Education
Helping Candidates Do Their Homework
2016 Candidate Briefing Guide
2016 is an important election year in Utah. The public offices on the ballot in November include the following:
- U.S. Senate
- U.S. House of Representatives
- Governor and Lt. Governor
- Half of the State Senate
- The entire Utah House of Representatives
Our elected officials play a central role in determining whether all children have the opportunity for health, safety, education, and economic security. As the Utah child population grows and becomes more diverse, it is important for candidates to discuss the needs of Utah children and the policies they would pursue to ensure that all Utah's children can thrive.
Voices for Utah Children is providing candidates for elected office in Utah with the resources in this Candidate Briefing Guide to help them understand the challenges facing Utah's children, direct public awareness and dialogue toward the needs of children over the course of their campaigns, and begin their terms of office prepared to enact effective policies to protect their youngest constituents.
Utah voters can also use these resources to educate ourselves about children’s issues as we seek to elect candidates that will prioritize the needs of children and invest in our state’s future.
More Information:
Racial and Ethnic Equity for Children in Utah: What we learned from the 2016 Legislative Session
Economic Security/Tax & Budget
Supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, our KIDS COUNT® work aims to provide Utah’s legislators, public officials and child advocates with reliable data, policy recommendations and other tools needed to advance the kinds of sound policies that benefit children and families across the state.
This year, Utah barely held on to its position among the top ten in the annual Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT® Data Book report. Ranking 9th in 2015, Utah now ranks 10th among the fifty states (despite a dramatic change in the health domain, where Utah dropped from 7th in 2015 to 27th in 2016). Utah’s 2nd place ranking for the Family & Community domain and 8th place ranking for Economic Well-Being remained unchanged. In the Education domain, Utah ranked 21st — up from 29th in 2015.
Terry Haven 
Deputy Director
Voices for Utah Children
More Information:
Measures of Well-Being in Utah, 2015
2016 Utah and United States Kids Count Profiles
The Federal Safety Net Cuts Child Poverty in Utah in Half
Each child brings the promise of a healthier, stronger future for Utah. To make good on that promise, Utah needs to make sure children can grow up healthy, from the prenatal period all the way through their teenage years.
Utah children and families should have access to:
- Appropriate prenatal care;
- Affordable, accessible, culturally competent care that encompasses both prevention and treatment; and
- Supportive services and environments designed to help facilitate the best possible health outcomes.
All families in Utah must be able to achieve optimal health in order for our state to continue to grow and prosper.
Jessie Mandle, MPH 
Health Policy Analyst
Voices for Utah Children
More Information:
12-Month Continuous Eligibility for Children on Medicaid
Utah's Uninsured Rate for Hispanic Children: Highest in the Country
A Coverage Gap Solution for Utah Families
Majority of Eligible Parents Who Would Benefit from Medicaid Expansion are Working
Voices for Utah Children seeks to reduce juvenile incarceration rates and eliminate the inappropriate use of secure confinement and out-of-home placement, ensuring that juvenile correction systems better protect youth and the public.
A key aspect of our juvenile justice work involves a commitment to challenging the School-to-Prison Pipeline, wherein children — particularly children of color and those with disabilities — are funneled out of public schools and into juvenile and criminal justice systems in a discriminatory application of discipline. “Zero-tolerance” policies criminalize minor infractions in the classroom, while the presence of law enforcement officers in schools often leads to student behavior being criminalized rather than handled within the school setting.
We are committed to the belief that children should be educated, not incarcerated. We work to empower advocates and community members alike, arming people with information that allows them take action to end School-to-Prison Pipeline.
Lincoln M. Nehring, JD 
President & CEO
Voices for Utah Children
The early years in a child’s life form the core foundation for later social, emotional and cognitive development. Done well, early childhood education can help level the playing field, especially for low-income children, by closing the access and achievement gaps, thereby enhancing not only school performance, but self-sufficiency over a lifetime.
