CHILD CARE AND EDUCATION

N.H ranks best in 'Kids Count' ratings again

For the fourth time in five years, New Hampshire ranked as the best state for the well-being of children according to Kids Count, an annual survey conducted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Unfortunately, the fact that New Hampshire has nearly one in 10 children living in poverty was good enough to give the state the top rank for this category nationwide.

Nine percent of New Hampshire's children — 26,000 — were living in poverty as of 2007, down 1 percent from last year, but up 3 percent from 2000.

Nationally, 18 percent of children were living in poverty, based on the most recent data from 2007, which predated the onset of the current recession.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, a charitable organization that works to improve the life of disadvantaged children and partners with state advocates such as the alliances, based its rankings on federal data measuring 10 indicators of child well-being. They are the percentage of low-birthweight babies, children living in single-parent households and the number of teenagers between 16- and 19-years-old not in school or working; and the rates of infant mortality, child death, teen death, teen birth, high school dropouts, children living in families where parents do not have secure employment and children living in poverty.

Behind New Hampshire's top ranking are its top 10 rankings in nine of the indicators and its top rank for child poverty and the teen birth rate, which stood at 19 percent in 2006. The national teen birth rate is 42 percent.

The state ranked 17th for its 6.1 percent infant mortality rate, which represents 87 deaths in 2006. The state had a 5 percent rank in 2002.

Rates increased for the percentage of low-birthweight babies and rates of infant mortality, child poverty and children of parents with secure employment.

The state improved in child and teen deaths, teen births and high school dropout rates, which have gone from 9 percent in 2000 to 4 percent in 2000.

The number of children in single-parent families and those not working or going to school remained the same, at 25 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

Source: Kids Count Data Book 2009, the Annie E. Casey Foundation

Children identified with a disability, Ages Birth - 3
who received services from Early Support and Services (Community Partners)

A median-income family spends 11% of its annual income on child care and a low-income family spends 24% of its annual income on child care.

Source: The Governor’s Business Commission, New Hampshire’s Child Care Challenge, Spring 2000

At a Glance: Child Care in New Hampshire
The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy

• 60% of working New Hampshire parents with children under six need child care outside their homes.

• It is estimated that NH employers annually lose between $12 and $24 million to child care related absences.

• In 1997, 2,620 welfare recipients entered the workforce, creating the need for 6,5OO additional child care slots.

• In 1997, an estimated 89,072 NH children needed care outside their homes. New Hampshire had 32,093 licensed child care slots available, which means there was only enough child care for 37% of the children that needed it.

In New Hampshire:

• 44% of children age 16 or younger are in child care during the regular school year.

• Among two parent families where only one parent works, only 20% use child care.

• Among two parent families where both parents work, 55% use child care.

Among those who use child care:

• About one-fourth (23%) are enrolled in a child care center.

• About 32% receive child care from an established child care provider who is not a friend or a family member.

• Nearly one-half of children use some type of child care through a friend (18%) or a family member (27%).

• Children of families with low annual income are equally as likely to be placed in child care as children of families with high annual income. However, one-third of families with annual income below $18,000 obtain child care from a family member, while only 9% of families with annual income above $50,000 rely on family members to provide care.

Based on the actual cost parents pay for child care, and the reported number of hours spent in child care per week, it is estimated that for 40 hours per week parents are paying an average of:

• $134.80 per week/$7,009.60 per year to provide child care for an infant.

• $112.40 per week/$5,844.80 per year to provide child care for a toddler age 1-3.

• $107.20 per week/$5,574.40 per year for a pre-school child age 4-5.

The Governor's Business Commission on Child Care and Early Childhood Education found that the average New Hampshire family spends about 18% of its annual income on child care and that businesses in the state lose up to $24 million because of child care related absenteeism.

