the world, and, to set specific goals, and
to have benchmarks toward how much we're meeting those goals.
Let me just end with a story, because I just think children
are going backwards.
I thought that the American dream was about seeing our
children and grandchildren doing better than we do. And, it's
reversed, and we really do need to deal with that.
We are going to be calling together Black leaders in
December at the Haley Farm, because we think that the Black
child faces the worst crisis since slavery.
Black children and Hispanic children and white children are
moving backwards, and we really need to try to see if we can
reverse this trend or these trends.
I come from a little rural county in South Carolina, and I
would just end with a very disturbing, short story. One Black
minister called me up and said he just talked to three teenage
boys, 12, 13, 14, and asked them what they wanted to be when
they grew up; and one boy said, I want to work at McDonald's.
The second boy said, I want to be Spiderman, and when
pushed he couldn't think of a known profession that he would
have, because many children have never seen anybody work in our
inner cities and poor rural areas. Work is just not--and we
need to focus on jobs for these children and for their parents,
and for young people.
And the third child said that he drew a picture on the
ground and said, ``Well, I don't have to worry about what I'm
going to be when I grow up, because I'm not going to grow up.
I'm going to be dead.''
This is not America's dream. This is not Dr. King's dream.
This is not what we're about as a country.
We just need to really stop and say, what is important? Who
are we as a people? And, how are we going to make sure that we
prepare our children for the next generation; and more
importantly, to make sure that our children are there to make
our country strong.
Without the strong child population, without educated
children, the country is not going to be where we need to be in
the future.
Thank you for what you've been doing. We've got a lot of
work to do.
[The prepared statement of Marian Wright Edelman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Marian Wright Edelman
Thank you Chairman Dodd, Senator Alexander and other members of the
Subcommittee on Children and Families.
I am Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense
Fund, and I am so honored to be able to join you for this important
hearing focused on the ``State of the American Child: Securing Our
Children's Future.'' Your leadership in the Senate on behalf of
children, Senator Dodd, has been so important to millions of children
over these past three decades. You have shown us what can be done for
children--you are a champion for children indeed. We will miss you.
Children have only one childhood and it is right now. Millions of
children in our Nation require emergency attention in our recession-
ravaged economy as poverty, including extreme child poverty, hunger,
and homelessness have increased to historic levels, if irreparable harm
is not to be inflicted on them and on our Nation's future.
The greatest threat to America's national security comes from no
enemy without but from our failure to protect, invest in, and educate
all of our children who make up all of our futures. Every 11 seconds of
every school day a high school student drops out of school; every 32
seconds a baby is born into poverty; every 41 seconds a child is
confirmed abused or neglected; every 42 seconds a baby is born without
health insurance; every minute a baby is born to a teen mother; every
minute a baby is born at low birthweight; every 3 hours a child or teen
is killed by a firearm. A majority of children in all racial and income
groups cannot read or do math at grade level in 4th, 8th or 12th grade
and over 80 percent of Black and Hispanic children, who with other
minority children will constitute a majority of our population in 2023,
are behind in these grade levels--if they have not already dropped out
of school.
If the foundation of your house is crumbling, you don't say you
cannot afford to fix it. Children are the foundation of America's
future. We need to invest now in their health, early childhood
development and education. Today is tomorrow.
God has blessed America with great material wealth but we have not
shared it fairly with our children and our poor. Although we lead the
nations of the world in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in billionaires,
and in military technology, defense expenditures and military exports,
our money and our military might have not translated into moral might,
adequate child safety and well-being, and a concept of enough for those
at the top and at the bottom.
Children are the poorest age group and the younger children are,
the poorer they are. We rank highest among industrialized nations in
relative child poverty and in the gap between rich and poor, and last
in protecting children against gun violence.
The gap between the rich and the poor is the highest ever recorded
in America. In the 1960's, when the economy was expanding, about two-
thirds of the Nation's income gains went to the bottom 90 percent of
U.S. households. In the first half of this decade, it was just the
opposite: the wealthiest 1 percent reaped two-thirds of income gains.
Between 2002 and 2007, the income of the wealthiest 1 percent of U.S.
households grew more than 10 times as fast as the income of the bottom
90 percent. In 2007, the income share for the wealthiest 10 percent of
households, 49.74 percent, was the highest ever recorded.
In 2008, the highest-paid American CEO took home over $100 million,
an amount equal to the salaries of 2,028 elementary school teachers, or
3,827 Head Start teachers, or 5,275 child care workers. The average CEO
of a Fortune 500 company earned 319 times as much as the average
worker. The combined net worth of the United States' 408 billionaires
is $1.3493 trillion--greater than the combined GDP of 134 countries
where more than a billion people live.
This fiscal year, the Department of Defense is scheduled to spend a
total of $683.7 billion. This is $13.1 billion a week; $1.9 billion a
day; $78 million an hour; $1.3 million a minute; and $29,679.13 a
second. Just one second of defense spending is more than a Head Start
teacher earns in a year. Yet our children are three times more likely
to die from firearms at home than American soldiers who are fighting in
the Afghanistan war. Headlines blazed across America in June 2010 when
America's military death toll in Afghanistan reached 1,000 after 9
years of that war. No headline blazed when CDF released the disgraceful
annual numbers showing more than 3,000 children--3,042 children in
2007--dying in the gun war at home. Six times as many nonfatal child
gun injuries occurred that year.
The terrible Taliban terrorist threat to American child and citizen
safety is rivaled by the terrible NRA threat which terrorizes our
political leaders from protecting our children from the over 280
million guns in circulation which have taken over 110,000 child lives
since 1979, when gun data collection by age began. More American
preschool children died from guns in 2007 than police officers in the
line of duty and more Black male youths die in 1 year from guns than
all the lynching of Black people in American history. But where is our
anti-war movement at home?
And where is our anti-poverty movement at a time when 1 in 50
Americans, a New York Times front page story tells us, has no cash
income? ``Almost six million Americans receiving Food Stamps report
they have no income. They described themselves as unemployed and
receiving no cash and no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no
pensions, child support or disability pay. About 1 in 50 Americans now
lives in a household with a recorded income that consists of nothing
but a Food Stamp card,'' the New York Times' Jason DeParle reported.
This shocking New York Times article provoked no public outcry,
action or shame. It did not stop some political leaders from trying to
block extension of unemployment insurance benefits and to block more
Federal dollars to protect or create jobs, to expand tax credits for
working families desperately trying to feed, house and clothe their
children, or to increase investments to stimulate an economy struggling
to recover with 14.8 million workers still unemployed and massive State
deficits which will cause more job loss. How morally obscene it is that
a nation with a GDP exceeding $14 trillion cannot find the will, common
sense and decency to provide a safety net to protect its more than 15
million poor children. The subcommittee learned from Elaine Zimmerman,
the executive director of the Connecticut Commission on Children, at an
earlier hearing and again when you took your field trip to Connecticut
that the legislature there enacted a bill to cushion its children from
the harmful impact of the recession by decreasing bureaucratic barriers
to accessing a range of benefits and tax refunds. State leaders
recognized that the impact of even short periods of poverty can have a
long term--even permanent--effect on children pulled from the stable
security of their home, school, and friends when families lose their
homes and jobs and are forced to move in with others or into homeless
shelters. The loss of a sense of safety amidst the turmoil of economic
insecurity fuels stress for parents and children and breeds a sense of
hopelessness about the future. Our leaders and citizens need to
respond.
This is a time when America can and must turn economic downturn
into an opportunity to step forward to correct the gross imbalance of
government subsidization of the wealthiest and most powerful among us
and provide a safety net for all children from growing hunger,
homelessness and stress. A college student working three jobs in
Connecticut, causing her to make lower grades, feels she will never be
able to get into medical school and fulfill her dream of becoming a
doctor. Teenagers are leaving home to ease the burdens on their
unemployed parents. Now is the time to correct the laissez-faire
Federal policies that enabled the few to run roughshod over the life
savings of many hard working Americans and wreck the lives and dreams
of millions of children. And now is the time to replace the costly,
ineffective, unjust and abusive child and youth policies which favor
punishment and incarceration and cost tens of billions of tax payer
dollars with more cost-effective prevention and early intervention
strategies, based on best practices that put children on the path to
healthy adulthood rather than into the adult criminal system.
We are the world's leading jailer and are criminalizing our poor
and minority children at younger and younger ages--both shameful badges
of misguided and negative leadership. A Cradle to Prison Pipeline
crisis, driven by poverty and racial disparities, is becoming the new
American apartheid threatening to undermine the hard earned racial and
social progress of the last half century. The prison pipeline sucks
hundreds of thousands of children every year into a trajectory that
leads to marginalized lives, illiteracy, imprisonment and often
premature death. Nationally, one in three Black and one in six Latino
boys born in 2001 are at risk of imprisonment during their lifetime.
There are more Black citizens under the purview of the corrections
system today than there were Black people in slavery 10 years before
the Civil War according to legal scholar Michelle Alexander in her
important book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness.
The Federal Government is spending $6.2 billion and States are
spending $50 billion a year to incarcerate 2.4 million people. States
are spending on average three times more per prisoner than per public
school pupil. New York State spends $210,000 a year on youths in
abusive and ineffective upstate New York youth prisons. Black children
are 32 times more likely than White children to be incarcerated.
Seventy-five percent of them have committed nonviolent offenses and
pose no threat to public safety--until they come out. This
unjustifiable profligate State youth prison spending of $210,000 per
youth--the equivalent of 4 years at Harvard or Yale--is simply
underwriting abusive prep schools for the adult criminal system. Their
recidivism rate is 75 percent. Their results threaten rather than
increase public safety and derail so many youthful lives. There are far
cheaper and more effective community-based alternatives that help
rather than hurt children.
It is time to replace the costly, ineffective and destructive
prison pipeline with a pipeline to college, career and productive work
for all our young people. We cannot afford not to provide a healthy,
fair and safe start for every child and a continuum of support with the
help of caring families and communities to enable them to reach
productive adulthood. You have already heard researchers speak to how
dumb and costly our failure to invest early in children is. Building on
best practices and accelerating help children and their families need,
especially as we move out of this deep recession, is the right and
economically wise thing to do in a decent society. Saving child lives
early and saving money go hand in hand.
The Children's Defense Fund posted earlier this year our State of
America's Children 2010, which is a call to action for us all to stand
up and demand an end to the massive child suffering around the Nation.
The catastrophic BP oil spill's assault on our environment was an
urgent national emergency. But so is the catastrophic impact of this
recession and the chronic plight and suffering of millions of children
left adrift in a sea of poverty, hunger and homelessness and political
neglect. Congress must see the recession and its aftermath as an
emergency for children and take action for our children. We must secure
our children's futures and our Nation's future.
The selfish and reckless profiteering of Wall Street bankers who
are still living high need to be adequately regulated--to prevent a
repeat economic catastrophe. And wounded children losing teachers and
days of schooling and safe spaces after school and in the summer, and
enough food and safe housing need equal priority attention by their
government. If we could bail out bankers to steady the economy, we can
bail out babies who without our help will see their hopes and dreams
for a better life wiped out. Denying children their basic human rights
to adequate nutrition, health care, education, and safety from adult
neglect, abuse, and violence should be a no-brainer.
I grew up in a small rural county in South Carolina which I still
call home. Marlboro County has a population of about 30,000: 52 percent
African-American; 42.5 percent White; and 3.7 percent American Indian
and Alaska Native. Our unemployment rate at last look was 20 percent. A
Federal and a State prison are among the county's largest employers. I
was deeply saddened by a recent story of three young teen boys in my
county who were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. The
first boy said he wanted to work at McDonalds; the second boy said he
wanted to be Spiderman and when pushed for a real person, he could not
think of one; and the third boy drew a boy lying on the ground and said
he was going to be dead before he grew up.
This is not Dr. King's dream. This is not America's dream. This is
not my dream for them. We can and must do better.
Thank you.
Senator Dodd. Thank you, Marian, very, very much. I'm
struck--and many members of this committee will recall back
when we had the healthcare debate, back to this committee, and
the bill we marked up, one of the things we tried to do was to
score savings.
We all knew how to cost the purchase of a treadmill--to
cite a silly example, obvious one. The question we never could
get anyone to do was to tell us, now what would be the cost
saved if someone uses it and actually loses weight, becomes
healthier and all the other aspects of it. We never could score
that. All we could score was the cost of the equipment, not the
cost of the benefit to the people who use it and actually
improve their health.
This is a classic problem we have, and one that, I think,
deserves a great deal of attention.
We thank you very, very much for that.
Jennifer, thank you again for joining us today, and we
would be delighted to hear your thoughts this morning.
STATEMENT OF JENNIFER GARNER, ARTIST AMBASSADOR, SAVE THE
CHILDREN, LOS ANGELES, CA
Ms. Garner. Distinguished members of the subcommittee, I am
honored to be here today and to be joined by this panel of
truly amazing advocates on behalf of America's children. It's
an education for me, so thank you.
Before I begin, I want to take a moment to thank you,
Chairman Dodd, not only for inviting me to participate in
today's hearing, but also for your nearly four decades of
dedicated service on behalf of children. We couldn't have asked
for a stronger advocate on the side of our Nation's children,
and personally speaking, I know you to be an excellent lunch
partner, and I'm sure that that will be missed as well, your
guests in this Senate lunchroom.
Your leadership to form the first Children's Caucus led the
way toward stronger national investments in early childhood
education and child care programs, as well as landmark
legislation that gave parents the right to take time off from
work to care for a new baby, which we all know is the most
critical time.
From the perspective of this witness your legacy on behalf
of our Nation's children is simply undisputed. Thank you.
Senator Dodd. Thank you.
Ms. Garner. Senator, as you mentioned, I am proud to be a
member of the team at Save the Children's U.S. Programs, and
I'd like to acknowledge my partner in this endeavor, Mark
Shriver, who is Head of U.S. Programs.
Thank you, Mark, for your leadership and your mentorship
and your friendship.
He's also a good lunch partner, just for the record.
Members of this subcommittee, I am here as an advocate, as
a plain, old ordinary citizen, and perhaps, most important, as
a mom.
For me, reading to my daughters, singing with them, playing
with them, is as elemental to my daily child rearing as feeding
them and going on the carpool run.
This morning, my 1\1/2\-year-old has been sending me voice
notes on my Blackberry requesting me to send voice notes back,
of her favorite songs like, ``I Love You a Bushel and a Peck''
or ``Owl and the Pussy Cat.''
But, if you're one of the millions of American parents
struggling with the recession or the poverty crisis, you're
thinking about just keeping your kids fed and clothed. You're
not singing show tunes in your house.
Many of these children's families face challenges that
often seem insurmountable. Chronic unemployment, incarceration,
domestic violences are often the main risk factors.
I'd like to share a short story with you from one of my
site visits with Save the Children.
Last April, as part of my work for Save the Children, I
visited the home of Teresa Fugate and Michael Blanton, a
struggling, to say the least, couple raising four young
children, age 3 to 7 in Breathitt County, KY, one of the most
impoverished communities in America.
The Blantons live in a small trailer where the main source
of heat is an open oven door, around which the children play.
Their empty window panes were covered by cardboard.
This woman, Teresa, was a smart, American woman. She loved
her kids as much as I love my kids. She wanted for them
everything that I want for my kids. She had just fallen on bad
luck. That is the only difference between us. She looked like
me; she sounded like me. If she had hair and makeup this
morning, she could be sitting right here and talk about
children with a lot more knowledge than I could.
She saw Save the Children as a lifeline for her children.
Save the Children comes into her home; it works with her
children; it gives her the actual, physical tools of toys and
books, to read with and play with her child; encourages her to
play with her youngest children; is at school with her older
ones, working with them in the literacy programs.
Unfortunately, in this community that is absolutely steeped
in despair, this actual Teresa Fugate died in a random shooting
by her trailer, by a man who was frustrated that his wife had
not made him the breakfast that he requested.
Now, obviously, anything could have set this man off.
Anyone could have died in this shooting, but I think it is
emblematic of the kind of despair that these communities--these
children are growing up in.
We need to give them light. We need to give them something
to hold on to--if it's Save the Children, if it's Children's
Defense Fund. They need something in their future to point them
in a direction.
Obviously, you know 90 percent of our brain growth occurs
between birth and 5 years of age, so the words a toddler hears,
the music that makes them sing and dance--and wake up singing--
the games they play, build the foundations for their education.
Two out of five preschool-aged Americans are being denied a
lifetime of success because they are not getting the Early Head
Start or the preschool or any kind of stimulation until they
enter kindergarten, and by that time they're so far behind,
they're playing catch-up from the beginning. And, what child
can start out 2 years behind in kindergarten and catch up? I'd
like to see them succeed at this.
Every parent should be armed with the tools they need;
books, music, games, to be the best parent they can be and keep
their children stimulated at home.
There's action being urged right now by Save the Children's
U.S. Programs and our partners at the First Five Years' Fund
that can begin to make a difference.
I hope that Congress will act immediately in this November
session to fully fund the Child Care and Development Block
Grant and Head Start in the fiscal year 2011 appropriations.
We also need to make a down payment on the Early Learning
Challenge Fund, an $8 billion proposal to promote innovative
models for early childhood education by providing the $300
million the Senate Appropriations included in this next year's
spending bill.
Save the Children's Early Steps to School Success, Early
Childhood Education Programs, operates in almost 100 of the
poorest communities in America, including, as I mentioned, in
Breathitt County, KY.
And, tomorrow we will head to my native home, West
Virginia, to officially open our programs there.
We go to the homes, in these programs, such as the
Blantons, and work directly with the parents. And, paired with
our in-school literacy program for elementary-aged kids, we're
putting some of the most vulnerable kids on the path to
success.
In fact, I'm proud this morning to announce brand new
results from our programs across the board. Children in our
literacy programs improve their reading skills as much as if
they had attended an extra 4 months of school per year. The
number of children reading at or above grade level nearly
doubled after they participated in our program. Sixty-four
percent of children showed significant improvement in their
literacy scores. Children in our Early Education Program scored
right in line with the national average on key vocabulary
tests, and scored significantly higher than children in Early
Head Start.
These are extraordinary results, especially considering the
circumstances faced by many of the children that we serve.
The Brookings Institute estimates that a deep and truly
serious investment in early childhood education would add $2
trillion to the gross domestic product within a generation.
This would be an incredible return on investment that would, in
the future, help solve many of the problems our Nation is
struggling with today.
Now is the time to give every American child an equal start
in life by investing in early childhood education.
Thank you for inviting me here today.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Garner follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF JENNIFER GARNER
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the subcommittee, I am
honored to be here today to testify about the power of investing in
early childhood education.
I am proud to be a member of the team at Save the Children's U.S.
Programs and I want to acknowledge my partner in all this work, Mark
Shriver, who is the head of U.S. Programs.
If you have children under six like I do, reading them Baby Bear,
Baby Bear, What Do You See?, listening to Mozart or playing Candyland
is probably as elemental to your daily child-rearing routine as feeding
them carrots or changing their diapers.
However, for millions of American parents struggling with the
recession or affected by the poverty crisis that the Census Bureau
recently revealed to be at historic levels, these kinds of activities
are often financially impossible or they simply take a backseat to
keeping a family fed and clothed.
Denying children early education activities robs them and their
families of a brighter future and locks the American cycle of poverty
into place.
Indeed, stimulating toddlers with reading, music and games provides
them with the foundation for the next two decades of their education.
Ninety percent of our brain growth occurs between birth and 5 years
of age. Thus, the words a toddler hears, the music that makes them tap
their feet and the games they play actually nourishes and builds their
minds.