At Voices for Utah Children, we focus on promoting targeted investments in early childhood education, with the goal of creating a statewide early learning system in Utah that supports all families by making sure they have access to high-quality options for their children’s early care and learning—whether children spend their days at home, in formal child care, or with family and friends.
Tess Davis, JD 
Policy Analyst
Voices for Utah Children
More Information:
Optional Extended-Day Kindergarten
5 Minute Guide to Shared Services
Economic Security/Tax & Budget
Every day, state governments raise and spend tax revenue in ways that profoundly affect families and communities. The fiscal choices Utah makes — about investing in schools, health care, child care, and other services — can help foster equal opportunity and lay the foundations for our future growth and prosperity.
Voices for Utah Children's fiscal policy program works to ensure that we invest sufficient resources in the vital public systems that ensure that our kids get world-class education and health care as well as special support for children most in need. We also work to ensure that public revenues are generated in ways that are fair; no family should be taxed into poverty as the price of educating their children.
Matthew Weinstein, MPP 
State Priorities Partnership Director
Voices for Utah Children
More Information:
Utah Children's Budget Report 2015
What's Still Eating Utah's General Fund?
Top 10 Reasons to End the Earmarks
Deseret News: Social service advocates call for lawmakers to 'end the earmarks'
Utah Policy.com: Poll: Utahns Split on Eliminating Transportation Earmarks
A Comparative Look at Utah and Colorado:
Part 1: Economic Opportunity
Part 2: Standard of Living
The Earned Income Tax Credit: A Time-Tested Two-Generation Strategy for Poverty
For 30 years now, Voices for Utah Children has called on our state, federal and local leaders to put children’s needs first. But the work is not done. The children of 30 years ago now have children of their own. Too many of these children are growing up in poverty, without access to healthcare or quality educational opportunities.
How can you be involved?
Make a tax-deductible donation to Voices for Utah Children—or join our Network with a monthly donation of $20 or more. Network membership includes complimentary admission to Network events with food, socializing, and opportunity to meet child advocacy experts. And don't forget to join our listserv to stay informed!
We look forward to the future of Voices for Utah Children and we hope you will be a part of our next 30 years.
Special thanks to American Express for sponsoring our 30th Anniversary Year. 
The goal of the Working Families Benchmarking Project is to identify a variety of economic trends affecting working families across Utah, and then to examine those issues through a comparative lens, evaluating Utah’s overall progress by using a peer state as a benchmark. Colorado was chosen for this inaugural edition, in part for its geographic proximity to Utah — and thus relatively similar regional identity — as well as for its comparable rates of economic and population growth, demographics, and policy challenges.
Many existing economic comparison studies and rankings look at the economy as a whole or at its impact on specific sectors or on employers. This project seeks to augment those very useful comparisons by focusing on how the economy is experienced by middle and lower-income families. In particular, it is these families whose children are most at risk for not achieving their potential in school and later in the workplace and in society in general. Thus, how they experience the economy is of particular interest to Voices for Utah Children.
In Part I of the Project, we focus on economic opportunity. The dynamism, flexibility, and competitiveness of a state’s economy is a major contributor to economic opportunity, so we look at this topic through a wide range of metrics, from business climate and entrepreneurship rankings to educational attainment and demographic gaps.
Utah ranks ahead of Colorado in:
Business climate rankings- Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth
- Lower unemployment
- Labor force participation
- Higher education system investment
- Referring fewer minority youth to the correctional system
- Reducing inequality and increasing social mobility
Colorado outpaces Utah in:
- Pre-K and kindergarten enrollment
- K-12 investment and performance
- Higher education attainment
- Workforce productivity
- Entrepreneurship
- The status of women in the economy
The gaps in educational attainment are perhaps the finding
of greatest concern for Utah’s long-term future.
Since education is the foundation of opportunity and prosperity in a modern economy, Colorado’s success in educating its population and attracting highly educated migrants from other states may well hold lessons for Utah. Utah is wise to invest more that Colorado in higher education to attempt to make up this gap and should apply a similar lesson in the area of pre-K-12 funding.
