Weekly Roundup: Adult Educational Attainment, Child Poverty and More ...

Feb 24, 2012

Select CLASP blog posts and other highlights

Workers who have GEDs and go on to receive bachelor's degrees make, on average, 30 percent less than workers who receive traditional high school diplomas and then complete bachelor's degrees. This was one of the most sobering statistics to come out of a Census report released this week on educational attainment. The report also demonstrated the value of postsecondary credentials. Not surprisingly, median income increased based on level of educational attainment. At the same time, the report also found that for the first time, the number of adults over 25 with bachelor's degrees exceeded 30 percent. Some workers continue to be left behind, however. Racial and ethnic disparities in educational attainment persist. Read policy analyst Marcie WM Foster's blog post, As the Nation Makes Progress on College Attainment Goals, Critical Workers Left Behind, to learn more. Ms. Foster also writes about the number of adults with basic skills deficiencies and cuts in adult education programs in the post, With Budgets Slashed, Adult Education Programs Struggle to Keep the Lights on.

On the same day the Census released data on educational attainment, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released a report on children living in high poverty communities. We already know that child poverty has increased in recent years, so it's not surprising, then, that the number of children living in neighborhoods with a high concentration of poverty has increased by 25 percent since 2000. This has negative long-term implications for children because concentrated poverty exacerbates disadvantage. Hannah Matthews, CLASP's director of child care and early education, talks about what policymakers should do in light of this data in her post, Child Poverty: The Questions We Should Ask.

CLASP's Child Care and Early Education team and the National Women's Law Center released a report this week that examines child care directors' point of view on systems (Quality Rating Improvement Systems or QRIS) designed to improve child care. The report, A Count for Quality: Child Care Center Directors on Ratings and Improvement Systems, describes the benefits and challenges of participating in QRIS from those who are often left out of the conversation.

And More ...

CLASP's Elizabeth Lower-Basch participated in a forum this week entitled Ending the Code Language: Race Baiting and Stereotypes in Public Benefits sponsored by the Center for American Progress (CAP). Check out the report (Moving Away from Racial Stereotypes in Poverty Policy) that CAP released on Feb. 22.

On Wednesday, President Obama signed the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, more widely known as the payroll tax and unemployment insurance extension bill. A report from GAO, Unemployment Insurance: Economic Circumstances of Individuals Who Exhausted Benefits, talks about the dire economic circumstances of individuals who, even with the federal extension, exhausted their benefits.