Wisconsin Ranks 10th in the Nation in Overall Child Well-Being, But Still Struggles When it Comes to Minority Children

Wednesday, June 21st, 2023 -- 10:00 AM

(By Corrinne Hess, Wisconsin Public Radio) Wisconsin ranks 10th in the nation in overall child well-being, according to the latest 2023 Kids Count report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. 

According to Corrinne Hess with Wisconsin Public Radio, the report analyzes how children and families are faring looking at four areas: education, health, economic well-being and family and community.

"A child’s chances of thriving depend not only on individual, family and community characteristics, but also on the state where they are born and raised," according to the report. "Policy choices and investments also influence children’s chances for success."

For the last five years, Wisconsin has been ranked between 10th and 13th in the country. This year, New Hampshire ranked first, followed by Utah and Massachusetts. Mississippi, Louisiana and New Mexico are the three lowest-ranked states. This year’s report focus­es on how expen­sive and hard-to-find child care affects par­ents. It also describes how low pay has led to a chronic shortage of providers.

"A good child care sys­tem is essen­tial for kids to thrive and our econ­o­my to pros­per," Lisa Hamil­ton, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion said in a statement. "With­out safe child care they can afford and get to, working par­ents face impos­si­ble choic­es, affect­ing not only their fam­i­lies but their employ­ers as well."

The Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation works with federal, state and local governments to provide grants to help children facing challenges related to poverty. In its report, the group made the following recommendations related to the high cost of child care.

Fed­er­al, state and local gov­ern­ments should invest more in child care. State and local gov­ern­ments should max­i­mize remain­ing pan­dem­ic recov­ery act dol­lars to fund need­ed child care ser­vices and capac­i­ty.

Con­gress should reau­tho­rize and strength­en the Child Care and Devel­op­ment Block Grant Act and increase fund­ing for pub­lic prekinder­garten and Head Start. Pub­lic and pri­vate lead­ers should work togeth­er to improve the infra­struc­ture for home-based child care, begin­ning by low­er­ing the bar­ri­ers to entry for poten­tial providers by increas­ing access to start­up and expan­sion capital.

To help young par­ents, Con­gress should expand the fed­er­al Child Care Access Means Par­ents in School pro­gram, which serves stu­dent parents. The issue has been central in Wisconsin where for weeks, child care providers and parents have asked the state Legislature to keep in place a federal pandemic relief program that helped them improve pay for their employees while keeping tuition costs for families down.  

That program, called Child Care Counts, will be cut in half and new restrictions will be put into place later this year. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers included $340 million in his 2023-25 Wisconsin state budget to stabilize the program, but Republicans cut it from the budget.

While Wisconsin children and families overall rank 10th, Emily Miota, a spokesperson with Wisconsin's Kids Forward which helped author the report, said Black and brown children are struggling.

"Our state still faces some of the most extreme racial disparities in the country, especially for Black children and families," Miota said. "So, it's important to note that this 10th place ranking really doesn't tell the whole story."

The report found Black and brown children are more likely to be living in poverty. One in three Black children were living in high poverty areas from 2017 to 2021. That’s compared to 1 in 6 Native American children; 1 in 8 Latino children and 1 in 100 white children.

Children of color are also not doing as well as their white counterparts in school. Latino children are six times higher to be living in a household that lacks a high school diploma than white children. And Black children are nearly five times more likely not to graduate high school on time than white children, according to the report.

"These are just a couple of examples, but closing these gaps will obviously be key to ensuring everyone in Wisconsin has an opportunity to thrive, especially Wisconsin's Black and brown families," Miota said. Wisconsin’s overall numbers slipped in the areas of health and education.

More low-birth weight babies are being born in Wisconsin, compared to in 2019 and children and teen deaths per 100,000 is up compared to two years ago, according to the report. Only 38 percent of Wisconsin fourth graders are proficient in reading and 38 percent of eighth graders are proficient in math.

A bill is currently working its way through the state Legislature that would overhaul how Wisconsin schools teach reading, moving away from what is known as "balanced literacy" to a "science of reading" approach.

Instead of being taught reading through pictures, word cues and memorization, children would be taught using a phonics-based method that focuses on learning to sound out letters and phrases.

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