About 26 million K–12 students in the U.S. rely on school buses to get to class every day. However, many school districts across the country are facing serious bus driver shortages, leaving teachers to attempt to fill in the transportation gaps and help kids get to school.

“If you're adding on another $100 to your budget a month just to put gas in your car to get to work or drop your kids at school and whatever they need their car for, where is that $100 coming from? Most typically, they're having to pull it from the grocery budget.”

Please RSVP here for a free virtual event on June 15 that will kick off a series in which the @deepsouthtoday.org newsrooms in Arkansas, Louisiana, & Mississippi will explore findings from the latest release of the 2026 KIDS COUNT data. @annieecaseyfdn.bsky.social deepsouthtoday.org/families-cou...

Nearly one in 10 children are reporting mental health issues — most commonly A.D.H.D. and anxiety — during their primary care appointments.

“Older foster youth need more support, not silence. We don’t stop needing guidance just because we age out [of the system].”

In order to cultivate authentic youth engagement, it’s essential to treat young people’s lived experience navigating the foster care system as not just a supplement to professional expertise, but as an expertise of its own that can help to improve the effectiveness of policy and programs.

“Screens affect different children differently... [and] a lot depends on what a child is doing on a screen. Watching an educational program designed by early childhood education specialists is very different from consuming whatever YouTube’s algorithm serves up.”

“One of the most important findings is that when adults, institutions, and communities become more affirming, the suicide risk of LGBTQ+ young people goes down. Schools play a life-saving support by creating environments where LGBTQ+ young people feel safe, accepted and supported.”

More than half of U.S. families who need child care report paying more for care now than a year ago — a trend leading many families to switch from licensed child care providers to more convenient or affordable informal options, such as relying on friends or neighbors for care.

Teenagers who report struggling with their emotional or psychological health miss an average of 12 more days of school than their peers who don’t experience those challenges.

“We’re seeing disparities where adolescents who come from households with greater social advantage—maybe they have parents that went to college—are more likely to report getting enough sleep [than] households that might face disadvantage or come from or have marginalized identities.”

Even after Detroit made city buses free for all K–12 students in the city, misalignment between the city’s bus routes and school schedules has left many students in the city without reliable transportation to school.

“Getting high-quality sleep is essential for adolescents because their brains and bodies are still developing. When teens are regularly using phones late into the night, it can interfere with the sleep they need to learn and perform at their best at school the next day.”

When policymakers and advocates are designing programs to help ease young people's transition to adulthood, it is critical that they seek out and integrate the perspective and insights of the youth these programs aim to support.

“[Parents of young kids] might have to patch together unstable [child care] arrangements that could fall apart at the last minute and put their job in jeopardy. They may not be able to go to work at all, which could put them in even greater financial straits.”

“I think that we would be shocked to know the true reality of how much time kids are spending up late into the night, in the early morning, on a device. When kids don’t get sleep, it can have a really detrimental impact, particularly on behavior.”

Don't forget to check out the series of podcast episodes of Lemonada Media’s Good Things podcast that spotlight several of the lessons from our President and CEO Lisa Lawson’s new book, Thrive: How the Sci­ence of the Ado­les­cent Brain Helps Us Imag­ine a Bet­ter Future for All Chil­dren.

“Every minute a child is spending on a device isn’t spent on serve-and-return or physical development. Research is pretty clear young kids don’t learn as well from screens. What is the screen taking away? That’s one primary challenge: making sure it’s not displacing vital developmental inputs.”

Over the past few years, only five U.S. states and Washington, D.C. saw notable improvement in students’ reading test scores. In fact, students across the country remain on average nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading scores.

“It simply costs more to produce a quality child-care space than most of the people who need it can afford to pay. Until you understand why the math doesn’t work in the business model, you’re not going to be supportive of public financing.”

“Parking lots are a terrible option, but there are options that are worse. Often the only other option is literal homelessness, in your car and on the streets. This creates a middle ground where you can get families into the system [and] try to meet their needs... in a place that keeps them safe.”

Despite the plethora of evidence that recess breaks support children’s academic success and their overall health and well-being, 40% of school districts in the U.S. have reduced or entirely eliminated recess since the mid-2000s.

“For many young peo­ple, school is often one of the only places they may access sup­port… Schools are most effec­tive when men­tal health sup­ports are orga­nized into coor­di­nat­ed sys­tems that help iden­ti­fy con­cerns ear­ly and con­nect stu­dents with the right lev­el of care.”

Just two years after North Carolina expanded their policy to start offering payments to not just licensed kinship caregivers, but also unlicensed caregivers, the number of adults in the state who signed up to be a caregiver to a juvenile family member has already increased by 16%.

