Iowa kids -- good trends and not

The Gazette Editorial Board

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This year's results of a highly regarded annual survey of child well-being contained mostly good news for Iowa, which once again was named as one of the best states in the country for children.

Seventh best, to be exact, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation's annual Kids Count report, which tracks nearly two dozen indicators concerning health, education, economics and social and family dynamics to measure child and family well-being.

According to the recently released report, our state boasts lower-than average numbers of babies born with low birth weight or born to teen parents. The number of teen child and teen deaths in the state is lower-than-average and dropping. Same goes for the number of Iowa teens abusing alcohol or drugs. More kids in Iowa are covered by health insurance, are attending preschool and graduating with their high school class. Those are all trends to be proud of.

But within that rosy picture, are at least two areas of concern.

First, more Iowa children are living in poverty than in past years - 17 percent in 2011 compared to 14 percent in 2005, according to the report.

Second, we showed no recent improvement on two important school-proficiency benchmarks.

Just as was the case in 2005, only one-third of the state's fourth-graders test proficient in reading; one-third of our eighth-graders are proficient in math, according to the report.

Together, those two indicators paint a picture of a frustrating catch-22.

The link between poverty and school performance is well established, even if the reasons for the correlation are unclear: Across all grades and ethnicities, children who live in poverty are statistically more likely to struggle in school.

But education can be a critical escape hatch from persistent poverty: Research has shown that, generally speaking, the better-educated people become, the more likely they will find a job, and the more money they'll make over a lifetime.

Education can be the key to breaking cycles of poverty and ensure a brighter future for all of Iowa's kids and subsequent generations. As a state, focusing on effective education and improving the system must always be a high priority.

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