Feed toddlers properly and their brains will be pumped up and ready
for their K-12 education. Deprive them of this stimulation, and they're
not ready for school, which is proven to lead to increased high school
dropout rates, higher levels of incarceration and unemployment.
Some very smart and visionary leaders, including Mark's father,
Sargent Shriver, understood the value of early childhood education and
created Head Start in 1965, which was followed up three decades later
with Early Head Start.
Still, Early Head Start reaches only 5 percent of eligible
children, and only about half of the eligible population of 3- to 5-
year-olds receive Head Start services. Even paired with private
preschools, only 3 out of 5 preschool-aged kids are enrolled in some
sort of childhood education.
That means two out of five pre-school-aged Americans are being
denied a lifetime of success.
That's two out of five too many.
This should come as no surprise, as just 14 percent of our public
education investment is directed toward children five and under.
Simply put, it should be a right for every single toddler to be
enrolled in a high-quality, early-education program. In addition, every
parent should be armed with the tools they need--books, music and
games--to be the best parents they can be and keep their children
stimulated at home.
There is action being urged right now by Save the Children's U.S.
Programs and our partners at the First Five Years Fund that can begin
to make a difference.
First, I hope Congress will act immediately in this November
session to fully fund the Child Care and Development Block Grant and
Head Start in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget.
If we don't take this action now, nearly 300,000 children could
lose their early learning services.
We also need to make a down payment on the Early Learning Challenge
Fund, an $8 billion proposal to promote innovative models for early
childhood education, by providing the $300 million the Senate
Appropriations included in next year's spending bill.
These funds will go a long way to supporting innovative programs
like the ones we run at Save the Children's U.S. Programs.
Our Early Steps to School Success early childhood education program
operates in almost 100 of the poorest communities in America, including
my native home of West Virginia.
Through these programs, we go into homes and work directly with
parents and have achieved extraordinary results. Paired with our in-
school literacy program for elementary-aged kids, we are putting some
of the most vulnerable kids on a path to success.
In fact, I am proud this morning to announce brand-new results from
our programs.
Children in our literacy program improved their reading
skills as much as if they attended an additional 4 months of school.
The number of children reading at or above grade level
nearly doubled after they participated in our program.
64 percent of children showed significant improvement in
their literacy scores.
Children in our early education program scored right in
line with the national average on key vocabulary tests, despite risk
factors, and scored significantly higher than children in Early Head
Start.
These numbers are particularly impressive given the extraordinary
challenges faced by the kids in our programs. Far too many of them come
from homes where unemployment, poverty and even parents who are
incarcerated are prevalent.
The Brookings Institute estimates that a deep and truly serious
investment in early childhood education would add $2 trillion to the
Gross Domestic Product within a generation. This would be an incredible
return on investment that would, in the future, help solve many of the
problems our Nation is struggling with today.
There is a decades old and very robust debate about the role of
government in helping families living in poverty. But 3-year-olds don't
even have boot straps to pull on.
Now is the time to give every American child an equal start in
life.
Thank you for inviting me here today and I am very pleased to
answer any questions that members of the subcommittee may have.
Senator Dodd. Thank you, very, very much, Ms. Garner. We
appreciate your being here. And good luck in West Virginia
tomorrow, too--going back to your home State.
Ms. Garner. Yes, thank you.
Senator Dodd. Peter, thank you so much for joining us here,
and I'm anxious to hear any thoughts you have.
STATEMENT OF PETER EDELMAN, PROFESSOR OF LAW, GEORGETOWN LAW
CENTER AND FACULTY CO-DIRECTOR, GEORGETOWN CENTER ON POVERTY,
INEQUALITY, AND PUBLIC POLICY, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Edelman. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Dodd. Thank you for your work over the years, as
well. You've been a great advocate, and the combination of you
and Marian has just been phenomenal on this subject matter.
Welcome back to a committee you're familiar with.
Mr. Edelman. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
feel so honored to be part of this hearing this morning. As
Marian said, speaking about your father and how this comes full
circle for both of us. When I worked for Robert Kennedy, I
worked very closely with your father and his staff--Senator
Kennedy and Senator Dodd--on hearings about substance abuse in
our country. And, so, I remember that very, very well. It was
an initial baptism for me, if you will, in Senate hearing work;
and here we are, coming all the way, full circle.
I join everybody in speaking about the indelible mark,
really, that you've left on our country.
I'd like to put some of the conversation about children and
early childhood that we've heard from Marian and Jennifer in a
context.
I think one very important piece to keep in mind--we've
heard from Marian, from Senator Sanders, about how much of the
income and wealth is stuck and concentrated at the top, and we
absolutely need to address that for our future as a Nation.
The other side of the coin is that the economic history
over the last four decades has been one of near stagnation for
people with jobs--not just the poor, but people with jobs that
pay below the median wage, the entire bottom half, if you will.
De-industrialization has really left us just awash in low-
wage jobs. And half the jobs in this country now pay under
$30,000 a year. A quarter pay less than the poverty line for a
family of four. Those are full-time jobs that I'm talking
about.
Children are now growing up in large numbers to get jobs
that pay less than what their parents earn.
That's the other side of the gap that's growing between the
top and bottom. And, it's really important to understand why we
haven't made more progress, with all the good work that's been
done, in reducing poverty over the last 40 years.
All of the programs and policies that you, Senator Dodd,
Senator Mikulski--others who have been here for quite a while
have--have contributed to, made a difference, made a huge
difference in cushioning the damage that's been done by these
massive changes in the economy. And, millions more people would
be in poverty if we didn't have these programs and policies.
In fact, one thing that just has struck me in the last few
days--particularly now, with the struggle that so many people
are having, but with the low-wage work, is President Obama's
Debt Commission co-chair is proposing to make cuts in the
Earned Income Tax Credit and the child tax credit, makes no
sense whatsoever, not, really at any time, given this economic
history, but especially now.
There are a couple things that I would point out in terms
of the history of, again, placing things in the history of the
last 40 years, obviously, still questions of race, still
questions of gender, that we've made progress about, but not
nearly enough; the education of our children that Marian spoke
of.
I would particularly point out as an area where we just
haven't figured out what to do, and haven't done nearly enough,
is the concentrated poverty in our inner cities.
That's where the highly controversial--the poverty that
becomes politicized, where we hear all kinds of labels attached
to people, and where, really, the concatenation of everything
that's there in those neighborhoods and communities, is robbing
children of their future.
So, it's not just the schools; it's the criminal justice
system; it's every aspect of community; it's the heart of where
the crisis of young Black men is. It's not only young, Black
men who are going to prison in too large numbers, but
especially, it is that group.
The heart of what we need to do for children and families
is work that produces a decent income, coupled with work
supports, proper safety net and all of that. We really have to
understand that we have to have multiple strategies if we're
going to deal with child poverty in this country.
The strongest anti-poverty strategy is certainly full
employment, but we have to do all of the rest.
I just want to take a little different cut here for a last
minute, and that is that we need to understand that in income
terms, we really are talking about three different levels here:
one, which--obviously, poverty itself, and the fact that so
many of the poor actually have jobs. Sixty-one point six
percent of the income of people below the poverty line comes
from work. We don't recognize that; but, even more so, extreme
poverty.
We now have over 19 million people. Six point three percent
of the American people live with incomes below half the poverty
line; below $8,500 for a family of four. And, all that we have,
essentially, to help them, is food stamps. We now have 6
million people in this country who have no income other than
food stamps. And food stamps only gives help at one third of
the poverty line.
Welfare, for all practical purposes, is gone as something
to help people, in many, many parts of our country. In the
State of Wyoming, next door to Colorado, Senator Bennet, in
2008, 281 families in the entire State was on welfare. And
that's not atypical as we look around the country.
There's virtually no public attention to the issue of
extreme poverty. We need to focus on it.
And, on the other end, the working near-poor, really it--to
make ends meet in this country, reams of research say it's got
to be at least twice the poverty line. That's where the real
break comes in, being able to pay the bills every month. And,
we have not focused sufficiently. These aren't people who are
poor. Maybe the poverty line's too low.
You've worked on this, Senator Dodd, so much. But they are
people who are in deep economic trouble, and it's the low-wage
jobs and our inattention to all of that.
I hope these framing thoughts are helpful. And, I would say
again, Senator Dodd, we'll miss you terribly. I know you'll
still be a voice and force for what we're doing. And the great
progress that we've made--you contributed so much. And, so
thank you again for the opportunity to be here this morning.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Edelman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Peter Edelman
SUMMARY
Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this, perhaps the last
hearing Senator Dodd will chair as a Member of the U.S. Senate.
Millions of American children and their families are better off for the
phenomenal trail of achievement that Senator Dodd has blazed.
The economic history of the past 40 years has been one of near-
stagnation for people with jobs that pay less than the median wage. De-
industrialization has left our country with a massive number of low-
wage jobs. Along with the further fact that virtually all of the
economic growth over that period has gone to people with the very
highest incomes, these facts are vital to understanding why we have not
made more progress in reducing poverty over that time. The substantial
funding that the Federal Government has provided to lower income people
has cushioned the hurt occasioned by the massive changes that have
occurred in our economy. Millions more families would be in poverty
without those investments.
Many other factors affect the level of poverty and who is poor.
Race, gender, disability, marital status, education levels, where
people live, and much more all matter. The heart of the answer is work
that produces a decent income, coupled with work supports, a decent
safety net, and educational opportunity, but the strongest antipoverty
strategy is full employment. At the moment, it is vital to continue
providing help for the millions who have been unemployed for a long
time and still have no prospect of finding a job. Poverty has many
faces and forms, so particular problems require particular solutions.
Concentrated poverty in inner cities is one such problem.
There are three distinct problems in terms of levels of income. In
addition to better strategies to get people out of poverty, we need to
pay far more attention to the 19 million people who live in extreme
poverty, with incomes below half the poverty line, and to the 100-plus
million people with incomes up to twice the poverty, who are not poor
but whom extensive research shows have a continuingly difficult time
making ends meet. At the lower end we need to be aware that 6 million
people have food stamps as their only source of income, at about a
third of the poverty line. And in light of the large number of
Americans with low-wage work who get by only with federally financed
income supplements, it was disturbing to see that the co-chairs of
President Obama's debt commission are suggesting consideration of cuts
in the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child tax Credit.
The responsibility for remedying poverty reaches far beyond
government. Civic leaders, volunteers, and low-income people themselves
have a responsibility. We need leadership to find common ground between
those who stress public policy solutions and those who emphasize
voluntarism and personal responsibility. All are germane to making
progress.
We celebrate Senator Dodd today. He has been in the forefront of
almost everything good that has happened in Federal policy for children
and families. I am deeply honored to be able to say to him directly and
from my heart, thank you.
______
Mr. Chairman, Senator Alexander, and members of the subcommittee,
thank you for the opportunity to be part of this important hearing.
Even more important, thank you for including me in this transcendently
significant occasion--perhaps the last hearing you will chair as a
member of the U.S. Senate, Senator Dodd. Your work on behalf of
children and families, as in so many other areas, has left an indelible
mark on our Nation. I speak for my wife as well as myself in thanking
you for all you have done. Millions of American children and their
families are better off for the phenomenal trail of achievement that
you have blazed. The list would use up my allotted time and much more,
going from the Family and Medical Leave Act through SCHIP, and on
through child care, Head Start, children with disabilities, HIV-AIDS,
and much much more. Few Senators in the history of this body can claim
such a record of accomplishment.
You have asked me to reflect on the achievements and
disappointments of recent decades with regard to child poverty in our
country, on lessons learned, and on what we need to do going forward.
It is impossible to understand child poverty trends without placing
them in a context of what has happened to the American economy and to
the distribution of income and wealth. Except for the last half of the
1990s, the economic history of the past four decades has been one of
near-stagnation for people with jobs that pay below the median wage in
the country--the entire bottom half, if you will. De-
industrialization--the flight of jobs abroad and the replacement of
many jobs by automation--has hurt millions. Good paying factory jobs
have been replaced (fortunately, new jobs did come along) by much lower
paying service jobs. Half the jobs in the country pay less than $30,000
a year, and a quarter pay less than the poverty line for a family of
four. Large numbers of children have grown up to get jobs that pay less
than what their parents earned. Our economy did grow, but the increased
income went almost entirely to people at the top of the income ladder.
To cite just one stunning statistic, the top 1 percent took in 9
percent of personal income in 1976 and 23.5 percent in 2007.
Understanding this framework is vital to understanding why we have not
made more progress in reducing poverty over the past 40 years, as well
as the larger situation of all lower income families and individuals.
It is all far more rooted in the fact of low-wage work and the ever-
growing gap between rich and poor than we typically say out loud.
We did in fact provide significant new Federal funding over this
period that kept the stagnation of the bottom half--especially families
that would otherwise be in poverty or more deeply in poverty--from
being as damaging as it would otherwise have been. The Earned Income
Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, Medicaid and SCHIP, child care
assistance, food stamps, housing vouchers, Pell grants, and other forms
of assistance all have the effect, directly or indirectly, of adding to
the income of lower income families. These have been, and continue to
be, wise investments to cushion the damage done by the massive changes
that have occurred in our economy. We would have millions more families
in poverty or more deeply in poverty without these investments.
This, briefly, is the big picture--trends in wages and income
distribution and trends in income supports, be they in cash or in kind.
But poverty is not monolithic, and the totality of the steps that need
to be taken to end poverty is consequently not monolithic. There are
racial, gender, and ethnic disparities that require special attention
to continuing discrimination and the underlying reasons for disparate
outcomes for the groups affected, whether in education, the criminal
justice system, or elsewhere. The elderly present different challenges
from those of working age, although we should celebrate the enormous
success we have had over the past half century in bringing the elderly
from being the poorest age group to being the least poor. Disabled
people present unique issues. So do people who live in rural areas, as
well as people who live in inner-city neighborhoods of concentrated
poverty. Educational disparities lead to disproportionate problems of
poverty. Children who grow up with a single parent--typically a single
mother--are much more likely to be poor during their childhood, and
more likely to experience poverty in adulthood. Children are now the
poorest age group. Each of these groups and areas presents different
policy issues.
A particular area of concern is the continuing issue of
concentrated poverty in inner cities. If anything, the poverty in those
areas is more entrenched than ever. It is persistent, is too often
intergenerational, and disproportionately involves people of color.
Comparatively speaking, the numbers are not large, encompassing perhaps
15 percent of the poor, but the poverty of the inner city is the image
many have of American poverty in general. It is an artifact of de-
industrialization, plus the flight of middle-class residents to the
suburbs beginning in the 1970s, plus continuing racial discrimination,
plus terrible schools, and more, all of which have added up to produce
behaviors and troubling statistics that are the fuel of political
controversy.
This list of the various faces and forms of poverty underscores the
obvious. A full-scale assault on American poverty, or even an assault
confined to the category of children and families that is the
jurisdiction of this subcommittee, will entail multiple strategies
engaged in by multiple actors. The heart of the answer for children and
families is work that produces a decent income, but this also must be
coupled with necessary work supports, a proper safety net, and a
sufficient investment in education to prepare children for
participation in the economy and the broader society (and afford mid-
career adults the chance to retool for jobs in emerging areas). The
full list of remedies is even longer, reaching to health care and
mental health, child care and pre-K, housing, neighborhood
revitalization, transportation for access to jobs, help with college
costs, legal services, drug and alcohol treatment, both immigration
reform and juvenile and criminal justice reform, and more. And it
cannot be emphasized too strongly that no one will succeed in making
the most of available opportunities unless he or she assumes personal
and individual responsibility for doing so.
The strongest antipoverty strategy is full employment. I am sure
everyone in this room is deeply worried about when and even whether our
current unemployment crisis will abate. Our first need, which is
obviously beyond the jurisdiction of this subcommittee, is economic
policy that will produce the jobs we need for our people. The plethora
of low-wage jobs has been a serious problem for a long time, but for
the last 25 years we at least had an overall unemployment rate that was
the envy of the rest of the world. Far too many of the jobs we still
have pay shockingly little but, even worse, we now have too few jobs
overall, and no clear strategy for accelerating the rate of recovery to
get back to where we were, which was itself far from perfect.
Our first need is jobs but, especially in the current crisis, we
also cannot stop helping the millions who have been unemployed for a
long time and have no prospect of finding a job any time soon. I hope
Congress will act before November 30 to continue the extended benefits
that are the lifeline for a huge number of people. And if we have a
very large number of new poor, we still have the very large number of
children and families who were already poor before the recession began.
All of these are problems that demand constructive attention.
Just as poverty is not monolithic as a matter of race or gender or
place or in many other ways, we need to focus on low-income people in a
more income-precise way.
There are, roughly, three different groups.
The first is the astonishing number of people who live in extreme
poverty--with incomes below half the poverty line, or below $8,500 a
year for a family of three. In 2009 this number climbed to 19 million
people, or 6.3 percent of the population, but it had crept up from 12.6
million in 2000 to 15.6 million even before the recession began. Our
safety net for such people is riven with gaping holes. Six million
people now have income only from food stamps--and food stamps provide
an income at only about a third of the poverty line. Welfare is
virtually nonexistent in many States, and is of little help in many
others. With the recession, the food stamp caseload has climbed to well
over 40 million people, while welfare has barely increased to somewhat
more than 4 million. In Wyoming the welfare caseload in 2008 was 281
families, covering 4 percent of the poor children in the State. Nor is
this atypical. Nationally, only 22 percent of poor children received
welfare in 2008, compared to 61 percent in 1995. In 1991 12 percent of
poor women had no job and no welfare. By 2007 the number was 34
percent. There is virtually no public attention to the issue of extreme
poverty.
The second group is comprised of those whom we call poor, whose
income in 2009 was below about $17,000 for a family of three and about
$22,000 for a family of four. Senator Dodd, you have been a leader in
proposing legislation to reconstitute the poverty line to a level that
is more realistic and takes into account both all elements of income
and all the basic costs of living. I think there is a sense in the
country that the poor are somehow a group that is separate and apart
from everyone else. This is by and large not true. A large percentage
of families with incomes below the poverty line do work. They have
seasonal or sporadic or part-time work and even full-time jobs, and a
hefty 61.6 percent of their income comes from work or self-employment.
They bring in as much money as they can from work, but in millions of
cases scrape by only because they are able to supplement their income
by turning to the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. I
therefore found it surprising and disturbing to read that the co-chairs
of President Obama's debt commission are suggesting consideration of
cuts in these two crucially important income supplements. I frankly
don't understand the thinking here.
The third group is those who are not poor by any measure and would
reject any label in that regard, but who nonetheless face a continuous
struggle to make ends meet every month. These are people who have to
decide whether to go to the doctor when they are ill (even if they have
health coverage, due to the expense of paying the deductible or the co-
insurance). Reams of research suggest that this group is composed of
people with incomes up to twice the poverty line. It constitutes nearly
a third of the population--more than 100 million people. The focus of
our public policy needs to be not just poverty, but all lower income
people who are having such a difficult time.
It is critical to stress that the remedies for poverty and near-
poverty are a responsibility that reaches far more sectors and groups
than what goes on in the Federal Government, or in government at all
levels, as important as public policy is. Civic leaders from every
sector, volunteers of all kinds, and low-income people themselves all
have a responsibility. There is a tendency for some to stress one or
the other--public policy solutions or voluntarism and personal
responsibility. The real truth is that the responsibility is both/and
in every way we can think of it. We need leadership on both sides of
the aisle to find the common ground that has to be the reality of
making progress for the future of all of our children.
Senator Dodd, we will miss you terribly. I know you will still be a
voice and a force for what we should be doing and that is comforting.
