Act to ‘Leave No Child Behind’

Surrounded by hundreds of supporters waving signs in the shadow of the US Capitol, Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Congressman George Miller of California, and Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), announced details of a new bill that would help ensure that all children in America get what they need to thrive and grow up safe, healthy and educated.

The Act to Leave No Child Behind provides 12 specific titles to improve the lives of children, including:

• Ensuring health insurance for all children and their parents

• Lifting all children out of poverty—half by 2004, all by 2010

• Fully funding quality Head Start, child care, and preschool programs

• Making sure every child can read by fourth grade and leave school ready for work and life

• Providing all children with quality after-school and summer programs.

“Too many children are struggling in a sea of hardships,” said Dodd, Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s Subcommittee on Children and Families. “By investing in initiatives that work today, we invest in tomorrow, and by doing so, recognize that while our children may only be one quarter of our population, they are one hundred percent of our future.”

CDF supports this legislation because it addresses the needs of the whole child, rather than a fragmented series of steps. The Act brings together child advocates and service providers in a range of areas affecting children. Edelman wants to hold President Bush to his promise to ‘Leave No Child Behind.’ She said, “We should hold him and the Congress to this standard until all Americans can proudly say, ‘We Leave No Child Behind.’”

“It is time for the richest nation on Earth to do what we know works to help all of our children,” said Edelman. “Children who are homeless, hungry, neglected, abused, without health care, in unsafe communities and schools” do not represent “acts of God,” but “our moral and political choices as a nation.” She continued, “It is shameful and unnecessary that 12 million children are poor and 10.8 million children lack health insurance. We know how to solve these problems. Now we must build the political and civic will to do so.” #

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