As Utah builds on its many assets and grapples with its challenges in the years to come, we hope that this benchmarking project may contribute in a constructive way to the broader economic policy conversation among experts, policymakers, and the general public.
For more detailed information, see the complete printer-friendly report:
Working Families Benchmarking Project Part One: Economic Opportunity
These measures of economic opportunity also relate directly to the questions we address in Part 2: Standard of Living.
For 30 years now, Voices for Utah Children has called on our state, federal and local leaders to put children’s needs first. But the work is not done. The children of 30 years ago now have children of their own. Too many of these children are growing up in poverty, without access to healthcare or quality educational opportunities.
How can you be involved?
Make a tax-deductible donation to Voices for Utah Children—or join our Network with a monthly donation of $20 or more. Network membership includes complimentary admission to Network events with food, socializing, and opportunity to meet child advocacy experts. And don't forget to join our listserv to stay informed!
We look forward to the future of Voices for Utah Children and we hope you will be a part of our next 30 years.
Special thanks to American Express for sponsoring our 30th Anniversary Year.
Love UT Give UT is Thursday, March 31 and we need your help!
Donate Now
Public policies affect children—but children don’t vote. At Voices for Utah Children, we raise our voices on behalf of children, informing policymakers that government can and should act to keep kids safe and help them succeed.
Voices for Utah Children actively seeks grant money from children’s foundations to support our research and educational efforts, but most grant funding cannot be used for lobbying. Voices for Utah Children needs donations from community members to fund staff time at Capitol Hill—where we put our knowledge about children into action by supporting legislation that protects and invests in children.
Your support was crucial to the successful legislative session we just completed. Because of your donations, Voices for Utah Children won important victories benefiting Utah children and families:
- Additional money for quality preschool for 4,000 children;
- Removal of the 5-year waiting period for legal immigrant children to help 1,000 children enroll in CHIP and Medicaid;
- Expanded Medicaid coverage to 3,800 parents in poverty;
- The first CHIP and Medicaid outreach funding since 2007 to support the Department of Health’s efforts to reach and enroll eligible Hispanic families.
Utah’s statewide day of giving is Love UT Give UT on March 31. Your tax-deductible donation to Voices for Utah Children goes even further during the Love UT Give UT campaign. Generous donors may match your donation and if Voices for Utah Children is among the Utah charities that receive the most donations of at least $10 each from different individual supporters, we could win up to $10,000 to support our mission.
In this video, a Utah child explains some of the victories Voices for Utah Children has won for Utah kids. Help us keep speaking out for the next generation of Utah kids. Donate by March 31 to Voices for Utah Children through Love UT Give UT at http://bit.ly/loveUTchildren
Video: A 10-year-old explains why you should support Voices for Utah Children
Donate Now
March 31, 2016 is Love UT Give UT!
It’s a day for Utahns to give to the nonprofits that make Utah special. Every donation to Voices for Utah Children through Love UT Give UT gives Voices a chance to win matching grants and prizes.
And you don't have to wait! Donate now at http://bit.ly/loveUTchildren.
For 30 years now, Voices for Utah Children has called on our state, federal and local leaders to put children’s needs first. But the work is not done. The children of 30 years ago now have children of their own. Too many of these children are growing up in poverty, without access to healthcare or quality educational opportunities.
How can you be involved?
Make a tax-deductible donation to Voices for Utah Children—or join our Network with a monthly donation of $20 or more. Network membership includes complimentary admission to Network events with food, socializing, and opportunity to meet child advocacy experts. And don't forget to join our listserv to stay informed!
We look forward to the future of Voices for Utah Children and we hope you will be a part of our next 30 years.
Special thanks to American Express for sponsoring our 30th Anniversary Year.
A Tale of Two Utahs: How do Urban and Rural Utah Measure Up?