We have made great progress over these past decades and in the past 2
years and you have been in the forefront of almost everything that has
happened. I am deeply honored to be here this morning and to be in the
fortunate position of being able to say to you directly and from my
heart, thank you.
Senator Dodd. Well, Peter, thank you immensely--you and
Marian both. Your insight and the work that you've done on this
is tremendously important. I just urge my colleagues who will
be here, to stay in touch with you, the young people you work
with, the graduates, the going on and just so much data is
that--as Pat Moynihan used to say--and now I hear Lawrence
O'Donnell using the line--``You're entitled to your own
opinions, but not your own facts.'' I must have heard Pat
Moynihan say that a million times when I served with him here,
and I think of this so often.
These are just facts, and they're not debatable. You can
argue about what policies you want to apply to make it work,
but the facts are what you outline them to be. And, we can deny
them; we can refuse to identify them, but they're not going to
go away. And, the numbers, unfortunately, are growing worse.
So, your counsel and your advice and participation can be
tremendously helpful to this committee and the Congress in the
coming days as we wrestle with these issues.
Thank you, immensely.
Mr. Edelman. Thank you.
Senator Dodd. Dr. Satcher, thank you once again for being
back before the committee. We miss you and you did a great job
during your tenure. We used to listen to you frequently here in
this committee, and we thank you for being a part of this,
today's hearing.
STATEMENT OF DAVID SATCHER. M.D., Ph.D., DIRECTOR, THE SATCHER
HEALTH LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE AND CENTER OF EXCELLENCE ON HEALTH
DISPARITIES, MOREHOUSE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, ATLANTA, GA
Dr. Satcher. Well, thank you very much, Senator Dodd, and
members of the subcommittee. I am delighted to be able to be
here, especially for this, your last hearing. I had a lot of
opportunities to testify before you during the 9 years that I
served in government; five as Director of the CDC and four as
Surgeon General and Assistant Secretary for Health.
I just want to say one thing: At the Satcher Health
Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine, we
have a saying that applies to you. We say that we need more
leaders who care enough, who know enough, who are willing to do
enough and who will persevere until the job is done.
And, so I salute you today for being a model of that kind
of leadership, and express, on behalf of all of my colleagues,
our appreciation for your great leadership in the interest of
child health in this country.
Senator Dodd. Thank you, very much, Doctor. I appreciate
it.
Dr. Satcher. I will make four brief points: One is, that
the most important investment that we can make in this country,
as you've heard, is in the health of children. And, I think the
most important time for that investment, of course, is during
the reproductive periods, in utero periods, and early
childhood. I think we are failing, during the most delicate
period of development of our children, to make sure that they
have adequate nutrition, that they are protected from toxins
such as lead, and tobacco, substance abuse; and we're losing
that battle. Secondhand smoke is still a major problem for
children in this country.
I think the first recommendation would be that we focus
more on this early period of childhood that deals with the
health of mothers. You remember that during my tenure in
government, working together, we were able to get the
fortification of folic acid into flouring mills, which
significantly reduced the incidence of neuro-tube defects in
this country.
Just one example of what can happen when children receive
the right micronutrients, and the dangers of them not receiving
them.
The second thing I want to say is that I think that we have
ignored the development of the brain in children in so many
ways. We know more and more about the brain every day, as you
know. I released the first Surgeon General's Report on mental
health.
But many of our children, during the most delicate period
of the brain development, are not getting the nutrition that
they need, are not being protected from toxins, but are also
not getting the social interaction and motivation.
When I was a member of the World Health Organization's
Commission on Social Determinants of Health, our first visit
was to Chile. And, what I remember most about that visit is
that Chile had made a decision many years ago to invest in the
children of the poor.
Beginning with 3 months of age, Chile decided to invest in
daycare and early childhood education all the way through the
ninth grade, including good nutrition and physical activity.
Their logic was that by investing early, they would not
have to invest as much later in the medical care or in criminal
justice.
I think it's a lesson that we, as a Nation, really need to
learn.
Sweden has a long history of making this kind of investment
in the poor.
And, for those of us who are members of the World Health
Organization's Commission on Social Determinants of Health,
that first visit sort of stood out, and you can see the
products of it in our report.
Another problem I want to mention is childhood obesity.
Now, as you probably remember, in December 2001, I was able to
release the Surgeon General's Call to Action to prevent and
reduce overweight and obesity. We called it an epidemic, and
that was a shock to some people, because epidemics usually
apply to infectious diseases. But, we noted between 1980 and
2000 childhood overweight and obesity had tripled in this
country. So we thought that we could call it an epidemic. We
made some major recommendations about investing in physical
activity and good nutrition.
After leaving government, I was able to start an
organization called Action for Healthy Kids, to work with
schools in this country to try to get them to return to
physical education in K-12 and to model good nutrition.
One of the things I remember is that we had a lot of
difficulty working with schools initially. They said, ``Well,
why do you want to dump the problem of childhood obesity on us?
We already scrubbed in with No Child Left Behind and now you
want to give us another problem.''
So, it was a difficult partnership until, in 2005, we
released a report called The Learning Connection. In that
report we summarized all of the research showing that children
who ate a good breakfast and children who were physically
active on a regular basis learned better in school. They did
better on standardized exams, in reading and math. They were
better disciplined. They were much less likely to be absent
from school.
And, so I think then we became a real partnership. We now
have 24,000 volunteers throughout the country.
Ninety-five percent of schools now have policies related to
physical activity and good nutrition, but they don't have the
funds to implement them. I think there's a real lesson there.
The last point I want to make is about this critical
recommendation from the World Health Organization, and I'll
just read it as we stated it.
Our commission said that we must commit and implement a
comprehensive approach to early life, building on existing
child-survival programs and extending interventions in early
life to include social/emotional and language/cognitive
development.
That's the World Health Organization's recommendation for
countries all over the world.
The United States needs to listen to that recommendation.
As you know, we rank No. 29 out of 30 in infant mortality,
despite our wealth. And, we have a long ways to go in terms of
responding to the needs of our children.
So, I close today by saying that I think we have a
tremendous opportunity to turn around the course that we're on,
in terms of what's happening to children in the United States.
We have an opportunity to be a leader in the global community,
in carrying out the recommendations of the World Health
Organization's for Social Determinants of Health.
I look forward to continuing to work with you as you leave
the Senate and we continue to try to do what's best for
children.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Satcher follows:]
Prepared Statement of David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D.
I am Dr. David Satcher and I am director of the Satcher Health
Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine. From October 1993
to February 1998, I served as director of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta and from February 1998 to February
2002, I served as the 16th Surgeon General of the United States. For 3
of those years, 1998-2001, I also served as the Assistant Secretary for
Health and was responsible for providing leadership for the development
of Healthy People 2010.
I am pleased to join you for this important discussion on the state
of the American child. I am especially grateful to be a part of this
last hearing before Senator Dodd, who has contributed so much to
improving the conditions of child health in America, including critical
support for the Child Health Insurance Program of 1996.
Today I am pleased to express my appreciation and that of my
colleagues, who work daily to improve the health of children, to
Senator Dodd for all that you have been and done on behalf of the
children in this country and the world.
As Surgeon General, I stated that the best investment that we could
make as a nation was to invest in the health and future of our
children. One of the greatest responsibilities of leaders is to speak
for those who cannot speak for themselves. Children, especially, need
advocates and they need leaders like Senator Dodd.
Today I want to comment briefly on four aspects of the health of
children. First, the impact of reproduction and in utero; second, the
impact of the environment on the brain; third, childhood obesity; and
fourth, the social determinants of health.
First, children are greatly impacted by reproductive health and the
conditions of pregnancy and their in utero experience. According to
America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being,
2010,
``Infants born preterm and with low-birth weight are at high
risk of early death and long-term health and developmental
problems. Following many years of increases, the U.S. preterm
birth rate declined for the second straight year, from 12.8
percent in 2006 to 12.7 percent in 2007 to 12.3 percent in
2008. Decreases in preterm rates between 2007 and 2008 were
seen for each of the three largest race and ethnicity groups:
White, non-Hispanic, African-American, non-Hispanic, and
Hispanic women.''
Children in utero need to be nourished by good nutrition and a safe
environment. They need protection from toxins of various kinds,
including alcohol, tobacco, lead, and various forms of substance abuse.
Likewise, it is important that children in utero are protected from
infectious diseases, trauma, and violence. Irreversible damage is done
to the health of children and adults by adverse in utero experiences.
There is also increasing evidence that the environment in the womb
plays a role in later development in childhood and adulthood of
obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
The most important target organ for all of our efforts to improve
the health of children and of adults is the brain. The conditions to
which the brain is exposed in utero and in early childhood are most
critical to healthy outcomes in children and adults. A recent survey
reveals that 20 percent of children will suffer some mental or
behavioral disorder each year including substance abuse.
We know that high-quality nutrition during gestation and after
delivery is critical to the healthy development of the child. The
avoidance of toxins in utero is critical to the normal development of
the brain--toxins such as lead, tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. The
brain needs nutrients including vitamins, minerals, and others. And the
brain needs it from the earliest period of development. In fact we know
that inadequate intake of folic acid by the mother before and following
conception is a major risk factor for neuro-tube defect. Likewise, the
impact of other nutrients from the earliest period of development is
crucial.
The brain not only needs the nutrients of nourishing foods and
drink but also the nutrients of positive social relationships beginning
with parents. Language development and other social skills are greatly
impacted during this early period of life. Programs that aim to enhance
early child development are worth their weight in gold and some
countries are now investing heavily in this period of life.
At birth, children face conditions that stem from their in utero
experience and new challenges to their health and well-being from their
new environment. Children need to be immunized against common
infectious diseases that can damage the developing brain, causing
ongoing problems. In early childhood children need special nurturing
relationships with parents in order to develop appropriate social
skills and optimal brain development. Early childhood and parental
immunizations have reduced the incidence of rubella and general
measles, preventing or protecting the brain from serious damage from
these infectious diseases.
Fortunately, improvement and access to quality prenatal care have
enhanced birth outcomes and have continued to help decrease infant
mortality. Yet as a nation, we continue to trail other industrialized
countries and some developing countries in infant mortality. According
to the CDC, in 2004 (the latest year that data are available for all
countries), the United States ranked 29th in the world in infant
mortality. In 2005, the U.S. infant mortality rate was 6.86 infant
deaths per 1,000 live births, not significantly different than the rate
of 6.89 in 2000.
Children are also needlessly exposed to environmental toxins early
in life with second-hand smoke probably being the most prevalent and
damaging and most preventable. In 2007-8, 53 percent of children ages
4-11 had detectable blood cotinine (a breakdown product of nicotine)
levels, down from 64 percent in 1999-2000 and 88 percent in 1988-94.
The percentage of children with cotinine levels indicating high levels
of secondhand smoke exposure declined from 26 percent in 1988-94 to 18
percent in 1999-2000. However, the percentage did not change
significantly from 1999-2000 to 2007-8. We have also made dramatic
progress over the last 30 years in reducing the exposure of children to
lead in early childhood and that progress needs to continue.
Environmental agents of various kinds have lead to an increase in
childhood asthma in recent years, especially in inner city children. In
2008, 9 percent of children had asthma that was either active or well-
controlled. This percentage increased slightly from 2001 to 2008.
Efforts to clean up the environment and reduce/eliminate toxins of all
kinds are critical to the ongoing health of children.
Childhood obesity is one of the greatest threats to child and adult
health that we are facing today. The risk of childhood obesity begins
in utero and those risks include obesity of the mother during the
pregnancy. Today in America, almost one-third of pregnant women are
obese and among African-American mothers, the figure is closer to 50
percent. Obesity in the mother is a major risk factor for obesity in
the child. On the other hand, children who are breast-fed are less
likely to be obese and programs to increase breastfeeding need to
continue in all populations.
In early childhood we have witnessed a dramatic increase in obesity
and in the Surgeons General Report of 2001 we pointed out that between
1980 and 2000 obesity had doubled in children and tripled in
adolescents. We call this an epidemic. Poor nutrition and increasingly
sedentary lifestyles have spread from adults to children in the United
States. Even our schools no longer require physical education in grades
K-12 and are often not modeling good nutrition but contributing to the
development of both the habits of sedentary lifestyles and poor
nutrition. It is almost as if home, school, and community have
conspired to produce an epidemic of childhood obesity. This was our
concern in The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease
Overweight and Obesity, 2001 as we called upon all of these sectors to
work together in combating the epidemic of childhood obesity.
Not only are children who are overweight and obese more likely to
be overweight and obese adults with increased risks of cardiovascular
disease, diabetes, and cancer, but children who are overweight and
obese are at increased risks for depression, diabetes, and
hypertension. In addition, as we pointed out in the Action for Healthy
Kids Report of 2005, entitled the Learning Connection, children who eat
well and are physically active learn and perform better on standardized
exams in reading and math. These children are also better disciplined
and less likely to be absent from school.
There are signs from recent CDC data that the epidemic of childhood
obesity is plateauing but the battle must continue. It is much too
early to declare any kind of victory in the battle against childhood
obesity.
The Commission on Social Determinants of Health makes the following
recommendation:
Commit to and implement a comprehensive approach to early
life, building on existing child survival programs and extending
interventions in early life to include social/emotional and language/
cognitive development.
I would like to close with the following thoughts and
recommendations:
As a nation we need to invest more in the health and well
being of our children--our greatest natural resource.
In our work to improve access to quality healthcare, pre-
and perinatal care must receive priority attention. Damages in this
period are usually irreversible.
The role of parents and parenting is vital to child health
and development especially mental/behavioral health and violence
prevention.
Our best hope for reversing the child obesity epidemic is
to provide optimal environments of opportunity and motivation for
regular physical activity and good nutrition.
The most cost-effective investment that we can make in the
health of children is to invest in improving the social determinants of
health--education, safety, social inclusion and bonding to name a few.
There is no greater investment that a nation can make than to
invest in the health of children and their early development. By so
doing, we not only prevent diseases in childhood but most of the
problems of adulthood including major disparities in health among
different racial and socioeconomic groups.
Senator Dodd. Thank you, Doctor, very much. And, thank you
again, for your remarkable service and continuing service to
our country; very, very valuable. You did a wonderful,
wonderful job as Surgeon General.
Dr. Satcher. Thank you.
Senator Dodd. And, we still recall, with great admiration,
your service and your contribution. So, thanks.
Helen Blank, we thank you once again for joining us. We'll
get to you and Dr. Casserly here and we'll get to some
questions.
STATEMENT OF HELEN BLANK, DIRECTOR, LEADERSHIP AND PUBLIC
POLICY, NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. Blank. It is a special honor to be here today, Senator
Dodd, 20 years after the enactment of the Child Care and
Development Block Grant. It took over 3 years, but you and
Senator Hatch were steadfast. You never gave up.
And, after that, children in this country could count on
you to lead every effort to increase investments in child care
and Head Start.
I wish I could tell you that the glass was all full.
Despite our many efforts to provide better quality
experiences for young children, we still haven't found the will
to ensure that all our children, especially our most
vulnerable, have them.
Frankly, the gap between the rhetoric and the reality is
stunning, given the research, the support of our top economists
and the growing public understanding of the importance of
children's early years to our future.
You've listened to the debates. Do we focus on supporting
families work or do we support early education? These are all
interrelated goals. When parents do better, it's simple:
children do better. And children also do better when they get
to be in high quality programs.
The Federal commitment is paramount. Unlike K-12, most
policy makers don't recognize that the bulk of funds for early
education are Federal, not State or local. For families, CCDBG
is a lifeline. It reaches children up to age 13 for a full day
and full year; and approximately 1.6 million children now
receive help.
You might remember Sheila Merkison. She was the Maine
mother who testified before you in 2002. She was on her State's
child care waiting list. Sheila had left an abusive husband.
She told this committee:
``The problem I'm facing is, although I believe my
day care deserves every penny of it, my child care
expenses are 48 percent of my weekly income. I see no
other way to fully provide for my son if this program
can't help us. I make $18,000 a year. I'm asking for
the ability to work, to provide for my son.''
After testifying, which always seems to do the trick,
Sheila received a child care subsidy when she went home. She
wrote, just this week, that she wished that she could
personally come to thank you on behalf of herself and of all
the mothers helped by CCDBG.
``I've been working as an insurance agent for 8
years. My son is doing excellent. He was recently
invited to test for the Johns Hopkins University Talent
Search. I was able to buy a home. I honestly wouldn't
have been able to accomplish this without child care
assistance.''
CCDBG quality dollars, many don't realize, also under-grids
State early childhood systems. They fund programs that help
child care providers go to school, and reward them for their
efforts. They support program monitoring, resource and referral
services, basic materials, and growing quality rating and
improvement systems.
Head Start and Early Head Start, as you mentioned, are very
important national building blocks. Early Head Start is our
best effort at reaching infants and toddlers and their
families. Head Start, as Senator Alexander pointed out,
continues with the help of the reauthorization in 2007, to
strengthen its standards, teacher credentials and monitoring.
State-funded pre-kindergarten is another positive
development. However, programs primarily serve 4-year-olds for
only part-day, part-year, and sometimes, part-week, leaving
working parents scrambling to fill in the day.
State Early Childhood Advisory Councils, which you provided
for in the Head Start reauthorization, facilitate collaboration
across the system. While collaboration can encourage effective
use of resources, it's not cost-free, and alone will not fill
our gaps. Only one out of six children, eligible for Federal
child care help receives it.
With all the families in those low-wage jobs that Peter
talked about, we need more and more child care help.
Long waiting lists are common. California usually has about
200,000; Florida, when we originally were working on the child
care bill, had about 25,000; now it's about 67,000. Denver has
shut its child care program to low-income working families for
the next 18 months. North Carolina has a great early childhood
system, but almost 38,000 families on its waiting list.
Arizona, since February last year, has shrunk its child care
program from 48,000 to 30,000 children.
Several States say now, unless you're on TANF we won't give
you child care help.
States choose between serving families, asking parents to
contribute more or paying child care providers less. Only six
States pay rates that reflect the current cost of care. Less
than half of eligible 3- and 4-year-olds are in Head Start,
just 4 percent of eligible infants and toddlers are in Early
Head Start. A crime, given what Dr. Satcher talked about in
terms of the importance of brain development and stimulation in
those early years.
Children are left with a patchwork of State standards, not
even always guaranteeing their health and safety. Eight States
don't require an annual monitoring visit for child care
centers. California only visits centers once every 5 years.
Child care workers' average annual wage is under $21,000.
Many children get a good part of their nutrition in child
care. Without access to the Child Care Food Program they're
dependent on food brought from home that, in these tough times,
is simply inadequate. Gaps in CACFP make it difficult for
providers to offer the meals children need.
Our country needs to close these gaps by expanding access
to these core programs. We need to help early childhood
providers increase their education and compensation, ensure
their resources for high-quality, full-day programs that
address working parents' need for care--and children's--for
early learning.
Coordination between early care programs in school should
ensure that what children learn and the progress they make
before school is reinforced after they enter school.
National and State groups have developed an agenda to guide
Congress in a comprehensive reauthorization of CCDBG.
But there is a step, as Jennifer Garner has mentioned, that
Congress must take now. We're at immediate risk of taking a
giant step backwards in early childhood that we won't recover
from. The fate of 300,000 children hangs in the balance.
Without a bill that sustains the increases for child care and
Head Start that were in ARRA, children and families and their
providers are going to lose this help.
This is going to be devastating as they continue to
struggle in this difficult economy, and as many State budgets
remain in free fall.
Yes, along with this core funding, Congress should
establish an early learning challenge fund.
