Children of color are behind in most categories at state and national levels, according to the Race for Results report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Improvements have been made over the past decade, but no racial or ethnic group came close to the maximum index.
Alabama ranked number one for the wellbeing of Indian or Alaska Native children but ranked number fifty for Latino children. Alabama is below the national average in both fourth grade reading and eighth grade math, particularly for Black and Latino kids. Twenty-eight percent of overall kids in Alabama are reading proficiently. One in five kids in Alabama are proficient in math. These disparities are significant for Black, Latino and native kids.
Many factors went into the report such as family educational status, neighborhood context, two-parent households and poverty rates.
Leslie Boissiere is the VP of External Affairs at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. She said the future of the economy and workforce rely on kids.
“It's important that we resource all kids no matter what communities they live in, no matter what their race or ethnicity, to make sure that every kid has the resources that they need, that they can go to good schools, that they're supported in such a way that they can succeed because the future of our economy, the future of our workforce and the future of the country relies on our support for all kids and families,” Boissiere said.
Boissiere also mentioned that states could make improvements with the help of federal dollars.
“We know that there are policies and programs that are effective in lifting families out of poverty. If we look at the pandemic era, the expansion of the Child Tax Credit lifted millions of children nationwide out of poverty. More than 800,000 black kids, more than a million Latino kids and more than 700,000 white kids,” Boissiere said. “States have the ability to pass both a Child Tax Credit and an Earned Income Tax Credit that will allow them to lift their families in their state up out of poverty as well,” she further explained.
According to Boissiere, a $3,000 investment goes a long way.
“We know that kids [who] are in financially secure households. Kids [who] are living above the poverty level are more likely than other kids to do well in school … and it only takes a small investment of $3,000 a year for a low-income family [and] for their kids to do better,” Boissiere said.
The report offered more ways to advance universal policies. This includes designing programs that help families provide for their child’s future while reducing racial disparities and expanding Medicaid coverage. More on the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Race for Results report can be found here.
