The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires states to have a health insurance “Exchange” that will provide high-value and affordable coverage for consumers, including individuals and small businesses, in place by 2014. The Exchange will be a marketplace where Arkansans can go to enroll in private insurance plans and, for those with income […]
Research continues to confirm the importance of high-quality early childhood education as a strategy for improving the social, emotional, and intellectual development of children as well as increasing the likelihood of their future academic and economic success. A 2008 study by Jay Barth and Keith Nitta, for example, found that access to quality pre-k in […]
Executive Summary: Download the executive summary for a brief overview of the full report. Over the last two decades, standards-based education reform has led the march toward accountability, high-stakes testing, and rigorous performance standards for the United States’ education system. Beginning in 1990 with President George H. W. Bush’s America 2000 legislation, continuing with President […]
In 2008, the national Closing the Addiction Treatment Gap (CATG) initiative was launched in Arkansas with support from the Open Society Foundation and with local support from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and the Arkansas Community Foundation. The goal of the initiative was to mobilize public support for expanding addiction treatment by increasing public funding, broadening insurance […]
A quality K-12 education is critical to the future well-being of Arkansas’s children. The benefits of a high-quality education, or the negative impacts brought about by the opposite, will affect almost every aspect of a child’s life well into adulthood. A quality K-12 education makes it more likely that a student will graduate from high […]
The child poverty rate in Arkansas, now at 26.8 percent, is higher than the national average and shows a disturbing upward trend that’s likely to continue as the state experiences the effects of the recession. Over the last ten years for which data is available, the poverty rate has increased by just over two percent. […]
The child poverty rate in Arkansas, now at 26.8 percent, is higher than the national average and shows a disturbing upward trend that’s likely to continue as the state experiences the effects of the recession. Over the last ten years for which data is available, the poverty rate has increased by just over two percent. […]
We never forget that behind every statistic is a living, breathing child. While we work each day to examine the causes of large-scale poverty issues in Arkansas, we are reminded that our work has real impact when we see positive changes for individual families. In 2011, we saw this in the drop in the number […]
The National Center for Youth Law and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency recently released Arkansas Youth Justice: The Architecture of Reform. The report details efforts to transform the juvenile justice system in Arkansas. The gist? Efforts by government officials, advocates, judges, service providers, youth, and their families have reduced the state’s reliance on secure confinement […]
It’s no surprise that recession has hurt Arkansas families, especially children. The state’s child poverty rate continues to increase and is now well over 27 percent. But new data on uninsured children provide some good news for Arkansas children and families—more Arkansas kids have health coverage than ever before thanks to ARKids First (Medicaid and […]