Parents are always going to be their children's primary
teachers, and always have the biggest role in their children's
early learning, but they need more. Federal and State
Governments need to step up now to close these gaps. If
children miss out on these early learning opportunities that
help them succeed in school and life, we are all going to lose
out.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Blank follows:]
Prepared Statement of Helen Blank
SUMMARY
High-quality early care and education is essential for getting
children the strong start they need to succeed in school and ultimately
help make a positive contribution to our Nation's economy. It is also
essential to help their parents work. Recognizing this, we have
increased investments in early care and education over the past 20
years. Yet, we still haven't found the will to ensure that all our
children, especially our most vulnerable children, have the early
childhood opportunities they need. The Federal commitment is paramount.
Unlike K-12 education, the bulk of public funds for child care and
other early childhood programs are Federal, not State or local.
The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) is a lifeline to
families' ability to work as well as their children's ability to learn.
It provides help to parents with children from birth up to age 13 for a
full day and full year of child care. Approximately 1.6 million
children receive help in paying for child care through the CCDBG each
year.
CCDBG quality dollars also undergird State early childhood systems.
The quality dollars help providers with the cost of going to school and
attaining credentials as well as reward them for their efforts. The
funds also support monitoring of programs to ensure children's health
and safety, resource and referral services to help families searching
for care, basic materials, and Quality Rating and Improvement Systems,
which provide a pathway toward higher-quality child care.
Head Start has provided comprehensive services to more than 27
million of our Nation's poorest children and their families since 1965.
Early Head Start represents our best efforts at reaching our poorest
infants and toddlers and their families. Head Start continues to
strengthen its program standards, teacher credential requirements, and
monitoring efforts. In addition, State Early Childhood Advisory
Councils are facilitating closer collaboration across all parts of the
early childhood system.
At the State level, prekindergarten is an important development. It
often comes with higher standards than child care. However, these
programs are targeted primarily at 4-year-olds and fund only a part-
year, part-day, and sometimes part-week, program in most communities.
There are still significant gaps to fill. Only one out of six
children eligible for Federal child care help under CCDBG receives it.
Many States have long waiting lists for child care assistance. States
are forced to make Solomon-like choices between serving fewer families,
asking parents receiving child care assistance to contribute more
toward the cost of care, or paying child care providers lower rates.
Less than half of eligible 3- and 4-year-olds and just 4 percent of
eligible infants and toddlers can participate in Head Start and Early
Head Start. Most States that have prekindergarten programs serve only a
portion of their 4-year-olds, and even fewer of their 3-year-olds.
State licensing standards remain weak in far too many areas, from
safety standards for facilities to staff-child ratio requirements.
Eight States don't require an annual monitoring visit for child care
centers. In 2009, the average annual wage for a child care worker was
just $20,940.
Many children get a good part of their daily nutrition in child
care and early learning settings. Without access to CACFP, they are
dependent on food brought from home that in these tough economic times
is simply inadequate. Providers need additional resources to ensure
continued access to CACFP benefits.
To close these gaps we should expand access to child care
assistance, Head Start, Early Head Start, CACFP, and State
prekindergarten programs. Opportunities and incentives for early
childhood providers and teachers to increase their education and
compensation should be explored. We need to ensure there are resources
for high-quality, full-day programs that address both parents' need to
have care for their children during their working hours and children's
need for early learning opportunities. Coordination should be ensured
between early care and education programs and school systems so that
what children learn and the progress they make before they enter school
is reinforced after they enter school.
There is a step that Congress must take now. The fate of 300,000
children receiving help from CCDBG and Head Start and Early Head Start
hangs in the balance. Without a fiscal year 2011 appropriations bill
that sustains the $1 billion increase for child care and the $1 billion
increase for Head Start and Early Head Start that were provided in the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, these children and families and
their child care providers will lose the help they are currently
receiving. This will be particularly devastating as they continue to
struggle in this difficult economy and as many State budgets remain in
free fall. Along with this core funding, Congress should also establish
an Early Learning Challenge Fund that will encourage States to
strengthen their early childhood systems and make effective use of
their early childhood resources.
______
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am Helen Blank, director
of Leadership and Public Policy at the National Women's Law Center.
What an honor to be here today 20 years after the enactment of the
Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). I want to give a
special thanks to Senators Dodd and Hatch who helped champion the
passage of this landmark support for children and families.
Since 1990, there has been increasing recognition and conversation
about the importance of the early years. Despite many developments to
provide better quality experiences for young children, we still haven't
found the will to ensure that all our children, especially our most
vulnerable children, have the early childhood opportunities they need.
We owe our young children better. The gap between the rhetoric and the
reality is stunning given the research, the support of our top
economists, and the growing public understanding of the importance of
our children's early years not only for school success, but our
Nation's economic success. And with the current focus on deficit
reduction, we face possible backsliding in our investments in young
children and families that they cannot afford.
During the past 20 years, conversations have continued about what
early childhood investments should accomplish. There has been debate
about whether the focus should be on child care and early education's
role as a support to help families work or as a support for child
development, and whether the focus should be on increasing access to
child care assistance and early education or increasing quality. In
truth, these are all equally important and interrelated goals. When
parents do better, children do better. We also know that there is a
tremendous payoff when low-income children participate in high-quality
early learning programs.
The Federal commitment is paramount. Unlike K-12 education, the
bulk of public funds for child care and other early childhood programs
are Federal, not State or local. In addition to CCDBG, our largest
investment, there are several key Federal programs that low-income
parents rely on: Head Start and Early Head Start, Preschool Grants
under Part B Section 619 of IDEA, Grants for Infants and Families under
Part C of IDEA, and now home visiting. The Child and Adult Care Food
Program (CACFP) helps ensure that children in these settings have
access to nutritious meals and snacks during the day and offers
technical assistance and training to isolated family child care
providers. The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit helps some middle-
income families as well by covering a portion of their child care
costs.
All of these programs matter, but CCDBG is at the heart of the
system. For families, CCDBG is a lifeline to their ability to work as
well as their children's ability to learn. It provides help to parents
with children from birth up to age 13 for a full day and full year of
child care for those who need it. We have made a difference since 1990
when the CCDBG was enacted. Approximately 1.6 million children now
receive help in paying for child care each year through CCDBG and funds
transferred from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
block grant to CCDBG.\1\ Additional families receive child care
assistance through funding used directly within the TANF block grant.
You may remember Sheila Merkison, a Maine mother, who testified
before the committee in 2002. She was on her State's waiting list for
child care assistance. Sheila left her abusive husband and struggled
with her child care costs. She told the committee,
``The problem I'm facing is, although I believe my day care
deserves every penny of it, my child care expenses are 48
percent of my weekly net income. I see no other way to fully
provide for my son if this program can't help us. I make
$18,000 a year . . . I'm asking for the ability to work to
provide for my son.''
After testifying, Sheila did receive a child care subsidy. She
wrote to me this week.
``I have been working as an Insurance Agent for 8 years now.
My son is doing excellent. He was recently invited to test for
the Johns Hopkins University Talent Search due to his high
scores on the standardized tests at school. I was able to buy a
home through the Rural Development agency a year ago. I
honestly would not have been able to accomplish any of this
without the child care assistance when I needed it.''
CCDBG quality dollars also undergird early childhood systems in the
States, supporting families at all income levels. The quality dollars
help fund T.E.A.C.H. and other programs that help child care providers
with the cost of going to school and attaining credentials as well as
reward them for their efforts. The quality dollars are also used to
support monitoring of programs, regardless of the income of the
children served, to ensure their health and safety. In addition, the
quality set-aside supports resource and referral services to help
families searching for care and community child care programs, helps
purchase basic materials, books, and equipment for family child care
homes and centers, and assists in the costs associated with starting
and operating Quality Rating and Improvement Systems, which provide a
pathway for providers toward higher-quality child care. These
initiatives have made a difference. But, there continues to be, as a
result of inadequate investment in child care, a constant tension
between serving more eligible children and improving quality.
Head Start and Early Head Start are the other national building
blocks in our early childhood system. Head Start has provided
comprehensive services to more than 27 million of our Nation's poorest
children and their families since 1965.\2\ Early Head Start represents
our best efforts at reaching our poorest infants and toddlers and their
families. Head Start continues to strengthen its program standards,
teacher credential requirements, and monitoring efforts. In addition,
State Early Childhood Advisory Councils, which are authorized by the
Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 and are receiving
initial funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, are
facilitating even closer collaboration across all parts of the early
childhood system.
At the State level, prekindergarten is an important and another
positive development. It often comes with higher standards than child
care. However, these programs are targeted primarily at 4-year-olds and
fund only a part-year, part-day, and sometimes part-week, program in
most communities. This leaves working parents scrambling to cover the
remainder of the time. Innovative early childhood leaders have put
State prekindergarten funding together with Early Head Start, Head
Start, and child care dollars, as well as other Federal and State
resources, to meet the needs of working families and to provide higher-
quality care throughout the day and year.
Despite the growth of CCDBG, as well as the growth of Head Start,
Early Head Start, and prekindergarten, there are still significant gaps
to fill. And while coordination and collaboration and ``systems
building'' can encourage these resources to be used as effectively and
efficiently as possible in helping children and families, coordination
and collaboration are not cost-free and alone will not fill those gaps.
ACCESS
We are reaching only a fraction of those who need access to early
care and education opportunities, much less ensuring that those
opportunities offer high-quality early care and education. Only one out
of six children eligible for Federal child care help under CCDBG
receives it.\3\ Many States have restrictive eligibility criteria,
limiting child care assistance to only the lowest-income families. In
13 States, a family earning over 150 percent of poverty ($27,465 a year
for a family of three) cannot qualify for help in paying for child
care.\4\ And in many States, even those families who are eligible are
placed on long waiting lists for child care assistance. California
usually has about 200,000 children on its waiting list.\5\ As of last
February, Florida's waiting list had almost 67,000 children.\6\ Several
States are now limiting child care assistance to families who are
receiving, or were recently receiving, TANF.
With limited funding, States are forced to make Solomon-like
choices between serving fewer families, asking parents receiving child
care assistance to contribute more toward the cost of care, or paying
child care providers who serve subsidized families lower rates. Only
six States pay reimbursement rates to child care providers that reflect
the current cost of care in their communities.\7\ With such low rates,
child care providers that serve families receiving child care
assistance must make sacrifices as they stretch their already tight
budgets. Families receiving child care assistance may have difficulty
finding a high-quality child care provider willing to accept the low
reimbursement rates. Families can also confront numerous hurdles in the
process of applying for and renewing their eligibility for child care
assistance. This makes it more challenging for parents to retain the
child care assistance they need to get and keep a job, which creates
more chaos in the lives of children who desperately need stable early
childhood experiences.
For too many of our most vulnerable children, Head Start and Early
Head Start remain out of reach. Less than half of eligible 3- and 4-
year-olds have the opportunity to participate in Head Start.\8\ And
just 4 percent of eligible infants and toddlers are enrolled in Early
Head Start.\9\ Most States that have prekindergarten programs serve
only a portion of their 4-year-olds, and even fewer of their 3-year-
olds.
QUALITY ASSURANCES AND HEALTH AND SAFETY
Another major gap is in ensuring the basic health and safety of
children in child care. There has been scant support in Congress for
Federal child care standards. This has left children with a patchwork
of standards that do not always guarantee their health and safety.
State licensing standards remain weak in far too many areas, from
safety standards for facilities to staff-child ratio requirements.
Eight States don't require an annual monitoring visit for child care
centers, including California, where 5 years can pass between licensing
visits, according to a study by the National Association for Child Care
Resource and Referral Agencies.\10\ Yet, States--facing budget crises
of their own--do not currently have the resources to expand their
licensing systems, and are typically reluctant to strengthen their
standards out of concern that doing so would increase costs for child
care providers operating on tight margins, which would force them to
increase their fees, which would only put the cost of care further out
of reach for more parents.
EARLY CARE AND EDUCATION WORKFORCE
We will also continue to struggle to improve child care unless we
address the training, education, and compensation of the early
childhood workforce. In 2009, the average annual wage for a child care
worker was just $20,940.\11\ With such low wages, it will continue to
be difficult if not impossible to attract and retain good teachers for
our early learning programs.
CHILD NUTRITION
Many children get a good part of their daily nutrition in child
care and early learning settings. Without access to CACFP, they are
dependent on food brought from home that in these tough economic times
is simply inadequate. Yet, reimbursement levels for meals is
insufficient to ensure that providers have the resources to provide
meals and snacks that meet the newly recommended standards from the
Institute of Medicine. While young children eat small portions but
frequently, Federal funds do not provide enough for a second snack
during a long child care day. Family child care providers have less and
less access to CACFP and the sponsors that work with them do not have
the necessary resources to support providers. Pending Child Nutrition
reauthorization does not adequately address the Child and Adult Care
Food Program and it is possible that it will actually result in fewer
providers and children having access to its benefits.
LOOKING AHEAD
Our country needs to move forward to close these lingering gaps in
our early childhood system. We should expand access to child care
assistance, Head Start, Early Head Start, CACFP, and State
prekindergarten programs. We need to provide opportunities and
incentives for early childhood providers and teachers to increase their
education and compensation. We need to make sure there are resources
for high-quality, full-day programs that address both parents' need to
have care for their children during their working hours and children's
need for early learning opportunities. We need to ensure there is
coordination between early care and education programs and school
systems so that what children learn and the progress they make before
they enter school is reinforced after they enter school.
In the long term, we need a national agenda. National and State
organizations focused on children and families have developed such an
agenda--the Agenda for Affordable, High-Quality Child Care--that can
guide the Congress in enacting a comprehensive reauthorization of the
Child Care and Development Block Grant (and which we request be
included in the hearing record).
However, there is a step that Congress must take now. Despite the
consensus about the importance of the early years for all children, we
are at immediate risk of taking a giant step backwards. The fate of
300,000 children receiving help from CCDBG and Head Start and Early
Head Start hangs in the balance. Without a fiscal year 2011
appropriations bill that sustains the $1 billion increase for child
care and the $1 billion increase for Head Start and Early Head Start
that were provided in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, these
children and families and their child care providers will lose the help
they are currently receiving. This will be particularly devastating as
they continue to struggle in this difficult economy and as many State
budgets remain in free fall. Along with this core funding, Congress
should also establish an Early Learning Challenge Fund that will
encourage States to strengthen their early childhood systems and make
effective use of their early childhood resources.
Parents will always be their children's primary teachers, and they
will always have the biggest role to play in their children's early
learning experiences. But they need your support. Federal and State
Governments still need to step up to close these gaps. Because if
children miss out on these early learning opportunities that help them
succeed in school, we all lose out. Let's take this opportunity to
build a stronger early childhood system for our children, and for our
future.
References
\1\ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration
for Children and Families, Child Care and Development Fund Statistics,
FY 2008 CCDF Data Tables (Preliminary Estimates), Table 1: Child Care
and Development Fund Preliminary Estimates Average Monthly Adjusted
Number of Families and Children Served (FFY 2008), available at http://
www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ccb/data/ccdf_data/08acf800_preliminary/
table1.htm.
\2\ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration
for Children and Families, Office of Head Start, Head Start Program
Fact Sheet FY 2010, available at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ohs/
about/fy2010.html.
\3\ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Human
Services Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and
Evaluation, Estimates of Child Care Eligibility and Receipt for Fiscal
Year 2006 (April 2010), available at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/10/cc-
eligibility/ib.shtml.
\4\ Karen Schulman and Helen Blank, State Child Care Assistance
Policies 2010: New Federal Funds Help States Weather the Storm
(Washington, DC: National Women's Law Center, 2010), available at
http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/
statechildcareassistancepoliciesreport2010.pdf.
\5\ Schulman and Blank.
\6\ Schulman and Blank.
\7\ Schulman and Blank.
\8\ Calculations based on data on Head Start enrollment from the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for
Children and Families, Office of Head Start and data on children in
poverty by single year of age from the U.S. Census Bureau.
\9\ Calculations based on data on Early Head Start enrollment from
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for
Children and Families, Office of Head Start and data on children in
poverty by single year of age from the U.S. Census Bureau.
\10\ National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral
Agencies, We CAN Do Better: 2009 Update. NACCRRA's Ranking of State
Child Care Center Regulation and Oversight (Washington, DC: NACCRRA,
2009), available at http://www.
naccrra.org/publications/naccrra-publications/publications/
We%20Can%20Better%
202009_MECH-screen.pdf.
\11\ U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2009
National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, available at
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm.
______
Developing America's Potential
An Agenda for Affordable, High-Quality Child Care
Developing America's Potential: An Agenda for Affordable High-
Quality Child Care is the product of a historic collaboration of
national and State organizations to craft a shared ``blueprint'' for
the future of child care. It offers a solid framework for guiding the
reauthorization for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG)
and other opportunities for child care improvement in the new
Administration and new Congress.
The Agenda recognizes that high-quality child care helps children,
families and communities prosper. It helps children learn and develop
skills they need to succeed in school and in life. It gives parents the
support and peace of mind they need to be productive at work. And it
helps our Nation stay competitive, by producing a stronger workforce
now and in the future. But for many families--especially, but not only,
low-income families--high-quality child care is unaffordable or
unattainable. The Agenda for Affordable, High-Quality Child Care
proposes comprehensive, systemic reforms to ensure safe, healthy and
affordable child care that promotes early learning and increased
Federal funding to make these reforms possible.
SECTION A: ENSURING HEALTHY AND SAFE CARE
To ensure that all child care meets basic health and safety and
child development standards, mandatory Federal funding for the CCDBG
will be sufficiently expanded, and States will be required within 3
years to use this funding to:
Have written health and safety standards appropriate to
the setting of the provider and the age of the children that apply to
all child care centers and family child care homes caring for at least
one child not related to the provider for a fee on a regular basis. At
a minimum, these standards must address requirements for first-aid,
CPR, sanitation procedures and control of communicable disease, child
abuse identification and reporting, background screenings, prevention
of sudden infant death syndrome, emergency and disaster procedures,
medication administration, and basic child guidance policies.
Require all providers in child care centers and family
child care homes caring for at least one child not related to the
provider for a fee on a regular basis to have at least 40 hours of
appropriate and accessible health and safety and child development
training, including training on State early learning guidelines and
information about working with children with disabilities and other
special needs, before providing care to children, and 24 hours annually
thereafter.
Ensure that all children in child care centers and family
child care homes receiving care from a provider not related to the
child for a fee on a regular basis receive a developmental screening by
qualified professionals and referrals for appropriate services when
they enter care.
Inspect and monitor all providers in child care centers
and family child care homes caring for at least one child not related
to the provider for a fee on a regular basis at least twice a year with
one or more on an unannounced basis to ensure compliance with these
requirements.
To support child care facilities, Federal funding will be
authorized to:
Establish an ongoing pool of capital for the renovation
and construction of facilities in low-income communities, including
those serving families with limited English proficiency.
This pool will be accessed through experienced non-profit
facilities intermediaries that may use the funds to make grants and
loans to child care providers for this facility renovation and
construction, and to provide technical assistance on facility design
and development.
SECTION B: MAKING CARE MORE AFFORDABLE
To ensure that parents have access to a range of child care
services, mandatory Federal funding for the CCDBG will be sufficiently
expanded, and States will be required to use this funding to:
Provide federally funded child care assistance sufficient
to double the number of children currently served nationwide.
Until the Quality Rating and Improvement System described
in section C is in effect, establish maximum base reimbursement rates
for providers caring for children receiving federally funded child care
assistance at no less than the 75th percentile of the current market
rate, based on a market rate survey that is conducted at least annually
and that is statistically valid and reliable and reflects cost
variations by geography, age of children, and provider type.
