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Texas Near the Bottom of Child Well-Being Indicators

Posted byHoumanitarian

(Carrie Feibel, KUHF Public Radio)
A national report that measures the well-being of children ranks Texas 44th in the country. The report tallies how well Texas kids are doing in areas like health coverage and teen births. The lone star state is not shining too brightly when it comes to child welfare.

For Texas kids, the report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation is a mixture of good and bad news. Texas scores improved slightly in some areas, but declined in others.

Frances Deviney is an analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank in Austin. She says unfortunately the overall picture is still troubling:

 “But in each of those areas whether we’ve gone up or gone down, we’re still in the bottom states.  For example, in economic well-being, which includes children in poverty or children whose parents don’t have secure employment, we actually rank in the bottom third of states. We’re 33rd in the country. In education we’re 32nd and that includes children attending pre-school and how we perform on reading and math and graduation rates.”

The report does include some bright spots. For example, Texas improved on the percentage of children attending preschool, and the percentage of high schoolers graduating on time. But as Deviney points out the legislature recently cut grants for both preschool and graduation programs.
(See the full story at KUHF Public Radio)

To see full report see KidsCount.org website.

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