It is widely agreed that rural communities have a different set of issues than more urban communities. While all low-income families, regardless of where they live, need connections to support programs and access to economic opportunities, strategies that work in urban areas often cannot be applied to rural areas where social and economic programs are few and far between.
Because access to services is such an important issue in Utah’s rural areas, it is imperative that policymakers and service providers have a clear view of the problems facing rural communities. In Voices for Utah Children’s annual publication Measures of Child Well-Being in Utah, a variety of child well-being indicators are presented at the county level. These indicators cover important milestones in areas such as economic security, education, and health.
This edition of Data Links explores several of the indicators annually presented in Measures to see how much or if child well-being differs in rural communities as compared to urban communities.
DEFINING URBAN AND RURAL
There are a myriad of definitions for “urban” and “rural” from a variety of sources. For the purposes of this report we have chosen to use three categories based on the American Community Survey’s three breakdowns for the one year, three year and five year estimates:
Urban Areas - Areas with populations of 65,000+
Urban/Rural - Areas with populations of 64,999 to 20,000
Rural Areas - Areas of population 20,000 and under
Counties included in each area are indicated in the box to the right.
CONCLUSION
This data brief started out by saying it is widely agreed that rural communities have a different set of issues than urban communities. Access to services is difficult for a variety of reasons including lack of transportation and a lack of service providers. When there are no providers in town and individuals must wait on availability, scheduling can become a problem. In some cases where an individual has no family leave policy, traveling to a provider can mean missed wages. Child well-being indicators for children in rural Utah are, in general, slightly worse than those in urban areas. This makes all the above issues even more pressing and an area of concern that needs to be addressed.
“In urban areas, questions of access to care often revolve around whether all segments of the population have access to the full range of specialized medical centers serving the metropolitan area. In rural areas, the issue is often whether there are any health care facilities and providers to access at all. Large metropolitan counties have nearly four times as many physicians per 100,000 residents as do rural counties with only small towns."
Demographic Trends in Rural and Small Town America KENNETH JOHNSON, Carsey Institute Reports on Rural America 01/2006
Printer-friendly report:
A Tale of Two Utahs: How do Urban and Rural Utah Measure Up?
(Sources and definitions are available in the printer-friendly version of this report.)
March 31, 2016 is Love UT Give UT!
It’s a day for Utahns to give to the nonprofits that make Utah special. Every donation to Voices for Utah Children through Love UT Give UT gives Voices a chance to win matching grants and prizes.
And you don't have to wait! Donate now at http://bit.ly/loveUTchildren.
For 30 years now, Voices for Utah Children has called on our state, federal and local leaders to put children’s needs first. But the work is not done. The children of 30 years ago now have children of their own. Too many of these children are growing up in poverty, without access to healthcare or quality educational opportunities.
How can you be involved?
Make a tax-deductible donation to Voices for Utah Children—or join our Network with a monthly donation of $20 or more. Network membership includes complimentary admission to Network events with food, socializing, and opportunity to meet child advocacy experts. And don't forget to join our listserv to stay informed!
We look forward to the future of Voices for Utah Children and we hope you will be a part of our next 30 years.
Special thanks to American Express for sponsoring our 30th Anniversary Year.
2016 Utah Legislative Session
The 2016 Utah Legislative Session is underway January 25-March 10. Learn more about issues affecting children that will be addressed during this session:
Tax and Budget Issues
Creating a State Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
Health Issues
Restore Funds for CHIP and Medicaid Outreach
12-month Continuous Eligibility
Education Issues
Optional Extended Day Kindergarten
Bills
News Contact Lawmakers Sign Up for E-Alerts
For 30 years now, Voices for Utah Children has called on our state, federal and local leaders to put children’s needs first. But the work is not done. The children of 30 years ago now have children of their own. Too many of these children are growing up in poverty, without access to healthcare or quality educational opportunities.
How can you be involved?
Make a tax-deductible donation to Voices for Utah Children—or join our Network with a monthly donation of $20 or more. Network membership includes complimentary admission to Network events with food, socializing, and opportunity to meet child advocacy experts. And don't forget to join our listserv to stay informed!