Develop and implement strategies such as higher payment
rates and bonuses, direct contracting, grants, or other means of
increasing the supply of care in particular areas of the State or for
particular categories of children, such as care in low-income and rural
areas, care for infants and toddlers, school-age children, children
with disabilities and other special needs, and children in families
with limited English proficiency, and care during non-standard hours,
if shortages of these types of care are identified, and report annually
to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on how these strategies
are being used to expand the supply of this care.
Set a 1-year eligibility determination period for child
care assistance.
Support a computer system to streamline administration of
the State's child care assistance program.
Ensure that State payment practices for child care
providers reflect generally accepted payment policies that providers
use for their private-paying parents.
Provide grants to community-based organizations with
expertise in serving populations with limited English proficiency to
develop and implement effective outreach models to help eligible
families learn about and obtain child care assistance.
To expand assistance available through the Federal Child and
Dependent Care Tax Credit, the credit will be improved through the
following changes:
To help low-income families, the credit will be made
refundable.
To help middle-income families, the sliding scale for
determining the amount of the credit will be expanded so that it begins
at 50 percent of expenses for families with incomes of $35,000 or less.
To help all families, the current expense limits of the
credit will be maintained at no less than $3,000 for one child or
dependent and $6,000 for two or more children or dependents.
To preserve the credit's value, it will be indexed for
inflation.
SECTION C: IMPROVING QUALITY TO PROMOTE EARLY LEARNING
To improve the quality of care above the basic standards described
in Section A, mandatory Federal funding for the CCDBG will be
sufficiently expanded to provide States with additional resources so
that States have the funding to invest in each of the following
required activities:
Financial support for providers and programs to meet
expenses necessary to achieve and maintain the standards and training
requirements established by Section A, and to become licensed and
regulated, with a priority for low-income providers and programs in
low-income communities.
Establishment and operation of a statewide Quality Rating
and Improvement System (QRIS) within 5 years for all child care centers
and family child care homes providing care for at least one child not
related to the provider for a fee on a regular basis and other early
childhood education program settings as the State determines.
The QRIS must rate providers according to the
quality of care they provide, based on the extent to which they
meet criteria appropriate for each age group such as: an early
learning environment that promotes children's development and
school readiness and that is linguistically and culturally
appropriate, appropriate staff-child ratios and group size,
staff qualifications and education credentials and staff
compensation, opportunities for parent involvement, regular
program evaluation, inclusion of children with disabilities and
other special needs, and safe physical environment.
The quality ratings must be tiered, beginning at the
level of quality needed for providers to become licensed or
regulated, and increasing in quality to reach nationally
recognized high program standards.
The maximum reimbursement rate for providers caring
for children receiving federally funded child care assistance
in each quality tier included in the QRIS must be based on no
less than the 75th percentile of the current market rate for
that tier of care, based on a market survey that is conducted
at least annually and that is statistically valid and reliable
and reflects cost variations by geography, age of children, and
provider type.
The QRIS must include support for a credentialing
and compensation program that includes grants to assist
individual providers/teachers in child care centers and family
child care homes providing care for at least one child not
related to the provider for a fee on a regular basis in
obtaining the training, credentials, and degrees required by
each level of the QRIS standards and the State's
prekindergarten program, and increases their compensation based
on their level of education, with preference given to
providers/teachers in centers in which a significant share of
children served are receiving federally funded child care
assistance and homes that participate in the Child and Adult
Care Food Program.
The QRIS must include grants to assist child care
centers and family child care homes serving children receiving
federally funded child care assistance in achieving and
maintaining the progressively higher quality program standards
of the QRIS (other than those standards that address provider/
teacher credentialing and compensation), with preference given
to centers in which a significant share of children served are
receiving federally funded child care assistance and homes that
participate in the Child and Adult Care Food Program.
The QRIS must include support for programs to train
and mentor individual providers/teachers in child care centers
and family child care homes providing care for at least one
child not related to the provider for a fee on a regular basis
in achieving and maintaining the progressively higher quality
standards of the QRIS, with preference given to providers/
teachers in centers in which a significant share of children
served are receiving federally funded child care assistance and
providers in homes that participate in the Child and Adult Care
Food Program.
States must report annually to the Secretary of
Health and Human Services, starting 1 year after the QRIS is
implemented, on:
The quality standards that are necessary to meet
the requirements for each tier in the State's QRIS.
The numbers and percent of all children and of
children receiving federally funded child care assistance who
are receiving care from providers in each quality tier, by
children's age, children's race/ethnicity, and the extent to
which children have limited English proficiency.
The number and percent of providers that have
moved up at least one quality tier in the QRIS from the
previous year, including the number and percent of those
providers who are in low-income communities.
The strategies used by the State to increase the
number and percent of providers offering, and children
receiving, care in progressively higher quality tiers.
Support for a statewide network of child care resource and
referral programs.
Additional supports to improve the quality of care.
To improve the quality of services to children and families who do
not speak English or have limited English proficiency, Federal funding
will be authorized for grants or contracts to:
Develop, implement, and demonstrate the effectiveness of
techniques and approaches for training child care providers with
limited English proficiency to provide high-quality child care.
Grants or contract will be awarded on a competitive basis to
community-based organizations with experience and expertise in
providing training to child care providers with limited English
proficiency.
To improve the quality of services to children with disabilities
and other special needs and their families, Federal funding will be
authorized for grants or contracts to:
Develop, implement, and demonstrate the effectiveness of
techniques and approaches for training child care providers to provide
high-quality care for such children.
Grants or contracts will be awarded on a competitive basis to
community-based organizations with experience and expertise in
providing training to child care providers to meet the needs of
children with disabilities and other special needs in community child
care programs.
SECTION D: IMPROVING AND EXPANDING INFANT AND TODDLER CARE
To address the shortage of high-quality infant and toddler care,
mandatory Federal funding for the CCDBG will be sufficiently expanded
to provide States with significant new resources to expand the supply
of high-quality infant and toddler care through each of the following
activities:
Grants to establish and operate neighborhood- or
community-based family and child development centers to provide high-
quality, comprehensive child care and development services to infants
and toddlers. Grantees must be child care providers ranked at the top
level of a State's QRIS. Priority for grants is given to centers in
low-income communities.
Grants to organizations to establish and operate
neighborhood- or community-based family child care networks and/or
offer technical assistance to parents and other infant-toddler child
care providers, including relative caregivers. Priority for grants is
given to organizations in low-income communities, including communities
with significant populations of families who have limited English
proficiency.
Grants to an organization to support a statewide network
of infant and toddler specialists to provide individual and/or group
training and intensive consultation to child care centers, family child
care homes, and relative caregivers on strategies to improve the
quality of care for infants and toddlers, especially infants and
toddlers in families who are eligible for federally funded child care
assistance.
section e: supporting research, technical assistance, and coordination
To provide technical assistance and other support, mandatory
Federal funding for the CCDBG will be sufficiently expanded, and the
Secretary of Health and Human Services will be required to ensure that
the following activities are conducted:
Within 2 years, the National Academy of Sciences will
conduct a study and report to Congress on the actual cost per child of
a full-year, full-day program of high-quality early care and education
program that promotes the sound development of children, by age of
child from birth to age 13, and by type of setting (center-based or
family child care program), taking into consideration the additional
costs of serving children with disabilities and other special needs.
The Department of Health and Human Services will provide
technical assistance to States on developing and conducting
statistically valid and reliable market rate surveys and identify
acceptable approaches for States to use in developing and conducting
market rate surveys.
The Department of Health and Human Services will identify
acceptable approaches and criteria for States to use in developing each
quality tier of the QRIS and provide technical assistance to States in
developing their QRIS.
Each State every 5 years will conduct a study, applying
methodology established by the Department of Health and Human Services
to ensure comparability of data across States, and the Secretary shall,
using the data submitted by each State, report to Congress every 5
years on the characteristics of the workforce providing child care and
development services to children birth to age 13, by age group served,
geographic area, quality rating, type of care (including child care
center, family child care home, prekindergarten, Head Start, and
school-age care) and other significant variables, including providers'
race and ethnicity, language status, credentials and training received,
experience working in the field, and salary and benefits.
To streamline, coordinate, and improve the effectiveness of child
care and early education services and programs at the Federal and State
levels:
The State child care plan for the CCDBG will be submitted
to the State Advisory Council on Early Care and Education for comment
before the plan is submitted to the Department of Health and Human
Services for funding. The plan must describe coordination among child
care, Head Start, State prekindergarten programs, and Part C and
Section 619 programs authorized by the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act, including the ways in which Federal and State resources
are to be used to help child care providers meet the State
prekindergarten requirements and to help children enrolled in part-day
prekindergarten and Head Start programs receive full-day services.
An Office of Early Care and Learning will be established
within the Administration for Children and Families, and will house
both the Head Start Bureau and the Child Care Bureau.
An Interagency Early Learning and After-School Council
will be established, chaired by the Secretaries of Health and Human
Services and Education, to coordinate Federal funding for child care
and development programs and services for children birth to age 13
across the Federal agencies that provide such funding.
(Developed and endorsed by American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees; Center for Law and Social Policy; The Children's
Project; Early Care and Education Consortium; National Association for
the Education of Young Children; National Association of Child Care
Resource & Referral Agencies; National Association for Family Child
Care; National Council of La Raza; National Women's Law Center; Service
Employees International Union; and Zero to Three)
Senator Dodd. Helen, once again thank you immensely; and so
articulate; wonderful to hear that story about that woman from
Maine. It's nice to hear that things actually work out. Those
efforts--you wonder whether or not the results produce the
kinds of events that you describe.
Ms. Blank. She says so. She also ran the 5K and graduated
with honors from junior college.
Senator Dodd. Very good, I tell you. All because of the
child care development.
Ms. Blank. I didn't ask her to say that.
Senator Dodd. Dr. Casserly, thank you so much for joining
us today. You've been very patient.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL CASSERLY, Ph.D., EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR, COUNCIL ON GREAT CITY SCHOOLS, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Casserly. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very
much for the invitation to be here.
I join with my colleagues this morning in thanking you for
your outstanding contributions to the lives----
Senator Dodd. I appreciate it.
Mr. Casserly [continuing]. Of so many children and families
across this country. Thank you. We honor you and the work that
you have done.
I'm Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of
the Great City Schools, the Nation's primary coalition of large
urban school systems.
And, to give you some sense of what a family affair this
gathering is, our organization was founded by Sargent Shriver
in 1956, when he was president of the school board in Chicago.
Mr. Chairman, we have seen substantial progress in the
education of our Nation's children over the decades you have
served on this panel, despite the work that is still in front
of us.
In addition to the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act
and expansions of the Head Start Program, you have played a
critical role in the passage of the Education of All
Handicapped Act, and its successor, IDEA; untold
reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act;
and student loan expansions.
You have also been a strong proponent of Early Childhood
Education, State school finance equity and afterschool
programming. And, you were the first legislator to stand with
us in calling for national math and science standards, which
eventually morphed into the Common Core Standards that are now
in place in so many States.
All of this legislation has been important in expanding the
opportunities for historically underserved populations and in
boosting student achievement.
Nowhere is this more evident than in our Nation's urban
public schools. The number of large-city students reading at
the proficient level or better on the National Assessment of
Educational Progress, for instance, has increased by 35 percent
among fourth graders since 2002; and the number of students
scoring below basic levels has dropped by 18 percent.
In addition, the reading gap between the large cities and
the Nation narrowed by one-third between 2002 and 2009.
The gains are more substantial in math. In fact, the number
of large central city students scoring at the proficient level
or better, has increased by 45 percent among fourth graders and
50 percent among 8th graders. And, we have decreased the number
of students scoring below basic levels by 24 percent.
Still, we are far behind, and our racially identifiable
achievement gaps are way too wide.
Congress and this committee, in particular, should feel
proud of its work over many years because it set the stage for
these academic gains.
In fact, Congress has been especially effective in
articulating issues and defining priorities and then building a
legislative infrastructure around those priorities, including
an emphasis on the instruction of poor children, students with
disabilities and English learners.
Congress has also been particularly effective in targeting
its scarce resources on school districts with the largest
concentrations of need.
This targeting of funds has been critical to the ability of
struggling schools to overcome the effects of poverty and other
barriers. The Nation's urban schools, in particular, have
benefited from this targeting and have used these dollars to
help spur the gains I have described.
The Federal Government's continued support for the
concentration of limited dollars in high-need communities is
one of the wisest investments it can make.
The Federal Government's work, in addition, to ensure civil
rights and to conduct research on what works in education has
also been important.
Congress' efforts to build more accountability into public
education has been critical.
But there is still considerably more work to do. Research,
in particular, needs to be expanded to better support school
systems that are facing special challenges that they can't
solve by themselves, including research on adolescent literacy,
English acquisition amongst children, reading comprehension,
and teacher quality, to name but a few.
There are also new national educational priorities that
Congress should consider as it moves forward. Despite our
rhetorical attention to science, for example, the Nation's
efforts in this area lack coherence and direction. Congress
could change that.
At one point, Congress also had a dropout prevention
program, but eventually it abandoned that effort. The Nation,
however, continues to lose too many young people before they
attain a high school diploma.
During the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, Congress should re-focus on dropout prevention
along with Secondary School Reform.
Research is also clear on the benefits of early childhood
education, but we can't seem to muster the public will to
create a system that ensures that all of our children are
served.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to call your attention to a
report that my organization released last week, called ``A Call
for Change: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to
the Outcomes of Black Males in Urban Schools.''
I ask that it be included in the record.
[The material referenced above may be found at www.edweek.
org/media/black_male_study.pdf.]
It looks at the academic well-being and college and career
readiness of America's African-American male youth; and the
results are not anything that we should be proud of as a
Nation.
On almost every indicator of well-being we looked at, our
Black male young people were coming up on the short end despite
the fact that many city school districts were showing progress.
We found that Black children were over twice as likely as
white children to live in a household where no parent had year-
round or full-time employment. Black children were three times
more likely to be raised in families living in poverty than
other children.
Black male fourth graders, Nationwide, were over three
times less likely to read and do math at proficient levels than
white males.
Black males were about twice as likely to drop out of
school, were less likely to take advanced placement exams, and
scored some 100 percent lower than others on SAT exams. If
these students make it into college, they are far less likely
to graduate.
At the end of this progression are unemployment rates among
African-American males that are twice as high as white males,
and imprisonment rates that are 6.5 times higher.
Congress may not be able to solve all of the complicated
issues surrounding this situation, but it is hard to believe
that additional focus on this issue would not pay enormous
dividends.
That America squanders so much of its human talent does not
bode well for our ability to maintain our global pre-eminence
economically, financially, politically or morally.
The great civil rights battles that you and Marian and
others on this panel fought were not fought so our children
could have access to mediocrity or failure. They were fought so
our children could have access to excellence and the resources
to pay for them.
Congress should be proud of the work that it's done over
the decades to improve access to, and the quality of public
education in this Nation, but we still have so much more to do.
Thank you very much, and I'd be happy to take any of your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Casserly follows:]
Prepared Statement of Michael Casserly, Ph.D.
Good morning and thank you for inviting me to testify before this
subcommittee. I join many others today in recognizing and thanking
Chairman Chris Dodd for your outstanding contributions to this
committee and to the lives of so many children and families across the
country. Thank you.
I am Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the
Great City Schools, the Nation's primary coalition of large urban
school systems.
Our 65 member urban school districts, which comprise less than 1
percent of the Nation's 15,000 school systems, enroll some 30 percent
of the country's students of color, English learners, and poor
students.
Mr. Chairman, we have seen enormous progress in the education of
our Nation's children over the decades you have served on this
important panel.
In addition to the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act and
expansions to the critically important Headstart program, you have
played a critical role in the passage of the Education of All
Handicapped Act and its successor IDEA; the Eisenhower Math and Science
program; the Magnet School Program; untold numbers of reauthorizations
of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; the overhaul of the
Bilingual Education Act, and student loan expansions. You have also
been a strong proponent of early childhood education, State school
finance equity, and afterschool programming. And you were one of the
first legislators to stand with us in calling for national math and
science standards in education.
All of this legislation has played an important role in expanding
opportunities for historically underserved populations and in boosting
student achievement. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Nation's
major urban public schools.
The number of large-city students reading at the proficient level
or better on NAEP has increased by 35 percent among 4th graders since
2002. And, the number of 4th graders scoring below the basic level
dropped by 18 percent between 2002 and 2009.
In addition, the reading gap between the large cities and the
Nation narrowed by one-third between 2002 and 2009. We are now just 10-
scale score points away from national averages at both 4th and 8th
grade levels. We are not only improving; we are catching up.
The gains are even more substantial in math. In fact, the number of
large central city students scoring at the proficient level or better
on math has increased by 45 percent among 4th graders and 50 percent
among 8th graders since 2003. And we have decreased the number of urban
students scoring below basic levels by 24 percent.
Between 2003 and 2009, our large central city schools have narrowed
the gap in math with the Nation by 20 percent in both 4th and 8th
grades.
Congress and this committee, in particular, should feel proud of
the work it has done over many years, because it set the stage for
these academic gains. It has been especially effective in articulating
issues and defining priorities, and then building a legislative
infrastructure around those priorities, including an emphasis on the
instruction of poor children, students with disabilities, and English
learners.
Congress has also been effective in targeting its scarce resources
on school districts and schools with the largest concentrations of
need. This targeting of funds, particularly under Title I, Title II,
and Title III of ESEA, are critical to the ability of struggling
schools to overcome the effects of poverty and other barriers.
The Nation's urban schools have benefited from this targeting and
have used these dollars to help spur the gains I just described. The
Federal Government's continued support for the concentration of limited
dollars on high-need urban and rural communities is one of the wisest
investments it can make.
The Federal Government's work to ensure civil rights and to conduct
research on what works in elementary and secondary education has also
been important, although clearly much more needs to be done.
Finally, Congress's efforts to build more accountability for
results into public education have also been important, although they
were hampered by the fact that not everyone was being held accountable
to the same standards--something that the new common core should solve
in time.
There is still considerably more work to be done, however, even in
an era when the public is rethinking the Federal role in education.
Research, in particular, needs to be expanded to better support
school systems that are facing special challenges they are not
necessarily able to solve by themselves, including new research on
adolescent literacy, English acquisition, instructional interventions,
reading comprehension, and teacher quality and incentives--to name but
a few.
We know surprisingly little, for instance, about why some teachers
are more effective instructionally than others. Nor do we have a firm
grip on how to boost the effectiveness of teachers after their 5th year
or so in the classroom.
Considerable research is also needed on effective instructional
strategies to boost reading comprehension, particularly with students
in grades 4-8. Nationwide, NAEP reading scores in the 8th grade have
been surprisingly flat for many years, and educators have been left
without much direction about what to do about it.
There are also national educational priorities that Congress should
consider as it moves forward. Despite our rhetorical attention to
science, for example, the Nation's efforts to address our deficiencies
in this area continue to lack coherence, definition, and leadership.
Congress could change that.
At one point, Congress made dropout prevention a legislative
priority, but abandoned the program after considerable squabbling about
how it was structured. The Nation, however, continues to lose too many
young people before they can attain a high school diploma, much to
their economic and social detriment and the Nation's.
During the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, Congress should
consider an effort that focuses exclusively on dropout prevention,
research, and demonstration--along with secondary school reform.
The research is also quite clear on the benefits of early childhood
education, but we can't seem to muster the public will to create a
system--public and private--that ensures that all children who need
services can receive them.
