Tonight Governor Walker delivers his State the State address. He is expected to talk about his vision of where Wisconsin should be headed, outline his priorities for the remainder of his second term, and describe how he thinks the state should move forward economically. Traditionally, governors haven’t used the State of the State...
As I reflect on Martin Luther Kings’ legacy, and the distance that we have travelled over the 52 years since his “I Have a Dream Speech,” I am struck by how much farther we have to go, as a nation, and as a state. A recent study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation showed that the well-being of Wisconsin’s African-American children is the...
No matter who you are, or what you do, we can all agree that we want what’s best for Wisconsin’s kids. Access to health coverage is a critical piece of the puzzle to set children up for success. A recent report from the Georgetown Center for Children and Families (GCCF) and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) found that we’re making...
Child Trends has released a blog on paid family leave, finding that family leave laws in the United States lag behind those in other countries. It is embarrassing that the United States and Papua New Guinea are the only two countries in the world to not provide any income coverage during maternity, according to the report. Wisconsin has...
If you have been living in a cave or have been transfixed watching only football over the last two weeks – let’s hope neither is the case – you perhaps have missed the extensive main media and social media attention that has been given to the controversial Netflix documentary, Making a Murderer. The murder of Teresa Hallbach in the fall...
As advocacy efforts to raise the age of adult court from 16 (yes 16) to 18 in New York continue, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his plan to give former youthful offenders a second chance by pardoning those who committed nonviolent crimes as youth but have since been law-abiding citizens. New York is one of just two states that...
Here are a few key highlights from the federal budget that passed in late December: Preschool Development Grants were restored to $250 million (this is third year funding for the 18 states that previously won preschool development or expansion grants). Head Start was funded at $9.168 billion, an increase of $570 million from the...
The latest quarterly report from the Department of Health Services (DHS) has some very good news on Wisconsin’s Medicaid budget. The report released yesterday projects that the state share of Medicaid spending will be $72.6 million less than previously expected over the course of the current biennium. The substantial savings in state...
I thought our readers would be interested in a new policy brief on continuity of care. The policy brief, The Importance of Continuity of Care: Policies and Practices in Early Childhood Systems and Programs, includes a section on research detailing the importance of continuity of care and an analysis of state policies and programming...
A recently released report from the Sentencing Project, Declines in Youth Commitments and Facilities in the 21st Century, summarizes the dramatic declines in youth confinement that have occurred across the country over the last decade or so. This is not news to those who have followed the trends of dramatic declines in juvenile arrests...
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