We look forward to the future of Voices for Utah Children and we hope you will be a part of our next 30 years.
Special thanks to American Express for sponsoring our 30th Anniversary Year.
What's Still Eating Utah's General Fund?
How Unfunded Earmarks Are Undermining the Budget Process and Affecting Utah Families and Children
Utah’s unrestricted General Fund continues to decline as a stable and reliable revenue source due to a nearly 1200% increase in earmarks from FY 2005 to FY 2015, from $42 million to over half a billion dollars, from 2% to over 18% of the overall General Fund and still rising. This practice of earmarking, which means a multi-year diversion of funds (and none of the major General Fund earmarks has a sunset provision), runs contrary to best practices in public budgeting because it ties the hands of policymakers and undermines their ability to use the annual budgeting process to meet the evolving needs of the state’s ever-growing and ever-changing economy and population.
This explosion of earmarks has been primarily for the purpose of meeting the state’s transportation needs. The earmarks in question are all “unfunded” earmarks, meaning that none of them was created with a new revenue source to finance it, even though they address newly identified investments required to keep up with the state’s growing economy and population.
This enormous diversion of resources has meant that everything else financed by the General Fund, including education, public safety, drug treatment, aid for the disabled, support for vulnerable families, and many more, has been given short shrift, leaving critical needs unmet and allowing the state to fall behind in a number of important areas, threatening to undermine progress toward the state’s most important goals.
The rise of unfunded earmarks bears considerable resemblance to the decision made by an earlier generation of policy makers in 1996 to divert Education Fund revenues to fund higher education as well as K-12 education.
The report concludes with a call for a return to best practices in the annual budgeting process so as to allow policymakers to adapt to changing circumstances in good times and bad. Read the complete report:
What's Still Eating Utah's General Fund?
What Does the General Fund Do?
All Utahns benefit from an adequate General Fund. The state programs it pays for provide functional and efficient courts, a statewide system of colleges and universities, and the enforcement of rules regarding commercial transactions, environmental protection, water safety, control of contagious diseases, and much more. The GF also provides a safety net for families in need, including the disabled and those in need of drug treatment and mental health services.
Attendance and the Early Grades: A Two-Generation Issue
Chronic Absence is a Two-Generation Problem
Policies that help parents keep kids in school, such as family leave policies and effective transportation systems; coupled with programs that help the child, such as attention to bullying; and improved policies at the school level, such as collecting the right data and working with families to identify barriers to school attendance will ensure that every child succeeds.
"The reality is an absence is an absence, excused or not, and that child is not in that classroom benefiting from the instruction on that day. We have to work in our community, with our schools and our families to build a culture of attendance."
Ralph Smith, Executive Vice President, Annie E. Casey Foundation
Attendance and the Early Grades: A Two Generation Issue
Chronic absence, missing 10 percent of the school year or more, is an early warning indicator of academic trouble for students and later;dropout. Excused and unexcused absences easily add up to too much time lost in the classroom. Students are at risk academically if they miss 10 percent of the school year, or about 18 days. Once too many absences have occurred, it affects learning, regardless of whether absences are excused or unexcused.
The map below shows the percent of elementary school students who were chonically absent in school year 2013. On average, no district had less than 90 percent of their students absent on a given day, despite exceptionally high rates of chronic absence in some schools and districts. Clearly, average daily attendance can mask a chronic absence problem.
Reducing chronic absence can help close achievement gaps. Chronic absence especially affects achievement for low-income students who depend more on school for opportunities to learn. Because they are more likely to face systemic barriers to getting to school, low-income children, many of whom are children of color, have higher levels of chronic absence starting as early as kindergarten.