Finally, I want to call your attention to a report that my
organization released last week--``A Call for Change: The Social and
Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Black Males in
Urban Schools.''
It looks at the academic well-being and college and career
readiness of America's African-American male youth. And the results are
not anything we should be proud of as a nation.
On almost every indicator we looked at--spanning infant mortality
to career advancement--our Black male young people were coming up on
the short end, despite the fact that many city school systems--like
Atlanta, Boston, New York, Baltimore, and others--were showing
substantial progress.
We found that Black children were over twice as likely to live in a
household where no parent has year-round, full-time employment.
Black children are three times more likely to be raised in a family
living in poverty than white children.
Black male 4th graders nationwide were over three times less likely
to read and do math at proficient levels than white males nationwide.
Black males are about twice as likely to drop out of school; are
less likely to take advanced placement exams; and score on average over
100 points lower than white males on SAT college-entrance exams.
If these students make it into postsecondary education, they are
far less likely to graduate in 4, 5, or 6 years than white males.
At the end of this progression--when the cycle begins anew--are
unemployment rates among African-American males that are twice as high
as for white males, and imprisonment rates that are 6.5 times higher
for Black males than for white males.
Congress may not be able to solve the complicated issues
surrounding this situation, but it is hard to believe that additional
thinking and investment in this issue and the problem of high school
dropouts would not pay enormous dividends for the Nation in both the
short and long term.
That America squanders so much of its human talent does not bode
well for the Nation's ability to maintain its global pre-eminence
economically, financially, politically, or morally.
Congress should be very proud of the efforts it has made over the
decades to improve the access to and the quality of public education in
this Nation. But we still have so much more to do.
Thank you and I'd be happy to take your questions.
Senator Dodd. Well, thank you, Doctor. And, thank you for
your work as well; tremendously helpful and tremendously
valuable.
We're fortunate on this committee, we've got my good
friend, Michael Bennet, who ran the school district in Denver,
CO, and has brought already tremendous wealth and talent and
ability to the discussion that is ongoing with the Obama
administration on educational reform.
I only regret I won't be around to watch that develop but
I've got a lot of confidence in Senator Bennet leading that
effort here, and along with others, to see that we move in the
right direction.
I'm going to ask a couple of broad questions as far as your
comments. There's an awful lot you've said, just in terms of
the realities we're looking at here.
We've got this Commission on Deficit Reduction, which is
obviously getting a lot of attention in the news, and the
change in the political dynamic in the institution of this
building now with the House under the control of one set of
hands, the Senate in another, pulling all of this together.
There's an awful lot that goes on. A lot of silos that we
talk about here at the Federal level, and how we weave these
together in some sort of a coordinated fashion.
Helen said something which I, in reading over your
testimony, was struck with and that I agree with. It comes down
to almost a simple sentence, in my view, in many ways. If
families are doing well, children do well. I mean, maybe it's
an over simplification, but if you had to get to one single
point, if a family's got a job, which is a decent paying job--
I've often said maybe a million times in 30 years, the best
social program ever created was a good, decent paying job. An
awful lot happens when that occurs.
Peter, your statistics on what's happened to our economy--
Bernie's points before he left a few minutes ago, in his
opening comments about just the de-industrialization of America
and this gap that has existed with the lack of economic
opportunity and upward mobility, both individually, as a
country, are deeply worrying and disturbing.
I wonder if you might comment again--not so much for me,
but for our staffs who are here and others, to wet the appetite
to want to do this and get this right. It may vary to some
degree, but everyone understands this. The question is, how do
we weave this together in a way that avoids the silo approach
to it, that would give us the opportunity to have a more
coordinated effort to focus on these questions?
Marian, let me begin with you, if I can. That's really to
break down those silos--and how can Congress help change its
thinking about these problems in a way that gives them the
opportunity to understand that what they're doing is not just
slicing pieces off of this, but gives them a sense of the
whole.
Ms. Wright Edelman. Well, I think looking at the whole
child is very important.
Senator Dodd. Yes.
Ms. Wright Edelman. And, again, children don't come in
pieces; they come in families. Families need jobs and a range
of support to do a good job. Families are affected by the
policies of their communities and their local and State
governments.
Children don't come in pieces, either, as they grow up. We
need a continuum of care from before birth up through
adulthood; and we keep grabbing onto one piece of it----
Senator Dodd. Yes.
Ms. Wright Edelman [continuing]. And we try to repair the
ankle and then say, why is the whole child not good. Or, we
repair this little piece. Good policy should be like good
parenting. There's no parent who would give their child safety
and not give them a roof over their heads or good food.
That's why we've been in--and you have been very helpful in
this in trying to talk about a comprehensive act to really
leave no child behind, but that means really providing the kind
of comprehensive, continuous care that protects children in the
context of their families, and that gets them from before birth
through transition to adulthood.
We know how to do it, and we should really model it on what
every parent wants with their child. There are a lot of pieces
in place, but we need to now make it more systematic.
I would really like to see us put together now a child
emergency investment bill that really talks about what we do in
eliminating poverty, creating jobs for parents, but giving them
the prenatal care, because millions of our children are sort
of, born with two or three strikes against them.
Senator Dodd. Yes.
Ms. Wright Edelman. And then they don't get the early
education and so we have to get them born healthy with prenatal
care, we've got to make sure they all get the preventative
health and mental health care, and we need to make sure that
they are ready for school; and in those early years, we need to
make sure that every school is ready and expects every child to
learn; and we need to make sure that they have stimulating,
after-school time and summertime, because they can't be idle.
Give them what we want for our own children. They need to have
work experiences and service experiences. I mean, we've got all
these disconnected youth who have never seen work, and never
seen anybody work.
Senator Dodd. No.
Ms. Wright Edelman. And, so we know what to do. The
question is, how do we get that kind of comprehensive vision?
And, we may have to renovate the whole house, room by room, but
we should start. But, we should have that vision of a whole
house that is safe for all children.
Senator Dodd. Does anyone else want to comment on this at
this point?
Mr. Edelman. Just briefly.
Senator Dodd. Peter.
Mr. Edelman. Senator, I would remind everybody of something
that you did during the Clinton administration. My fond memory
of it is that it originated in a conversation at our house, but
you----
Senator Dodd. As many, many ideas did.
Mr. Edelman [continuing]. You proposed, and got enacted An
Ounce of Prevention Council in the Federal Government. And, I
would suggest going back to that, and for the Senators who
remain on the staff, to work on something that puts real teeth
in making the departments of the Federal Government connect to
each other and pools resources, so that it deals with whole
children and families, and so that it incentivizes and pushes
people at the local level to pull together the relevant public
agencies and the relevant private participation in it, so, just
to revive that and reinvent it.
Second, it just reminds me to say something about the
compartmentalization of the debate that's taking place between
education and poverty, because I'm kind of sick of it. Where
we've got these dueling statements--and we've got one side
saying, which I think is correct, and I don't know why
everybody doesn't agree--that we don't attack both what's going
on in the schools and have reform of what's happening in the
schools, and see to it that children are living in families
that have adequate incomes and they're not coming to school
hungry, if we don't do both of those things, we're going to
keep on losing.
Senator Dodd. I agree, too. You know, I wanted to make
this--we're always having, in a family of teachers--a sister of
mine just finished 40 years of early childhood work in the city
of Hartford. In the last school she was in they were using a
lot of the early Montessori techniques which she developed back
in the 1950s at Whitby School in Greenwich with Nancy Rambusch
and others who were pioneers in the efforts to incorporate some
of those ideas. We overload them.
The notion of connecting the family with the educational
process--and I realize teachers get resistant to this notion
idea--I've often wondered why we don't do a better job of
asking teachers to become more knowledgeable about the families
from which the child comes when they enter that classroom. They
sit down at that school desk in the morning. That child has
come from someplace.
And, at the end of that day, they're going back to
someplace. And that someplace has a profound, profound effect
on what happens during those 5 or 6 hours that that child is
sitting in front of you.
The fact that there seems to be so little effort to really
understand what the circumstances are that that child has left;
maybe without a breakfast, maybe an abusive situation, maybe a
violence-ridden neighborhood; all going back to that as well,
and then wondering why that child isn't performing as well, or
lacks the skill sets and so forth.
It seems to me unless you start making that nexus and
creating that connection, No. 1, I think it does a tremendous
amount of advancing the quality of the education of the child,
but also raising a little awareness, within an educational
setting, of where these children are coming from and what
they're facing. I don't mean just in poor neighborhoods. This
can be a problem in affluent neighborhoods. It isn't just a
question of economics. It can be a lot of other things
occurring.
I wonder if you might, Dr. Casserly, quickly--and then I'm
going to turn to my colleagues, because I've spent a lot of
time talking and chatting here, so I want to hear them. They're
going to be carrying the ball, anyway, from here, so they ought
to be asking the questions.
Mr. Casserly. Let me go back to your original question
about silo behavior and maybe Congress' role in that. I'm not
always convinced that silos are the problem; and heaven knows,
at least in the education arena we have lots of silo-like
behavior that we're constantly having to fight against. That's
why I'm not necessarily the right person to address this issue.
Sometimes Congress can actually contribute to the issue by
passing lots of very small programs that don't necessarily have
broader priority or support, that actually contribute to some
of the silo-like behavior once you get down to the State and
local level, and everybody then has a stake in trying to
protect that individual little piece.
If a program is important enough to pass, it may be
important enough to either be large enough or to be folded into
some larger, more systemic effort of the kind that Marian is
talking about.
Senator Dodd. Yes, that's a good point. Well, I'll go to my
colleagues that have shown up here. Bob, I think you were
grabbing the gavel over here a little prematurely, I thought,
from me.
[Laughter.]
Bob Casey has been a terrific friend and all--early, early
on when he first arrived here he approached me and said that he
really, really wanted to get involved in these issues. A great,
great asset to us; and did a lot of work before he arrived, on
these issues as well.
I say this to my colleagues here: I thought your opening
comments were just right on, as they always are, in my view.
And, I mentioned already, Michael and former Speaker in Oregon
who brings great knowledge to these issues in some of the
States, Jeff Merkley.
I'm going to be disappointed, I'm not here--I'll be less
than honest if I didn't say--but, I'm very, very excited about
the people who are here. I care about this very much. There's
four of them right here, but you couldn't have four better
people to carry on a tradition to worry about kids.
Bob Casey, do you want to comment? Bob.
Senator Casey. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much; and we'll
keep getting you back here one way or the other, somehow.
I want to thank our witnesses, and I want to apologize for
having to run out and come back in, as I missed some of the
testimony.
One thing I wanted to ask--and maybe I'll start with Marian
Wright Edelman, if you don't mind. You get all the tough
questions on a regular basis, I know.
I wanted to ask you, and then open it up to all of our
witnesses: If you had to pick one or two substantial steps that
the Congress could take in, literally, the next 6 months or the
6 months starting in the new Congress, what would that be? I
mean, what would your hope and your expectation be for the next
6 months or even the next year?
Ms. Wright Edelman. I would like to see you fund fully, the
Early Learning Exchange and Head Start and child care. We need
to put in place a comprehensive early childhood system in this
country. And, so, I would really talk about how we do really
significant advances, investments and getting every child ready
for school, and going to scale.
Second, I would like to see us, as title I gets
reauthorized, make sure that we have a fair funding formula and
that the formula is not continuing to be stacked against
children in areas of concentrated poverty.
We need to see how we can look at title ID and see if we
can if we can have a real dropout prevention policy for the
most vulnerable children at risk, and children who are coming
back into the community from juvenile detention and from public
affair systems.
We need a dropout prevention policy, and I think we have a
chance to try to put into place a title ID, something we
acknowledge exists, but we comingle the money for them, and so
they're not really getting the services that's going to allow
them to get back on the path to successful adulthood.
We've got a great opportunity with child care and Head
Start and the Early Learning Exchange and with title I to be
able to make some real strides for--because of no jobs and jobs
for young people and disconnected youth is just disastrous
what's going on in poor minority communities.
We don't really have a jobs strategy, and we need to try to
do that so that they will have an incentive to stay in school.
If you don't see anybody working, you don't see there's going
to be the jobs out there, and the drug dealer is the most
visible person, then you're not going to sort of have a way of
making them be excited about learning.
I would just say jobs, jobs, jobs. The Youth Promise Act,
that you had been so importantly engaged with, we need to get
investments and prevention, to get more of these young people
out of the juvenile justice system and into jobs, and keep them
in school.
I put some of that in testimony, but I will also sort of
submit for the record--but early childhood, good education, and
I mean, fair--fair funding, and title I, and job creation and a
way for these young people who have already gotten into
difficulty to come back into the community.
Senator Casey. I don't know whether we go left or right or
if anyone else--Dr. Satcher, would you----
Dr. Satcher. Yes, I want to--and I think I'm responding to
the last two questions. The Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act has a component that I think far too few people have
read, and it's for prevention agenda.
It calls for the development of a prevention council to be
chaired by the Surgeon General; and the Council will be made up
of the secretaries of all of these agencies; Commerce,
Education, Labor. I think it's the best approach I have seen
yet, bringing people together and recognizing that all policy
is health policy.
In other words, labor policy is health policy;
environmental policy is health policy; education policy is
health policy. If we are able to implement this prevention
agenda, which is--it doesn't have a lot of funding--I think
$500 million this year; then it goes up to about $2 billion a
year after 2015. Prevention, I agree, is the key. And, there's
no better time to invest in prevention than with children.
If we can really implement this prevention agenda, and as
we see it working, I think, will provide more funds for it, I
think it will deal with many of the issues that Marian and
others have talked about here. And certainly will deal with the
silos, because it brings together all of these agencies around
the issue of how can we do a better job of preventing problems
before they begin.
Senator Casey. Anyone else? I know I'm running out of time.
Ms. Blank. Can I go?
Senator Casey. Yes, or Peter.
Mr. Edelman. Please.
Ms. Blank. I would tell you to do no harm. We do have
300,000 children who, unless our money is continued, are going
to be on the streets. We're going to see Head Start and Early
Head Start classrooms that were just opened up, close down;
nowhere for the children to go; and providers are going to lose
their jobs.
There are 10,000 children on the waiting list for child
care in Pennsylvania.
The clock is ticking, and we will really go backwards; and
we can't afford to in early childhood.
As you move into the next session and you look at deficit
reduction, listen to Peter about the earned income credit and
the child care tax credit, we do have to support families, and,
I'm not sure it's silos that are our problem, or that we don't
create systems.
If we had good early childhood and good health and good
family income, they'd come together. But we don't have the will
to invest.
In the next 6 months it's really important that we keep
what we have because if you look at what's out there in early
childhood and for children and what's happening in States, we
can't slip backwards. We won't have a system to build on.
Mr. Edelman. Helen said the specific things I was going to
say, and, of course, I agree with Marian, for a lot of reasons.
[Laughter.]
I would just add that I know all of the Senators and all of
us in this room--I hope Congress is going to act before
November 30 to continue the extended unemployment benefits that
are a lifeline for such a huge number of people.
Senator Casey. Thank you. I know I'm out of time, and we
will get some other questions submitted for the record. Thank
you.
Senator Dodd. Thank you very much, Bob.
Senator Bennet.
Statement of Senator Bennet
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very
much for holding this hearing, and for your leadership over all
these years. We all wish you were staying, as well. I certainly
do.
Senator Dodd. Thank you.
Senator Bennet. One of the saddest moments of my Senate
career--a very short career--was learning that the observation
that you're entitled to your own facts but not your own
opinion, was not original with me, because I've been saying it
over, and over, and over again in town hall meetings all over
the State of Colorado, especially when you're being paid by the
taxpayers for the privilege of serving in one of these jobs.
You said at the outset that we hear these statistics and,
you know, they sort of blow by us, and it's so true.
I did a little math among the people that are sitting
behind this panel; and if they were children living in poverty
in this country, roughly four or five of them could expect to
graduate from a 4-year college, but everybody else in the room
wouldn't. Roughly six of you would be proficient mathematicians
in the 8th grade. The rest of you wouldn't. If you are
incarcerated people in our country, I'd have to get all the way
over there before I could find one person that had a high
school diploma in our prisons.
And, to Peter's point earlier, we just came out of a period
of economic growth before we were driven into the worst
recession since the Great Depression, where the median family
income fell. The first time that's happened in the history of
this country. Created no new jobs since 1998 in this country.
And, household wealth is the same at the end of the decade as
it was at the beginning. That's never happened before.
On top of all of it, we've got $13 trillion of debt on our
balance sheet. And, I've been attacked for saying this, but in
my judgment, we have almost nothing to show for it. We haven't
invested in our roads, our bridges, our wastewater systems, our
schools. We haven't even maintained the assets that our parents
and grandparents built for us, much less built the 1st
infrastructure we're going to need in the 21st century;
transportation, transit, energy.
We are in a deep, deep hole working in a town where the
political debate, in my view, is almost utterly unmoored from
the facts, almost completely unmoored from the facts.
I share the Chairman's view on the question of silos--
having been on the receiving end of this, at least on behalf of
the children in the Denver Public Schools who are really on the
receiving end of the silo efforts that are in Washington.
That's something that I believe we have to work on,
desperately, desperately need to work on.
The other question I have for the panel along those lines
is, in view of all of that, everything that I just said, and
everything that we know, there is going to be priority-setting
here. There's going to have to be, because if we don't deal
with the deficit and the debt problem the capital markets are
going to decide that question for us, and all of these programs
are going to go away.
And, my question for those of you that have been around
this a lot longer than I have been around this, is, how would
you suggest we approach, as a process question, this priority-
setting that needs to happen?
How do we have a more comprehensive discussion about the
priorities in a country that is used to being the leader in
innovation, but may not be anymore; is used to having led the
world in the production of college graduates? Today we're 12th
or 15th in the world. That's just, by the way, over 10 years.
How would you recommend we try to create the shared
understanding of the facts that the Chairman talked about? Or,
have I sufficiently depressed everybody?
[Laughter.]
Mr. Casserly. Let me take at least a first crack at it
while everybody's thinking. My sense is this----
Senator Bennet. I only ask the question because this is how
I start and end every day. And I don't have the answer myself.
Mr. Casserly. And, by the way, Mr. Chairman, just for the
record, this question exemplifies why Senator Bennet is not
only an excellent Senator, he was also an outstanding school
leader in the Greater Denver.
Senator Bennet. Thank you.
Mr. Casserly. Again, while everybody's thinking--my hunch
about this is that frankly, there is no other body in the
United States who is capable of sorting out these priorities
other than the Congress of the United States, the 50 disparate
State legislatures, the governors, all the independent
organizations, and the like, really are not equipped to sort
through all of the various needs and priorities that we have.
It's Congress that needs to do that; and frankly, this panel,
and the larger committee, is perfectly equipped and well-
positioned to have that debate about what's priority, and what
might need to fall off the cliff, and is no longer a priority
anymore.
I know this is probably not the answer that you want to
hear, but I think the answer rests right here, in this
committee.
And now maybe everybody else has a better answer.
Ms. Wright Edelman. Well----
Mr. Edelman. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Ms. Wright Edelman. No, go ahead.
Mr. Edelman. Well, the first thing I would say, Senator, is
that we need some leadership to say--from this body, from the
President--that you need to take an immediate view and a long-
term view of this.
I don't care what the economists say--that the recession is
over and that all the people on Wall Street, are making those
obscene amounts of money again--because there, as we all know,
are millions of people out there who don't have jobs.
If we had a fully honest debate about this--I don't have to
run for office, so I can say this, obviously--we would talk
about the fact that we still need to be putting money out there
in various ways to prime the pump of this economy to get it
moving again. And, that's before we get to what is a very real
problem, with which I fully agree. That's the first thing.