“Pathways are a powerful option, but this linear path to a career is really the exception. In a world where jobs continue to change, we also need to equip students and workers with the skills they need, [such as] adaptability and decision making and information literacy and networking.”

We are thrilled to share this year's #RIFactbook with you! rikidscount.org/factbook/ This year’s Factbook is inspired by and dedicated to Rhode Island’s immigrant children ♥️🦋

In 2025, New York City food pantries experienced double the number of visits from families with children as they did in 2019.

“For many young peo­ple, school is often one of the only places they may access sup­port… Schools are most effec­tive when men­tal health sup­ports are orga­nized into coor­di­nat­ed sys­tems that help iden­ti­fy con­cerns ear­ly and con­nect stu­dents with the right lev­el of care.”

Although teachers and administrators say school cell phone bans have led to fewer distractions in the classroom, research has not yet shown substantial evidence that the bans are leading to higher academic performance or improved student behavior.

Only 44% of the LGBTQ+ youth who sought out mental health care last year were able to access it.

By connecting expectant parents with trained professionals who can provide support and guidance during pregnancy and into early childhood, home visiting programs play an integral role in protecting both the physical and mental health of new mothers and their infants.

37% of youth in foster care in California were chronically absent from school during the 2024-25 school year — nearly double the chronic absenteeism rate of the general K–12 student population in the state.

“We’re a victim of our own success. Since we’ve been treating babies with vitamin K, we haven’t seen much deficiency bleeding [for decades] so people think it doesn’t exist.”

On average, U.S. middle and high school teachers assign four full books a year in English class. However, educators at middle and high schools with larger populations of low-income students and students of color assign fewer books per year than their counterparts at whiter and wealthier schools.

The Baltimore-based apprenticeship program CareerBound is working to meet the needs of both young people and employers in the city through coordinating work-based learning programs, which allow youth to earn wages while also building competitive job skills.

“Regardless of political views, it's vital for adults to recognize that conversations around anti-LGBTQ+ policies are not abstract—they are directly affecting the mental health and safety of LGBTQ+ youth.”

Our blog post shares lessons from @annieecaseyfdn.bsky.social's Generation Work, an initiative that aimed to connect America’s young adults with meaningful employment by changing the ways public and private systems prepare them for success in the workplace. www.childtrends.org/publications...

Although most New York seventh graders earned proficient scores on their state math exams, one-quarter of New York schools don’t even offer Algebra 1 classes to eighth graders — a disparity that disproportionately impacts schools with high populations of low-income students and students of color.

“B’more for Healthy Babies brings togeth­er a net­work of com­mu­ni­ties, orga­ni­za­tions and resources so that every baby born in Bal­ti­more can have the best start pos­si­ble. It works to reduce infant mor­tal­i­ty in the city... [so] all fam­i­lies can access the care and ser­vices they need.”

The Right Now Needs Fund works to help keep Seattle students in school by providing children and their families with emergency financial assistance to help them afford necessities ranging from toiletries and prescription refills to rental assistance and new clothes.

“Most parents would not ignore concerns about delayed speech, slowed growth, vision problems, or persistent physical symptoms—and the same level of attention should apply to emotional regulation, behavior, coping skills, relationships, and a child’s overall sense of well-being.”

75% of kindergarten through second grade teachers surveyed in a 2025 study said that their students’ attention spans had decreased since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“For millions of moms, the math simply isn’t adding up. No mom should have to take on debt or skip meals and medical care just to make sure their kids have food.”

Child care costs in most U.S. states have risen more than twice as fast as overall prices. In 2024, the average annual cost of child care in the U.S. for just one child was about $13,000 — an increase of nearly 30% from 2020.

“If they live in a chronic [child care] desert for three or more years, that’s a majority of the child’s life in a desert. That is not only hampering mom and dad from going to work, it’s also hampering that child’s ability to get ready for kindergarten.”

Service and conservation corps programs help young people get hands-on job training, develop valuable skills and earn valuable credentials in fields such as construction and energy while also creating pathways to sustainable and well-paying careers.

Our tipsheets for workforce development program staff, developed for @annieecaseyfdn.bsky.social's Generation Work initiative, provide strategies to help employers have open and productive conversations with young adult workers. www.childtrends.org/publications...

“Emotion regulation skills — like their own ability to calm and distract themselves — might be being displaced by devices instead. And if [kids] don't have that skill, they might act out more, have more behavior problems.”

When youth who grew up in foster care have access to extended foster care services like educational guidance and mentorship from trusted adults, they are nearly 70% more likely to have a high school diploma or GED by the age of 19 than their peers who aged out of the foster care system at 18.

The Service and Conservation Corps is a network of local organizations across the U.S. that offer work-based learning opportunities for youth and young adults in the form of service projects addressing community needs, such as land and water management and disaster response.