A 2012 research brief by the Utah Education Policy Center that looked at the percent of chronically absent students by school year, found that kindergarten and first grade students tended to be chronically absent more often than their older elementary school peers. Further, on average, being chronically absent in one grade increased the odds of being chronically absent in the next grade by nearly 13 times. For each year that a student was chronically absent, his or her odds of dropping out nearly doubled. Studies from multiple states have shown that chronically absent high school students are less likely to graduate. Improving student attendance is an essential, cost-effective but often overlooked two-generation strategy for ensuring that students are on-track to learn and succeed, and to decrease the chance of living in poverty as adults.
Chronic absence does not just affect the students who miss school. If too many students are chronically absent, it slows down instruction for other students, who must wait while the teacher repeats material for absentee students. This makes it harder for students to learn and teachers to teach.
CHRONIC ABSENCE IS A RESULT OF A COMBINATION OF FACTORS: SCHOOL, FAMILY AND COMMUNITY
All schools enroll some students who have injuries or illnesses leading to frequent absences, and schools should know who these students are and design individual strategies to support them. Schools where five percent of students are chronically absent do not have systemic attendance failures. However, in schools where 20 percent of students are chronically absent, the extent to which schools, families and communities each might play a contributing role needs to be considered.
While illness is a leading factor in chronic early absence, others such as poverty, teenage parenting, single parenting, low maternal education levels, unemployment, poor maternal health, and household food insecurity all can affect school attendance. The 2012 Utah Education Policy Center Policy research brief found that students from low-income homes were 90 percent more likely to be chronically absent. Students who are absent from school miss opportunities to learn and develop positive relationships within the school community. During the early elementary school years, children develop important skills and approaches to learning that are critical for ongoing school success. Through their experiences in K-3 classrooms, children build academic, social-emotional and study skills. Children who are chronically absent in kindergarten show lower levels of achievement in math, reading and general knowledge in first grade.
Children who are homeless or formerly homeless experience poor educational outcomes related to school absenteeism and mobility. Other families may be dealing with serious problems (e.g. mental illness, child or domestic abuse, incarceration of a parent, etc.) that make school attendance difficult because family life has been disrupted and public agencies and schools lack a coordinated response.
Chronic absenteeism also can result from poor quality education, ambivalence about or alienation from school, and chaotic school environments, including high rates of teacher turnover, disruptive classrooms and/or bullying.
Improving student attendance is an essential, cost-effective but often overlooked strategy for ensuring our students are on-track to learn and succeed. While addressing some attendance barriers- such as health, poor transportation, and unstable housing- can require longer-term strategies, everyone can make a difference by helping students and families understand that going to school every day and avoiding absences whenever possible is critical to realizing success in school and success in life.
Voices for Utah Children is proud to be a part of the Aspen Institute Ascend Network. The goal of the Aspen Institute Ascend Network is to mobilize empowered two-generation organizations and leaders to influence policy and practice changes that increase economic security, educational success, social capital, and health and well-being for children, parents, and their families. Learn more at http:/ /ascend.aspeninstitute.org/network
Utah Kids Count Data Book
Current Utah KIDS COUNT Data Book
How are kids doing in your county?
How are kids doing nationwide?
Measures of Child Well-Being, 2015
Previous Utah KIDS COUNT Data Books
KIDS COUNT Policy Reports
Creating Opportunity for Families: A Two-Generation Approach, 2014
Early Reading Proficiency in the United States, 2014
The First Eight Years: Giving Kids a Foundation for Lifetime Success, 2013
Utah Data Briefs
& Other Utah Data Products
A Two-Generation Strategy: Healthy Parents and Healthy Kids, 2014
Attendance and the Early Grades: A Two-Generation Issue, 2014
A Two-Generation Strategy: Right from the Start, 2014
A Two-Generation Approach to Ending Poverty in Utah, 2014
Kids Count in Utah Poster, 2013
Utah's Poverty Data at a Glance, 2009
Risk Factors Among Children in Utah, 2009
Teen Pregnancy Issue Brief, 2008
Basic Family Budgets: How Much Does It Take To Get By, 2007
Then and Now: Ten Years of Child Well-Being in Utah, 2005