The second thing is, some leadership in the Democratic
Party, and among everybody who is thinking, in my view,
constructively, about the ratio between taxing people and
cutting spending, because what we're hearing from, initially
from the co-chairs of the President's Debt Commission, makes no
sense. And, that's connected to what Marian talked about--about
these continuing incredible tax cuts to the wealthiest people
in this country who absolutely don't need it, and who are
sitting wherever they sit, having a very good time watching
everybody talking about it to their benefit, who, in fact,
isn't going to get anything out of it. I don't get that.
We need those revenues to run our country. They're part of
our community, too. They should think of themselves as part of
the United States of America's society for every one of the
people who lives here. And, they should contribute to it.
That's a ratio of what we need to do.
Then, we need to have a conversation about national
priorities that talks about where we're spending money,
including on the defense side, including on a lot of other
things that we do--insisting that we're going to protect our
country, of course, so that everything's on the table to be
judged on the merits.
And then we can get into--we're still going to have some
pain. We're still going to do some things that we don't want
to, but I don't think the premises are correct right now.
Dr. Satcher. I'll be brief. I think the priority ought to
be to invest in children. I think we probably all agree on
that. And I think that investment should be in health promotion
and disease prevention; and I think it should be looked at
comprehensively, all of the things that impact the promotion of
health of children and of prevention of disease in children.
Ms. Wright Edelman. I just want to be very simple. I mean,
I just think, what do we stand for? I think you start with what
are your values, and what is the dream of America.
I just don't understand any country that could say, ``We're
the wealthiest in the world'' and let its children be the
poorest; and you know, not get the basic health care--I think
that it should--the country that does not stand for its
children doesn't stand for anything; and we don't, and we're
going to be punished for it in the lack of a future, in the
lack of competitive things.
If America can't stand for its children like every other
rich and industrialized Nation, who has more sense than we do,
we're going to fall; and we're going to deserve to fall, and to
fail. And so that the statistics that all of us have shared
today are our economic downfall, but they're also our moral
downfall.
Second, Dr. King's last sermon title, that he called his
mother the day he got assassinated, was about why America may
go to hell. And, he talked about America will go to hell if we
don't use our vast resources to help the poor. And, he died
trying to get a poor people's campaign.
What kind of country takes from the poor and the weak
children and gives it to the rich and the powerful
corporations? I mean, who in the world are we?
I think you start from a values premise of how we create a
just and fair playing field for every citizen, how we leave the
country better and more just than we found it as adults and
grandparents.
So the whole point is, is what are we going to stand for in
the world? Are we going to be a beacon of what democracy can
be? I would hope that we can begin to get back to our senses
and the basic reasons why the American dream is called the
American dream; and it certainly isn't, go backwards and eat up
the seed core in the future, and it certainly isn't letting
your most vulnerable suffer.
We say we come out of a Judeo-Christian tradition; and I
think we ought to begin trying to apply.
Senator Bennet. I'm way over, Mr. Chairman, but I think you
said it even more simply at the beginning, which was, part of
our job was to make sure we're creating more opportunity, not
less, for our kids and our grandkids.
And, if I had to say there was just one animating thing in
the town halls that I've done in the last 22 months, whether
it's Republicans or Democrats or Tea Party Folks or whoever it
is, that is a principle that everybody agrees with; and my own
view is, there's not enough of that, that leading the way in
this town these days.
So, I'd like to thank the panel.
Senator Dodd. Very good. Michael, thanks very much.
Bernie, thank you very much.
Senator Sanders. Mr. Chairman, thank you for assembling
what I honestly believe is one of the best panels, the most
knowledgeable panels, most moral panels that I've heard since
I've been in the Senate. It's a great group of people, and I'm
glad you brought them together.
Just a few points; then I've got a couple of questions.
Peter, I absolutely agree with you. In 3 hours, in terms of
the so-called Deficit Reduction Commission, we're going to be
holding a meeting here with some of the more progressive
Senators, House Members, etc., to say that--yes, we've got to
deal with the deficit, but not on the backs of poor people and
the middle class. We've got a huge expansion of military
spending, great gap between the very rich and everybody else.
There are ways to deal with the deficit without cutting
back on the needs of ordinary people.
Marian, I think you touched on--you made a point that has
come up time and time again, about what other countries are
doing. Other countries apparently understand something that we
don't--that it makes a lot more sense to invest in your
children than invest in jails. It cost more money to keep
somebody in jail than to send them to Harvard University.
Ms. Wright Edelman. Precisely.
Senator Sanders. Say a word like Marian, or Peter or
anybody else, to talk about in terms of early childhood
education; how we compare to other countries around the world,
and whether or not--not only from a moral sense of preparing
our kids for school, but just from an economic sense, whether
it doesn't make more sense to keep kids healthy, Dr. Satcher,
keep kids in school, or whether you let them drop out of school
and we pay for their jail cells.
Compare what the United States is doing to other rational
industrialized countries, Dr. Satcher. Did you want to----
Dr. Satcher. Well, when I started out, I talked about my
experience with the World Health Organization, and our
Commission on Social Determinates of Health.
And, one of the most impressive things to me was to visit
countries like Chile; that it decided that it was better to
invest in the children, especially of the poor, in terms of day
care and education and good nutrition, physical activity. And
they reasoned that later on it would save on the cost of
medical care, but also save on the cost of jail and prison.
Sweden, I think has been doing that much longer. It was
great to see a country like Chile that had made this decision
and now they were carrying it out.
We went to day care centers. We went to elementary schools,
to junior high schools, where they had model nutrition and they
had model physical activity programs. They were investing in
these children. It was their strategy.
Senator Sanders. From an economic point of view----
Mr. Edelman. That's right.
Senator Sanders. Not just from a moral point of view.
Mr. Edelman. That's exactly right.
Senator Sanders. Well, let me throw out another question.
Somehow, you know, the Government of the United States hasn't
quite caught on that the world has changed since the 1950s;
that mommy is not home with the two kids while daddy is out
working. It's amazing how little we have reached that
understanding.
God didn't create schools beginning at the age of 5.
Marian, or anybody else, if you could snap your fingers,
what kind of early childhood--would you divide, in fact, early
childhood education from education in general; or would you
say, ``Well, you know, for the working parents, if you want to
send your kid to a good quality, early childhood or preschool,
that's available to you, how would you proceed?''
Is that idea that school begins at age 5 a little bit
outdated at this point?
Ms. Wright Edelman. Well, I think that we should have a
high quality comprehensive, early childhood system that fits
within the needs of our children. And, I know how much concern
you have, and what a strong proponent you've made.
I think the children who are zero to three have different
needs, and we really should talk about the age of a child and
what's going to be developed that's mentally appropriate, and
4- and 5-year-olds may need something different.
Even though the school is the one universal system that we
have, I'm not just for lowering the school age down,
particularly when we've got--from my point of view, schools
need to do--they're not doing such a good job with the children
they have. So, I wouldn't want to get them younger.
Not to say that we wouldn't have schools as a integral part
of a delivery system in rural areas and other areas where that
may be the best way to do; but I just think we need to look at
the developmental needs of children and the needs of parents;
and then figure out what kind of system----
Ms. Garner. It's parental support.
Ms. Wright Edelman. It's parental support, and then again--
and talk about all the range of family supports from zero up
to--through schools and through graduation from schools and
into college that we need.
I'm for a little bit more diverse delivery system, even
though the school ought to be the key, and the school ought to
be made to do their jobs.
Senator Sanders. Dr. Casserly, did you want to jump in?
Mr. Casserly. Yes. I generally agree with Marian's
perspective on this. I think a diverse provider model for early
childhood education makes a lot of sense. Everybody has a
substantial role to play in this issue; schools do, the Head
Start agencies do, and other child care providers do.
Whoever does the providing, though, the basic point is that
the research is really quite clear on this issue, that by the
time the children are 2 and 3 years old, what eventually
becomes the academic achievement gap is already there.
And, if we do not do something about that in the earliest
possible years of development, then the gaps that we see all
the way through schools, that schools have been so unable to
close, will simply be continued and reflected in schools, and
maybe even perpetuated by----
Senator Sanders. What you're saying, essentially, is that
permanent damage is now being caused to many very, very young
children, and we're asking schools to do something which is
extraordinarily difficult because the damage has already been
caused.
Mr. Casserly. By not attending to early childhood
education----
Senator Sanders. Right.
Mr. Casserly [continuing]. In this country and early
childhood development, I think we do do damage.
Ms. Blank. We are seeing a growing number of States do pre-
K programs, and in some States it's actually part of the school
finance formula, which is the best way to finance it, because
we haven't found another way.
And, in many States, it's a diverse delivery system. It's
not just the schools.
Senator Sanders. Right.
Ms. Blank. Like in New York State, about 60 percent of the
pre-K is delivered in schools in early childhood settings, in
child care or Head Start Programs. And, I think we all agree
that would be better for young children.
The challenge--and it will probably be mostly the threes
and fours that will eventually be in the schools--is that
you've got to pay attention to the needs of working parents.
And everybody wants to make it simple and to make it cheap, but
the truth is, when we look at pre-K, most of it is 2\1/2\ hours
a day.
In Iowa it could be 3 days. It's only a maximum of 12
hours.
So, you actually need the full day child care subsidy to
make it fit for working parents, because I don't think
schools--and that would be ideal if somebody wanted to pay
through the school system to have the 10 hours, 52 weeks a
year.
Senator Sanders. Well, let me just pick up there.
Ms. Blank. We have to be careful when we talk about this so
children don't fall through the cracks.
Senator Sanders. Let me tell you a happy story. This is
from a terrible earmark that I got that went to schools in
Vermont--low-income schools.
We ran a summer program 40 hours a week so parents could
feel comfortable. Their kids were out in recreational programs,
in this case, through the schools, as well as learning
programs. Walked into the school. These kids were excited. They
couldn't wait to get to school in the middle of the summer.
And, what the teachers then tell you and what the principal
says, these kids are ready to go when school starts. They
haven't lost what they learned in May and June. A modest
investment.
But, it was full-time; parents felt great about it; kids
felt happy to be in school.
David.
Dr. Satcher. I just want to support the concept of
supporting parenting. When we did the Surgeon General's Report
on Youth Violence Prevention, I'll always remember it was the
only report that I did that was requested by both the President
and the Congress, because after the Columbine shooting we
looked at several strategies for youth violence prevention, and
concluded that those programs that included supporting parents,
starting with pregnancy--and then we have a lot of teenage
parents--and then in these programs there was a visiting nurse
who went and visited these parents while they were pregnant and
talked about parent-child bonding.
And then that went on after the child was born for at least
a year or more.
We're doing some of those things now in Atlanta.
The whole idea is that, if you can strengthen parenting, in
terms of nutrition, in terms of communicating with the child,
early child development, it pays off.
We saw a 50 percent reduction in those populations where
those programs were in place.
There have been several studies like that. I don't know why
we ignore them. But it shows that if we are willing to support
good parenting, through educating parents, through supporting
them--even teenagers who happen to get pregnant--if we support
them in developing as parents in bonding with the child, it
makes a big difference in the future of those children.
Ms. Wright Edelman. Can I just say one thing; that there's
some obvious building blocks that we could get done right now,
and I hope that we don't have universal kindergarten in our
States. I think it's about 12 States, if my memory is right,
but I have to check.
But the first thing, we were all talking about universal
pre-K. Well, universal pre-K without universal K makes no
sense. And so, at least you ought to bring it down 1 year, and
bring it down 2 years and put in the high-quality year-round
options.
But my basic point is, we've talked about silos from the
inside. We've also got to stop the silos on the outside.
The preschool people often don't talk to the K-people,
don't talk to the Head Start people, and Early Head Start
doesn't talk to regular Head Start, and they don't--it's about
children. It's not about providers, it's not about adult jobs;
it's about what's going to make sense and is going to be for
the best welfare of the children and their families.
All of us need to get our act together and break down these
silos. There are a couple of cracks in the barrel, and we don't
have enough funding and all that, but children have to be at
the core of the policy-development process.
So what makes sense? What's going to be good for them, not
what is our organizational interest, or what is our whatever
interest, bravado interest. And in most systems, sadly,
children are beside the point. And the debates that go on don't
have very much to do with children.
If we just keep children at the core, and families, and
what they need; and then how do we forge the right policy and
adjust them from time to time as changes needs change, then I
think we'll be on the right road.
Ms. Blank. We have one program, one national building block
that focuses on what the doctor spoke about, the needs of very
young children and their families, that's starting to fade into
the background; and that's Early Head Start.
Early Head Start was started in 1993 under President
Clinton by this committee, and it's a comprehensive approach to
reaching mothers, even pregnant mothers in young children, and
it got a big boost in the Economic Stimulus bill. But it seems
to be just fading into the background. And we actually have the
building blocks. Hopefully, we'll pull it out and have more
than 4 percent of the babies and toddlers who could use the
participation.
Senator Sanders. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Ms. Garner. It really is about supporting the mother,
though, because the children growing up in poverty, by the time
they're 3 or 4 they're hearing 33 million fewer words than kids
in middle class. There's one book for every 300 kids versus 13
books for every child in middle class. Those are just the
smallest numbers, but it's the mother knowing to talk to her
child.
And, the mother has to not be depressed; has to have
motivation. She has to be told that the child actually--that it
matters to talk to this little blob who's not talking back.
And, that's just as important. You have to take care of
mothers.
Senator Sanders. Thank you, very much.
Senator Dodd. Only a mother of a 1-year-old would call them
a ``blob''.
[Laughter.]
If any one of us had said that, however, you'd be in deep
trouble.
Ms. Garner. Yes, I can say it. I've been there.
Senator Dodd. I just have a couple of things. Michael
Bennet said something--and again, both Bernie and Michael have
been tremendously helpful in this.
And, again, I've done town hall meetings over the years.
This is the one issue, you know, we're at a time when
everyone's divided over environmental questions--what do you
do, not do? There's not a single audience I've ever appeared
before that when you say the following--there's not a single
person in the room--the one thing we care about. We care about
ourselves.
If you really probe an audience, what they really care
about more than themselves, is what happens to their kids and
their grandchildren. And, that's really what this is all about.
I mean, that's as natural as breathing, to me.
In a highly-divided country, one where there's a lot of
acrimony over various groups and organizations and what they
stand for, if you were to ask me what's the one common issue,
the one issue that we use in every faction in this country
together, it's this one. It's this one.
Now, there are debates about what you want to do, and so
on, but, nonetheless, people understand the value and the
importance, both from a national perspective as well as an
individual.
Jennifer, we talk about how to get this done. You're in the
entertainment business. And first, I'm curious about why you
chose this issue, but I wonder if you might share with us,
today, the power--I saw yesterday where the average child is
spending 5 hours a day in front of a TV screen. At least that's
what the numbers were.
Ms. Garner. It's child care.
Senator Dodd. Yes. The power of the entertainment industry,
to be able to educate, to inform--I still think it's as
compelling as anything, and historically, that's been true. You
go back and read the wonderful biographies.
A good friend of mind wrote of Louis B. Mayer and others
about how they were able, in the early days of film, to provide
a common denominator and define for a Nation a certain value
system, in many ways, because we all--or our grandparents and
parents--went to the movies; and then as such they developed
almost a sense of unity in the way that other events,
historically, had not provided for the country.
It's a rather interesting story, in my view; what the
entertainment industry has been able to share with us; product
placement, all of the ideas we know that go on as a way of
instructing, informing people, educating people, promoting
products and so on.
I wonder if you've given any thought on how they--the
business from which you come. You've made the choice, which is
fabulous. You picked out this cluster of issues to focus your
attention on.
I wonder if you have any thoughts at all about how we can
convince--or whether or not there is an appetite within the
industry itself. And I realize it's a big, diverse industry,
but, with video games and all of the things that are going on
out there, if something more could be done within that
industry, which I suspect has an appetite to want to be
helpful, that could allow us to maybe do a better job on some
of the things we have a hard time doing here.
And again, Dr. Casserly's point about why do we do this
thing in slices? I'll tell you why; because it's the only way
to get it done. I've been the sponsor of Marian's bills--our
comprehensive bills. We could never get one other co-sponsor.
And, yet, if I pick out a slice of it and I make it narrow
enough, I can go around and I can shop it and I spent thousands
of hours, I spent shopping ideas to get a co-sponsor on the
other side to work on it. And, every time I get with--when
someone tries to expand the product, it runs into a deep hole.
It never comes out.
The rationale for doing this is not because we don't agree
with you--I do agree with you. But, if I waited for that to
happen, we'd be sitting around here still talking about the
things that we wish would occur.
I'm jumping around a little bit, but Jennifer, do you have
any thoughts on that?
Ms. Garner. Well, your first question, why I became
interested?
Senator Dodd. Right.
Ms. Garner. In this issue.
Senator Dodd. Right.
Ms. Garner. Just briefly. I know everyone's been here a
while. My mother grew up the daughter of a dirt farmer in
Oklahoma, one of 11 kids in extreme poverty during the
depression--extreme poverty. She was the only one to leave and
to go to college and travel the world, actually. And the way
that she did that was--there was a reason, she believes, that
she had those opportunities because her family was committed to
reciting poetry as they did the chores, singing together,
reading together. They would muster up books and read them,
read them, read them, re-read them, re-read them.
And, she had kindergarten-readiness when she started school
just from those basic building blocks, just kids trying to get
through the day together without a nickel to rub together. And,
because of that she always excelled in school. She knew how to
learn, she knew--and because she got that positive
reinforcement from school, she went on and graduated from
college.
I grew up, then, in West Virginia where I was, of course,
surrounded by--I grew up in a middle class family. I was very
fortunate. My parents knew that education was the foundation
for everything, but I was surrounded by kids who I could see,
with my own eyes, had much less than I did, and I saw that they
did not do as well in school.
It was very easy for me, when I started to have a little
bit of a voice in the world, I felt like other than the great
mentorship I got from Marian early on, the kids in my community
were not being serviced.
So, that is what led me to Save the Children, who work,
specifically, more with kids in rural America.
And, the entertainment industry is an incredibly
philanthropic industry, don't you find? And, very eager to get
involved and dig into Washington, certainly, and muck around
here.
Entertainment is not the answer to educate kids, by any
stretch. I may do it, but I don't have a TV on in my house,
although I will be on Sesame Street in a couple of weeks, and
that's kind of the biggest moment of my career to date.
This problem of kids sitting in front of a television while
their parents are doing everything, it's certainly pervasive,
and there are good, educational stuff on television. It's not
that I don't believe in Sesame Street or Dinosaur Train, but
there has to be money to fund those. There has to be money to
fund PBS or else the things that kind of put sarcasm and
ugliness and kids putting each other down, which as far as I
can tell, is what's offered to young children, is going to be
more the norm.
Senator Dodd. Yes. Well, I hear you and I see that as well,
and because I don't think you're going to necessarily change--
unfortunately, watch it, but a lot of these so-called child
care settings, which are not the ones that we've talked about,
but where, basically pretty much putting a bunch of kids in
front of a TV screen for 3 or 4 hours, and that constitutes
child care.
And, to the extent the industry is so much of what kids
learn, what they model and so forth, there's no reason why a
good story can't be told in a way----
Ms. Garner. Well, there's no Mr. Rogers anymore. It's
``iCarley'' and ``Hannah Montana.''