Single Parent/ One Child	Single Parent/ Two Children	Two Parents/ One Child (Both Parents Working)	Two Parents/ Two Children (Both Parents Working)
$479.82/mo	$782.27/mo	$479.82/mo	$782.27/mo

New Hampshire Basic Needs and a Livable Wage
The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, June, 2000

Source: From Cradle to Career, Quality Counts 2007, Editorial Projects in Education

KIDS COUNT New Hampshire is a project of the Children's Alliance of New Hampshire, in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The Children's Alliance is a multi-issue child advocacy organization working to move public policy to make New Hampshire one of the best places anywhere for a child to grow up – a place where every child is valued and no child is left behind.

A Child Potential Index score was calculated for over 200 New Hampshire communities, summarizing the degree to which risk factors that limit children from realizing their full potential are present in each community. The index combines seven community-level measures of child risk known to be highly correlated with poor outcomes for children. A high incidence of these risk factors among children in a community can be expected to limit the long-term social and economic success of children as well as the long-term social and economic success of the community as a whole. Scores range from a potential high of 100 (if no child risk factors were present in the community) to a theoretical but unlikely score of O if all child risk factors were present among all children in a community).

The factors comprising the index affect the well-being of children from the earliest days of life. These factors focus attention on the importance of early interventions that not only impact longer-term health and behavior patterns, but also have the greatest potential for long term economic and social paybacks.

The seven components of the Child Potential Index are:

• Teen births as a percentage of all births
• Percentage of mothers who smoked during pregnancy
• Percentage of births to single mothers
• Percentage of births to mothers with less than 12 years of education
• Percentage of children receiving free or reduced lunch
• Percentage of births to mothers not receiving prenatal care
• Unemployment rate

The Children's Alliance of New Hampshire's KIDS COUNT project groups every city and town in the state into one of five clusters according to its ranking on each of four factors that create an economic environment: per capita income, median family income percent of children living below poverty, and percent of children living below 185% of poverty. Cluster 1 towns (red) are the wealthiest and cluster 5 towns (dark grey) are the poorest.

Education is the most important force that affects income inequality.

The behavior of relative wages of skilled and unskilled workers is an outcome of an education race between technological change and increases in educational attainment.

The median earnings for workers without college are still low, hovering around 150 percent of poverty for a family of three.

Source: From Cradle to Career, Quality Counts 2007, Editorial Projects in Education

From The Bottom Line, Children's Alliance of New Hampshire, Fall 2001

Low Educational Attainment

In the new economy, the best jobs go to those with higher education. The recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s was a key factor in the growing gap between the top and middle income groups in New Hampshire. During this recession, many New Hampshire workers lost jobs in traditional manufacturing and related industries—jobs that paid good wages and did not require advanced education. These types of employment opportunities have not returned, and never will. Structural changes in global, national and state economies mean that good wages are more dependent than ever before on higher levels of educational attainment. And yet, New Hampshire youth are lagging behind in high school completion and matriculation in higher education.

Low Post Secondary Graduation Rates

In New Hampshire today, approximately 66% of public high school graduates go on to post-secondary education, compared to 75% in New Hampshire's economic peer states.

Youth who end their education with a high school degree have limited prospects in the New Hampshire economy. For example, average annual income is 40% lower for high school graduates than for those with a four-year college degree.

New Hampshire's relatively low high school completion and postsecondary matriculatian rates reflect, in part, New Hampshire's continuing support of education at levels significantly below that of other states. In per capita spending on education at both the local and state level, New Hampshire ranks 14th nationwide, below its northern New England neighbors (Maine and Vermont), and in sharp contrast to its 6th place ranking in per capita income.

At the post-secondary level, local and state support for New Hampshire's public colleges ranks 49th in the nation—about half the national average. As a result of this under-funding, the total college costs for in-state students is the third highest in the nation. And New Hampshire funds scholarships and student aid at the lowest rate in the nation. The low level of state support for public colleges and for in-state students has resulted in New Hampshire ranking 46th among all the states in the percentage of high school graduates going on to college in state. This has resulted in a "brain drain," with the best and brightest New Hampshire students leaving the state.

