Shaping Our Children's Destinies
Policy briefing covers foster care, education, and childhood obesity

Fall 2005, Volume 27, Number 1

	From left: Dorothy Roberts, Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, and Kristin Butcher take questions from participants.

More than 75 people turned out for IPR’s policy briefing, Shaping Our Children’s Destinies: How policies in child welfare, education, and health are affecting at-risk children. The event was the first in a series sponsored by the Joyce Foundation and took place on Nov. 30, 2004.

Each of the experts tackled one of three specific issues: racial disparities in the child welfare system, alignment of pre-K to third grade to improve educational outcomes, and the rise in childhood obesity.

Racial disparity in child welfare systems

State child welfare systems oversee a disproportionate number of nonwhite children compared to white children. Is this because these children suffer from higher rates of poverty, welfare receipt, and parental incarceration that they wind up in the system? Or is there an inherent racial bias in the system? IPR Faculty Fellow Dorothy Roberts, Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law, argues the latter.

Roberts pointed out that in 2000 children of color made up 31 percent of the general population, but accounted for 59 percent of the children in foster care and 61 percent of those waiting for adoption. The picture for African American children was particularly dire: While they comprise only 15 percent of the general population, they represent 41 percent of children in foster care.

“African Americans are arguably the worst off in the child welfare system,” Roberts said.

The combination of harsh external social factors and the inherent systemic biases create a snowball effect, she observed, increasing disproportionality at each point of the foster care system’s decision-making chain.

Roberts argued that although researchers are increasingly investigating the reasons for racial disproportionality, too few have examined its impact on communities where child welfare agency involvement is concentrated.

She discussed a study she is conducting in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood that explores the effects of high rates of state involvement on community life and civic participation.

Pre-K to third-grade alignment: Hope for better educational outcomes

Currently, 30 percent of U.S. kindergarten teachers report that half of their students are unprepared for school, pointed out IPR Faculty Fellow Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, professor of human development and social policy.

This variability mainly stems from social inequality in the U.S., compounded by a disconnected patchwork of Head Start, childcare, early intervention programs, kindergarten, and first through third grades, she said. This fragmented system is less effective in preparing children to succeed in school—as opposed to a fully integrated system such as France’s écoles maternelles.

Chase-Lansdale, chair of the board of directors of the Foundation for Child Development, laid out the organization’s call for a new start. Called “PK-3,” it would begin with voluntary full-day pre-kindergarten for three- to four-year-olds and end in third grade. A PK-3 system aligns standards, curriculum, and assessment across these grades. Cost estimates run $9,000 per child per year versus $7,000 for Head Start. Economic assessments show that PK-3 returns up to $7 for each $1 invested.

A few states such as Florida, Georgia, and Massachusetts are working on such systems, but implementation is difficult, she acknowledged. Turf wars, funding complexities, teacher availability and retention, and curricula development represent just a few of the obstacles. But progress is being made, with the best PK-3 model represented by the Chicago Child-Parent Centers, Chase-Lansdale said.

The current U.S. educational model of kindergarten to high school is “out of date in the 21st century,” leaving the least prepared and most at risk even farther behind, she noted.

Childhood obesity: Trends and possible causes

Over the past three decades, the rate of childhood obesity in the U.S. has tripled. As these children grow into adulthood, serious health, social, and economic problems associated with obesity are likely to rise. Kristin Butcher, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, has studied the possible causes of this rapid growth in childhood obesity.

Between 1967 and 1996, she found that the percentage of working, married mothers with children at home rose from 48 to 75 percent. What counts, however, is not whether a mother works, but the number of hours she works. Mothers in the top income quartile, for example, worked on average seven more hours per week in the mid-90s than in the mid-70s, Butcher said. This change can account for between one-tenth and one-third of the obesity increase seen in their children.

“When you are working [longer hours], you don’t have a lot of time to chop vegetables and go play in the park,” Butcher observed.

In schools, Butcher found that by 2000, 85 percent of high schools made junk food available to children, and 50 percent allowed snack or soda ads. The sales of junk food and the advertisements typically generate money for the schools that “principals can use to fund programs they care about,” Butcher said. Financially strapped schools were the most likely to give students access to junk food. The increase in access to junk food in schools may account for 20 percent of the increase in the average adolescent Body Mass Index over the 1990s, she noted.

To view the full presentations, please go to
www.northwestern.edu/ipr/events/briefing1104.html