Senator Dodd. Yes. And, I'm just as curious as to why,
because I suspect there are people who are involved in that who
would also want to be associated and think of themselves----
Ms. Garner. Of course. Absolutely. But, they're in a
business and those shows were funded. They were funded by the
public broadcasting network, and--isn't that PBS' Public
something, and if they're not funded, they'll go to what makes
money and what sells their corn flakes, and that's this stuff
that you see on television now.
Senator Dodd. Gary Goldberg, whom I've known for a long
time is involved in some of the most successful commercial
television programming. He's also one of the great advocates of
child care.
One of the oldest child care settings in the country is in
Santa Monica, which was developed during World War II, and
sustained itself, even though others closed their doors when
lifestyles changed at the end of World War II, and yet it
developed some very good, very successful commercial
programming that also had the ability of also being a source of
positive messaging, and can make a difference.
I'm not expecting people to become all PBS stations,
necessarily. I realize that's not going to happen, but again,
I'm not going to dwell on this particular point, but since we
had you in front of us here, and you come out of the industry,
I thought I'd at least explore the idea with you, as to whether
or not there might be a better way, since it preoccupies so
much of a child's time, it seems to me, that we're not going to
stop that, necessarily.
So, the question is, can we channel it in some way----
Ms. Garner. Yes.
Senator Dodd [continuing]. To have a more positive impact
on this whole question we're raising. And, with adults, as
well. I mean, a lot of the times, what programming between 7
p.m. and 10 p.m., so-called ``prime time''--to what extent--are
there any efforts, during that programming, to be able to also
use it as an educational tool on what's occurring in our
country.
Ms. Garner. No, sir, there are not. I've been on these
programs. We don't try to educate you; we try to sell you cars.
Senator Dodd. Yes.
Ms. Garner. Yes, there is definitely a missed opportunity
in educating and entertaining kids at the same time.
Senator Dodd. Yes.
Ms. Garner. It's out there. Those shows do exist. They are
successful. But it is not the norm.
Senator Dodd. No. Well, with that note of good----
[Laughter.]
Well, listen, I too want to echo what Bernie Sanders said,
and that is--and for me, of course, over the last 30 years,
it's not been an uncommon experience to have the wonderful
pleasure of sitting on this side of the dais, to hear the
eloquence and compassion and commitment of so many of you at
the table this morning.
It's a nice note on which to end, I think.
[Applause.]
[Additional material follows.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Prepared Statement of Debra L. Ness, President, National Partnership
for Women & Families
SECURING OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE THROUGH FAMILY-FRIENDLY PUBLIC POLICIES
The National Partnership for Women & Families applauds Chairman
Dodd for his career-long dedication to improving the lives of women and
children. We thank him for convening these hearings to point the way
for future action on these vital issues.
Children are our Nation's future. Safeguarding their health and
enhancing their ability to learn must be a top priority. America's
children will only thrive if the people who care for them the most--
their parents and guardians--can take the time away from work to look
after them when they are sick. Family-friendly workplace policies that
provide paid sick days and paid family leave are crucial to the health
and well-being of America's children.
Let's face it--children get sick. Children face both short-term,
common illnesses and long-term serious health conditions; in both
cases, they need their parents with them to get better faster. Younger
children in particular need parental care and supervision when they
fall ill, and sick children of all ages need parents to administer
medicine and take them to medical appointments. Study after study shows
that children recover faster when cared for by their parents. The mere
presence of a parent at a child's bedside shortens the child's hospital
stay by 31 percent,\1\ reducing health care costs and improving health
outcomes.\2\
Children--and our communities--suffer when parents lack paid leave.
Despite the clear benefits for children and families, many parents
can't be there for their sick children because their employers don't
offer paid sick days or paid family leave. At least 53 percent of
working mothers and 48 percent of working fathers don't have access to
paid sick days to care for a sick child or recover from their own
illnesses \3\ and only 10 percent of private-sector workers have access
to paid family leave through their employers.\4\
When routine illnesses like the flu strike, many children go it
alone at home without anyone to care for them, or they go to school
sick--and risk getting sicker--because their parents can't take time
off from their jobs. Parents without paid sick days are more than twice
as likely to send a sick child to school or daycare.\5\ When children
go to school or child care sick, it affects their ability to learn, and
the health of other children, teachers, and child care providers is
also put at risk.\6\ The result is similar to when sick adults go to
work: decreased productivity, increased contagion and higher rates of
infection for all.
Paid leave is good for newborns and early childhood development as
well. Paid parental leave is associated with lower child mortality
rates and healthy child development.\7\ Children whose mothers take
longer leaves before returning to work full-time after giving birth are
more likely to be taken to the pediatrician for regular checkups and
more likely to be breast-fed, which contributes to life-long child
health.\8\
The health and well-being of children improves when mothers and
fathers have access to paid sick days and paid family leave. When
parents can't take time away from work, children cannot get the timely
medical care they need. Parents without paid sick days are five times
more likely to take a child or other family member to an emergency
room.\9\ In contrast, working parents with paid sick time or paid
vacation days are five times more likely to stay home to care for their
sick children than those without paid time off.\10\ Children's long-
term health is better because they are more likely to be taken to well-
child visits and to get their immunizations, which may prevent serious
illnesses, when their parents have paid sick days.\11\
Working families across the country need and want these policies.
Seventy-six percent of Americans believe that businesses should be
required to provide paid family and medical leave, including 61 percent
of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats.\12\ States and cities
across the country have already taken the lead in moving legislation
forward and the time has come for Federal action as well. Proposals
like the Healthy Families Act and paid family leave insurance programs
would make a tremendous difference to the health and well-being of our
Nation's children. They must be a priority for this committee and the
Congress in the future.
References
\1\ Jody Heymann, The Widening Gap: Why America's Working Families
Are in Jeopardy--and What Can Be Done About It, Basic Books. 2000.
\2\ S.J. Heymann, Alison Earle, and Brian Egleston. 1996. As cited
in Vicky Lovell, Paid Sick Days Improve Public Health by Reducing the
Spread of Disease, Institute for Women's Policy Research. 2006. http://
www.iwpr.org/pdf/B250.pdf.
\3\ Vicky Lovell, No Time to Be Sick: Why Everyone Suffers When
Workers Don't Have Paid Sick Leave, Institute for Women's Policy
Research. 2004. http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/B242.pdf.
\4\ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, ``Table 32: Leave benefits:
Access, civilian workers,'' National Compensation Survey. March 2010.
http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2010/ebbl0046.pdf.
\5\ National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago
for the Public Welfare Foundation, Paid Sick Days: Attitudes and
Experiences. May 2010. http://www.publicwelfare.org/resources/DocFiles/
psd2010final.pdf.
\6\ Ibid.
\7\ Christopher J. Ruhm, ``Parental Leave and Child Health,''
Journal of Health Economics, Vol. 19, No. 6, 952. 2000.
\8\ Lawrence M. Berger, Jennifer Hill, and Jane Waldfogel,
``Maternity Leave, Early Maternal Employment and Child Health and
Development in the U.S.,'' The Economic Journal, Vol. 115, No. 501, 44.
2005.
\9\ See note 5.
\10\ S.J. Heymann, S. Toomey, and F. Furstenberg, ``Working
Parents: What Factors are Involved in Their Ability to Take Time Off
From Work When Their Children are Sick?,'' Archives of Pediatrics &
Adolescent Medicine 153. August 1999. 870-74. As cited in Lovell 2006.
\11\ See note 2.
\12\ Heather Boushey, ``It's Time for Policies to Match Family
Needs.'' 2010. In Maria Shriver, Heather Boushey, Ann O'Leary, and John
Podesta, The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything. 2009.
http://www.americanprogress.
org/issues/2010/03/pdf/work_survey.pdf.
Prepared Statement of Tracy L. Wareing, Executive Director,
THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HUMAN SERVICES ASSOCIATION
Chairman Dodd, Ranking Member Alexander, and honorable members of
the Children and Families Subcommittee, the National Association of
State Child Care Administrators, an affiliate organization of the
American Public Human Services Association, respectfully submits this
statement for the record on ``the state of the American child.''
APHSA is a nonprofit, bipartisan organization representing State
and local human service professionals for more than 80 years. NASCCA
serves State child care administrators and supports its members in
developing, promoting and implementing child care and early learning
policies that improve the well-being of children and the quality of
child care. NASCCA brings State child care administrators' perspective
on issues facing the Nation's low-income children and families to the
forefront of Congress and the Obama administration.
As you know, child care is an essential resource for America's
families to obtain and secure employment while simultaneously ensuring
that today's children are prepared to be tomorrow's leaders. The Child
Care and Development Fund plays a critical role in providing low-income
families with subsidized child care so they can work or attain
training/education and at the same time, support the investment of
quality care and early education for children. The CCDF is a flexible
block grant; therefore the program is operated with great variation
among States. The CCDF lead agencies provide training, grants and loans
to providers, improved monitoring, compensation projects and other
innovative programs. In addition, child care administrators use CCDF to
make systemic investments, such as developing quality rating and
improvement systems and professional development systems to improve the
overall child care infrastructure. States may access up to 30 percent
of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families transfer funds for child
care expenditures. Maintaining the relationship between TANF and child
care is essential for low-income families to continue working while
their children receive quality care and education.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided States with
additional funds to maintain their child care programs within tough
budget constraints. States have been using these dollars in a variety
of ways; however, stimulus funds were mainly used to lower child care
copayments and make them affordable for families who have been greatly
affected by the economic downturn. Some States, territories and tribes
have used ARRA funds to increase provider rates, which has been an
important incentive to help child care providers maintain their
businesses and continue operating their services. Without stimulus
dollars, many children eligible for child care subsidies would have
been restricted from receiving this support, parents would have been
challenged to obtain work without access to affordable care for their
children, and child care waiting lists would have been greater. ARRA
dollars are a one-time-investment and although they will soon expire,
child care administrators have wisely and efficiently used these funds
to restore and revamp the child care infrastructure, which are
projected to produce better outcomes in years to come. These
advancements include professional development opportunities for child
care providers, technology enhancements that improve data collection
and reports and promotion of quality child care. Stimulus funds have
been critical in providing families with economic support and States
with fiscal relief to maintain their programs during this time of
recession. We thank Congress for this temporary relief; however, more
work needs to be done to continue these developments.
Federal child care funding levels have not aligned with program
needs and with the increase in inflation since 2002. In addition, while
States focus on improving the quality of child care programs, low-
income families struggle with affording the costs associated with
enrolling their children in high-quality child care settings. High-
quality care is in great demand and is beneficial for securing the
Nation's workforce and developing human capital. As a result, it will
alleviate the economic burden in our country and produce a return on
States' investment. To ensure that more children gain access to this
type of early education, it is essential for Congress to reauthorize
the Child Care and Development Block Grant.
We recommend the following:
Increase CCDBG funding levels and maintain its
flexibility;
Maintain partnership with the TANF program;
Relax Federal requirements for matching funds;
Support States' efforts to address the workforce
development needs of child care workers that promote high-quality care
and early education.
We look forward to working with Congress on these recommendations.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit our comments and your interest
in examining the state of the American child. If you have any
questions, please contact Rashida Brown at (202) 682-0100 x225 or
[email protected].
Response to Questions of Senator Hatch by Marian Wright Edelman
Question 1. A portion of your testimony was devoted to the subject
of gun violence among our Nation's youth. You made the following
statement in both your written and verbal testimony:
The terrible Taliban terrorist threat to American child and
citizen safety is rivaled by the terrible NRA threat which
terrorizes our political leaders from protecting our children
from the over 280 million guns in circulation which have taken
over 110,000 child lives since 1979, when gun data collection
by age began.
Now, I won't fault anyone simply for engaging in hyperbole to make
a larger point. However, I believe it is more than simple exaggeration
to compare the Taliban to the National Rifle Association. It is, quite
simply, needlessly inflammatory and, in my opinion, irresponsible. The
NRA has nearly 4 million members representing all walks of American
life. In most polls, it has a higher approval rating than either
political party. More importantly, virtually every poll has shown that
the vast majority of Americans support the NRA's chief policy goal,
which is the preservation of the rights of gun ownership for law-
abiding citizens.
Obviously, you are free to disagree with the NRA's position on any
number of issues. I am, of course, aware that it is all the rage these
days to compare one's political opponents to the worst elements of
human society, whether it is Hitler or the Taliban. However, I believe
such tactics are detrimental to our discourse and, in the end,
unpersuasive.
My question to you is: Do you honestly believe that one can make a
meaningful comparison between the NRA and the Taliban? Do you truly
believe the NRA is responsible for gun violence in America? If so, does
that responsibility extend to the NRA's millions of members and the
majority of American citizens who support the rights of gun owners?
And, do you include the Supreme Court--which has validated the NRA's
position on the meaning of the Second Amendment--in that criticism?
Many members of Congress also share this view. Are we, in your view,
also culpable for the deaths of children?
Answer 1. Over 280 million guns are in civilian hands in the United
States; that is approximately 9 guns for every 10 men, women and
children.\1\ Every year, an estimated 4.5 million new firearms,
including 2 million handguns, are sold.\2\ With this many guns in
civilian hands, the terrible truth is that there is no place to hide
from gun violence. Children and teens are not safe from gun violence at
school, at home, or anywhere else in America.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ L. Hepburn, M. Miller, D. Azrael, and D. Hemenway. 2007. The U.
S. Gun Stock: Results from the 2004 National Firearms Survey. Injury
Prevention 13: 15-19. Available at http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/
content/13/1/15.full. Accessed July 2010.
\2\ Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. 2000. Commerce in
Firearms in the United States. Washington, DC: Department of the
Treasury.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Children in America face the highest death toll from guns of any
other industrialized nation. Internationally, no other country comes
close. Children and teens killed by gunfire in 2007 nearly equaled the
total number of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq since the war started and
were more than four times the number of American combat fatalities in
Afghanistan. The child gun death toll since 1979 is double the death
toll of U.S. soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.
Although polls show that the majority of Americans favor common-
sense gun control laws that would reduce the epidemic of gun deaths,
Federal and State legislative reforms have been difficult to achieve. I
firmly believe that the National Rifle Association (NRA), with its
growing power and political influence, has been a major impediment to
the passage of common-sense gun legislation that could help keep our
children safe from guns.
As you know, Congress has not embraced pursuit of significant gun
control legislation in nearly two decades, despite an annual rate of
firearm deaths that exceeds all other industrialized nations. The 1993
Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act required gun dealers, but not
private sellers (known as the ``gun show loop hole''), to run
background checks on gun buyers. One year later, Congress passed
legislation banning private ownership of assault weapons. Since then,
there has been only bad news. Rather than acting to stem gun violence,
Congress let the assault weapons ban expire and passed legislation to
protect gun manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits if their guns are
used to commit a crime.
We need to protect our children by enacting legislation to limit
the number of guns in our communities, control who can obtain firearms
(keep guns out of the hands of criminals and people who kill children),
and ensure that guns in the home are stored safely and securely. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 2
million children live in homes with loaded and unlocked guns.
The NRA has made clear its opposition to nearly all forms of gun
control including restrictions on assault weapon ownership (which have
nothing to do with hunting), handgun registration requirements, and
buyer background checks, despite a recent survey suggesting its members
may have more moderate views about certain gun control measures.\3\ The
NRA continues to go to great lengths to protect gun rights and actions
that often result in policy and real life outcomes that are not in the
best interest of our Nation's children and threaten their safety.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ ``Gun Owners: NRA Gun-Owners and Non-NRA Gun Owners,'' Poll
commissioned by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, December 2009.
Available at http://www.mayorsagainstillegal
guns.org/html/federal/nra_member_poll.shtml.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For example:
A popular 2009 bill that placed certain restrictions on
credit card lenders came with a totally unrelated provision negotiated
by the NRA which allows people to carry loaded guns in national parks.
In the 2010 health care debate, the NRA successfully
lobbied Congress to include a little noticed provision that will
prohibit health insurance companies from charging higher premiums for
people who keep a gun in their home.
In June 2010, a measure that would have given the District
of Columbia a voting seat in Congress never made it to a vote in part
because the NRA inserted a provision to substantially weaken the
District's gun laws.
The NRA has also worked to build influence by working out a deal in
2010 to exempt only itself from the DISCLOSE Act, a campaign finance
bill that would require groups that spend more than $10,000 a year on
campaign activities to disclose their donors.
It seems nonsensical that U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
regulates toy guns and teddy bears but not real guns that snuffed out
the lives of 3,042 children and teens in 2007.
The U.S. Supreme Court has recently concluded that the Second
Amendment's guarantee of an individual right to have a gun in the home
for self-defense applies to Federal, State and local gun control laws.
However, it is significant and important to note that the Court also
was careful to point out that its recent rulings do not prohibit all
government regulation of guns. The Court specified that the government
has a vital interest in placing limits on certain types of guns, the
sale of guns and where they can be kept and carried. Urgent steps must
be taken to keep our children and communities safe from guns.
Question 2. I'd also like to take a closer look at some of the
numbers cited in your testimony. In your statement, you cited that
there were roughly 3,000 gun-related deaths among American children in
2007. I presume you got these numbers from the National Center for
Health Statistics (NCHS). What you didn't cite was the fact that most
of the deaths represented in that number were not among children, nor
even adolescents. The vast majority of the gun-related deaths cited in
your testimony occur among juveniles and young adults, those between
the ages of 15 and 20. Only a very small percentage of those deaths
were among people young enough to fit the normal understanding of
childhood ages.
More importantly, you also neglected to mention the fact that,
according to the NCHS, gun-related deaths in the U.S.--including those
among young people--have been declining steadily over the last three
decades. This decline in gun violence has occurred even as public
support for the rights of gun owners has increased and as supporters of
Second Amendment rights have continued to prevail politically.
Do you acknowledge that, according to the available evidence, gun
violence in America is actually on the decline instead of getting
worse? If so, to what would you attribute the decrease in violence,
given that, according to your testimony, political leaders have been
``terrorized'' from protecting our children?
Answer 2. As we acknowledge in the Children's Defense Fund's recent
report, Protect Children Not Guns 2010, gun violence among children and
teens has been declining since the mid-1990s. After reaching an all-
time high of 5,793 gun deaths in 1994, the annual number of firearm
deaths of children and teens declined by 47 percent between 1994 and
2007, although the number increased in 2005 and 2006 and remained above
3,000 in 2007. Although the total annual number of firearm deaths of
White children has historically surpassed Black children (until 2007),
gun deaths among White children and teens have decreased by 54 percent
since 1979 while gun deaths of Black children and teens have increased
by 61 percent over the same period.
While recognizing the overall decrease in gun deaths, I firmly
believe that the number of children and teens killed by guns every year
in this country--3,042 in 2007--is profoundly unacceptable. We also
must not forget the 17,253--almost six times as many--children and
teens who suffered non-fatal gun injuries and their emotional aftermath
that same year.
We are clear in our Protect Children Not Guns 2010 report that 95
percent of firearm deaths of young people occurred among children and
teens 10 to 19 years old and we believe that each of their lives is of
equal value. More young people in that age range die from gunshot
wounds in America than from any cause other than motor vehicle
accidents. Shamefully, in 2007 there also were 154 children younger
than 10 killed by firearms. The 85 preschoolers in this group exceeded
the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty that
year.
Every adult and leader has a responsibility to protect children and
to take necessary steps to stop this senseless and unnecessary loss of
young lives and the other physical and emotional harm to children and
teens resulting from guns. Many children in poor neighborhoods are
suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder on a daily basis, which
cripples their lives, but the random mass killing--whether at Columbine
or Virginia Tech--could be alleviated if powerful automatic weapons
were not available to non-law enforcement officials. Guns make anger
lethal and victimize innocent people including children.
[Whereupon, at 12:37 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.