Full Description
This landmark volume commemorates the fortieth anniversary of the Children's Defense Fund, which has been an uncompromising champion of American youth for all of those years. Yet the book looks not to the past but at our current circumstances - and at the challenges we must meet now and in the future on behalf of our young people. The book examines critical issues - prenatal and infant health and development, early childcare and education, school reform, the achievement gap, vulnerable children, juvenile justice, and child poverty - and highlights crucial practical and policy measures we need to consider and undertake if we are to better serve American children.
An invaluable survey of the conditions facing American youth - and a call to action at the local, state, and national levels - Improving the Odds for America's Children is an urgent, informative, and inspired volume that addresses shortcomings and challenges we cannot afford to ignore.
Contents
CONTENTS
Foreword by Congressman George Miller ix
Introduction
Kathleen McCartney, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Laurie B. Forcier 1
Prenatal and Infant health and Development
1 Health Care for Children: Forty Years of Health Policy 13
Sara Rosenbaum and Partow Zomorrodian
2 A Healthy Start Before and After Birth: Applying the Biology of Adversity to Build the Capabilities of Caregivers 28
Jack P. Shonkoff
Early Childhood Care and Education
3 A Great Beginning: Ensuring Early Opportunities forAmerica's Young Children 43
Joan Lombardi
4 A Future for Preschool in the United States: Integrating Innovations from Global Perspectives 58
Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Kathleen McCartney
School Reform
5 The Past as Prologue to the Future: Envisioning School Reform for the Twenty-First Century 73
Deborah Jewell-Sherman
6 Building a Twenty-First-Century School System: Creating a Teaching Profession and Multiple Student Pathways 84
Jal Mehta and Robert B. Schwartz
The Achievement Gap
7 Confronting the Achievement Gap: A District-Level Perspective 101
Jerry D. Weast
8 Rising Inequality and the School Performance of Low- and High-Income Children 121
Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane
Vulnerable Children
9 Beyond Child Protection: Helping All Families Provide Adequate Parenting 135
Michael S. Wald
10 Child Protection and Child Welfare: Meeting the Needs of Vulnerable Children 148
Jane Waldfogel
Juvenile Justice
11 The Wheel Turns: Recreating a System of Justice for Juveniles 161
Robert G. Schwartz
12 Using Scientific Research to Transform Juvenile Justice Policy and Practice: A Modest Success Story and Some Suggestions for the Next Four Decades 174
Laurence Steinberg
Child Poverty
13 Policies to Reduce Poverty: Supporting Family Income as an Investment in Children's Futures 189
Arloc Sherman, Robert Greenstein, and Sharon Parrott
14 The State of Research on Children and Families in Poverty: Past, Present, and Future Empirical Avenues of Promise 203
Eric Dearing
Afterword by Marian Wright Edelman 217
Notes 221
Acknowledgments 255
About the Editors 257
About the Contributors 259
Index 265
