Stephan: We are destroying our future. I don't know how else to describe what I see going on, and it is the most amazing thing to watch. I see these stories and think: how is it possible that that the people who created this systemic disaster don't understand that seeing everyone has enough healthy basic food to eat and an income above sheer poverty is smart social policy?
Children are a nation's literal future. Well-educated individuals are more desirable as citizens. Students in poverty don't do well. Students with hunger don't learn well. Study after study demonstrates this. And notice that the problem is worst in the Red value states.
I deliberately chose to publish this story using a conservative Red value state newspaper as the source.
For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation.
The Southern Education Foundation reports that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade were eligible under the federal program for free and reduced-price
lunches in the 2012-2013 school year. The lunch program is a rough proxy for poverty, but the explosion in the number of needy children in the nation’s public classrooms is a recent phenomenon that has been gaining attention among educators, public officials and researchers.
“We’ve all known this was the trend, that we would get to a majority, but it’s here sooner rather than later,” said Michael A. Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University, noting that the poverty rate has been increasing even as the economy has improved. “A lot of people at the top are doing much better, but the people at the bottom are not doing better at all. Those are the people who have the most children […]
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Sunday, January 18th, 2015
Alex Dobuzinskis, - Breaking News/Reuters
Stephan: The problems of poverty and hunger do not end with elementary, secondary or, as it turns out, college level. This is not how a nation creates a healthy democracy. It a measure of the toughness and intention of these kids that they get through school and into college in spite of the obstacles.
A lecture hall of community college students, a high percentage of which are in poverty.
The share of public college students who qualify for free of charge or decreased lunch in the United States has grown to 51 percent, in an indication of increasing poverty, according to a report released on Friday.
The trouble is most acute in Mississippi exactly where 71 % of students had been in that category, according to the report from the Southern Education Foundation.
The group identified the share of students from low-income families by analyzing 2013 federal information on kids who qualify for free or lowered lunch at college, which is supplied to those from households at or under 185 % of the federal poverty level. For a loved ones of four, the poverty level is much less than $24,000 a year and 185 % of that figure is about $44,000.
The foundation mentioned the share of poor students in the nation’s schools has been developing for decades.
It […]
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Sunday, January 18th, 2015
Brittany Patterson, - Scientific American/Climate Wire
Stephan: This is an excellent assessment, stripped of hysteria and grounded in facts, of the municipal response in the U.S. from communities facing sea rise.
One has to begin acknowledging that we in the U.S. are far behind other developed nations in dealing with climate change, particularly its effects on water. Coastal towns and cities over the next 20 years are going to face a different world, as this report describes. Federal politics may live in the twee world of Washington, where the majority political party denies human mediated climate change exists. But localities get flooded, and have to respond.
Infrastructure building or restructuring is a process measured in years, sometimes decades.We need to stop funding wars and start funding what is needed to accommodate this new world.
In just a few decades, most U.S. coastal regions are likely to experience at least 30 days of nuisance flooding every year.
Credit: Flickr
In December, residents in Marin, a county in the northern part of the San Francisco Bay Area nestled across from the Golden Gate Bridge, woke up to find that some of their roadways, docks and parking lots were underwater.
Unlike in past years, when the king tides—unusually high tides that occur when the sun and moon are closer to the Earth—were accompanied by stormy weather, residents this year were faced with just some minor flooding.
But more and more, parts of California are seeing an increase in such flooding, said Gary Griggs, director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Griggs is among the scientists who sat on a legislative committee to examine how rising sea levels will affect the California economy. He said in the last four years California has shifted from […]
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