The death rate for individuals with less than 12 yrs. education and age 45-64 and age 65+ are 39.2% and 31.9% higher respectively in the Rochester health service area than at the state level. (1993-1997)

Source: NHDHHS - OCPH, Primary Care Access Data Report: Assessing New Hampshire's Communities,1993-1997

Compared to other communities in the state, Rochester hovers near the bottom in the New Hampshire Educational Improvement Assessment Program scores. The scores are divided into four categories: novice, basic, proficient and advanced. The Legislature has determined that all students should score in the basic category, indicating they understand the subject matter. This year, 27 percent of the 10th grade class scored in the basic and above category. Seventy percent of 10th-graders scored in the novice area, a level the state ranks as not understanding the subject matter.

There are more babies born to mothers with less than a high school education in the poorer communities of Strafford County. The fact that in poorer communities more children live with undereducated parents could be a major factor for variations in the test scores, since the parents' educational attainment could affedt whether learning in school is reinforced at home.

The "Wealthiest" to "Poorest" clusters were determined by the 1996 Kids Count New Hampshire Data Book.

The five clusters are based upon:
1993 Income per Capita
1989 Median Family Income - the best available measure of family income (excludes college students and other single persons).
% of Children in Families Below Poverty - the best measure of the presence of very poor children in a community.
% of Persons Below 185% of Poverty - the best measure of the presence of the “working poor” in a community.

One of almost every 10 students at Somersworth High School and one of almost every 15 students at Dover High School end up dropping out.

According to updated school profiles compiled by the state Department of Education, 9.5 percent of Somersworth High School students dropped out of school during the 2000-01 academic year. At Spaulding High School in Rochester, 7.8 percent, or one of every 12 students, dropped out during that same year.

Statewide, an average of 5.4 percent of high school students dropped out.

Some school districts in the Seacoast had better than the state average dropout rate, including 1.5 percent at Oyster River High School.

From One in Four:School Drop-Outs in New Hampshire, New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies, June 2002

Approximately 25 percent of New Hampshire's high school students drop out, yet few parents or policy makers in New Hampshire seem aware of the magnitude of the problem. Imagine, though, the impact that a little honesty might have, if every high school graduation ceremony this spring included empty chairs among its graduating class for those students who had dropped out along the way. In Nashua and Milton and Somersworth, every third chair would be empty. In Pembroke and Lincoln-Woodstock and Winchester, every fourth chair would be empty. Every seat in Hopkinton would be occupied with a graduating student, but in Franklin, every other seat would be empty.

"The attrition over four years of high school, termed the cumulative rate, is approximately four times the annual rate."

The U.S. Department of Education and the NH Department of Education have traditionally issued reports that contain annual drop-out rates. The February 2002 report for New Hampshire high schools stated a state average drop-out rate of 5.4 percent for school year 2000-01. The public's general understanding is that this is a measure of how many students in a given class do not graduate. For example, a Portsmouth Herald editorial, reacting to the announced rate of 3.8 percent for Portsmouth High School, condemned that fact that "about one out of every 25 students (leave) school before graduation."' This is incorrect. The editorial should have alerted readers to the fact that about one out of every six students at the high school drop out before graduation. In a similar manner, a New Hampshire high school principal and a key state lawmaker separately expressed concern about the announced drop-out rate for their local high schools. Both were appalled when shown that the rate that had concerned them was only a quarter of the true cumulative rate.

A new report says the state has reduced the high school dropout rate to about one in five children, but is still undercounting dropouts and failing to adequately track students who switch schools.
From 1999 to 2004, the dropout rate fell from 25 percent to 20 percent, "a significant change," according to the report released September, 2006 by the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies.

Source: Kids Count Data Book 2009, the Annie E. Casey Foundation