A pair of recently released reports illustrate how far our region and state have to go to provide better outcomes for our children and youth – and how the pandemic has complicated those efforts.
According to the 2021 Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Arizona was slowly making improvements in multiple areas for children. The state is consistently in the bottom 25% for overall rankings, but had shown gains in 2019 in both the economic well-being of children and with more elementary and middle school students meeting math and reading proficiency levels.
And then COVID hit.