High-quality early education is strongly linked to later academic success and positive health outcomes, yet barriers like affordability and availability have put child care out of reach for the families of more than half of the 3 and 4-year-olds across the country.

Youth in foster care are more than twice as likely as other young people to experience a non-fatal drug overdose.

The economic background of the student bodies of “highly selective” colleges still heavily favors wealthier students. Since 2019, selective colleges have seen a bigger increase in the number of students coming from the highest-income areas than from the lowest-income areas.

20% of youth and young adults in New Mexico are not in school or employed — the highest of any U.S. state. The Northern New Mexico Youth Fund aims to engage these youth by helping them access career and technical education as well as work-based learning opportunities.

It’s become easier to get accepted into college over the past decade, with the median college acceptance rate 7.6% higher in 2022 than in 2012.

“It is incredibly troubling to learn that these children are not receiving the care and attention they need. [Mentally ill] children need counseling and treatment to help them address their struggles and grow into healthy, functioning members of society.”

Despite the barriers young people in foster care often experience around finding and keeping jobs, new data from @childtrends.bsky.social shows that nearly 60% of foster youth were employed at the age of 21.

“We’re struggling with kids being able to talk to each other and talk to adults in a respectful manner, and say, ‘I need a new pencil. That’s why I’m angry.’ It’s a lack of understanding how to interact with others.”

Nearly 4.7 million children — 6% of kids in the U.S. — did not have health insurance in 2024.

“If at night you look out your window and there’s still the blur of police lights and sirens, are you having a good night’s sleep? When they get [to] school and someone says... ‘Why you not paying attention?’, do you think the child could [say], ‘Hey... it was a shooting on my block last night?’"

“School [mental health] support was always important to us, but it became more of a priority to the state after Covid. And a lot of our growth has come by having the students drive the program, because ultimately they know the needs of the community.”

Fourth grade marks a critical transition period in children’s education, when understanding the fundamentals of reading starts to become important to a child’s learning across all subjects.

“Adolescents naturally develop a delayed circadian rhythm, meaning they want to sleep later and wake later... Teens might compensate with [extra sleep on weekends], which can look inconsistent, but really reflects their attempts to cope with a schedule that doesn’t match their biological clock.”

Women who have access to prenatal have better health outcomes for themselves and their babies.

“There’s this focus on K-3 without a lot of resources dedicated to helping the kids in secondary school that fell through the cracks. Starting early makes [sense] in a lot of ways, but there's also all these kids in the school system that didn’t benefit from that and do need intervention as well.”

Our latest blog—based on a decade of work funded by the @annieecaseyfdn.bsky.social—explores how positive youth development principles apply in workforce development settings for young adults. www.childtrends.org/publications...

Young children from the poorest families in the U.S. are on average 20% less likely to be on-track for kindergarten when compared to children from the wealthiest families.

“Every hour a child spends watching a show or an app comes at the expense of time spent doing something else — being physically active, being cared for and played with by a loved one. There are developmental costs associated with that. [Kids] that age need laps, not apps, to develop appropriately.”

The teen birth rate in the U.S. has decreased notably over the past two decades.

“Too many families are struggling financially to cover basic necessities. We found that the most common indicator of energy insecurity – reported by over 20% of surveyed parents – was cutting expenses for other needs, such as rent, food, medicine, or transportation, to pay their energy bill.”

Two-thirds of youth who were in foster care at the age of 17 were in a stable housing situation through the age of 21, which is welcome news given the high rates of foster youth experiencing homelessness.

“[English-learners] may very well need opportunities to have really good, targeted English language instruction in a more sheltered environment. But they also need and deserve opportunities to be fully integrated with non-English learners in their regular academic coursework.”

The Foundation is proud to have invested $3 million in the New Mexico nonprofit Homewise, which is working to increase homeownership amongst low and moderate income families in the state by offering services such as financial coaching, access to realtors and down payment assistance.

“For most parents, these pressures are deeply intertwined. Caregiving affects finances. Finances affect work. And when work and money feel unstable, mental health is often the first thing to suffer.”

Pediatric residents at a Seattle hospital developed an afterschool program where rural middle school students learn about their mental and physical health — meeting the dual goals of sharing important health information with middle schoolers and providing parents with afterschool child care.

Our new analysis of federal data shows that 2/3 of foster youth remain stably housed through age 21. Research shows that young people transitioning out of foster care are best positioned to achieve their goals when they have a foundation of stable housing. www.childtrends.org/publications...

A recently renovated Georgia apartment complex will provide current and former foster youth aged 18 to 21 with free and safe housing as they transition to adulthood. Residents will also work with coaches to learn life skills like cooking and to develop education and career plans for their future.

“If a kid doesn't get [an] education because they're being impacted by how sick they are, then, whenever they grow up, their job prospects don't amount to something that's more fruitful for them. It's really this domino effect that plays out through their whole life.”

“There’s this mysterious handoff that happens, when there’s a bunch of students who [are accepted but] still haven’t decided whether they’re coming to your college, and the only answer that you have for them is, ‘We’ve already admitted you. Go talk to your academic adviser.’”

Approximately 6% of children in the U.S. lacked health insurance in 2024 — the highest rate of uninsured children that the country has seen in a decade.

On the days when freezing weather or snowy conditions force K–12 schools into a snow day, many child care providers brave the elements to keep their centers open. Without their efforts, many essential workers with young kids wouldn't be able to get to their jobs amidst bad weather.

Children who have high blood lead levels by the age of 8 are significantly more likely to report mental health challenges and depression symptoms by the time they turn 12 years old.

Many educators who are in favor of cell phone restrictions for students in the classroom say that they still need access to their own cell phones, as they’re expected to use their phones for work administration tasks such as taking attendance and to communicate with parents.

Hearing directly from young workers about their wants and needs can help companies attract, retain, and support a stronger future workforce. Our research brief for the @annieecaseyfdn.bsky.social's Generation Work initiative provides lots of valuable ideas.

Young working adults are less happy than they were in the past. One possible reason? The decrease in job satisfaction in workers under the age of 25, many of whom report struggling with job stability and making ends meet.

Exalt, a New York City-based nonprofit working to reduce recidivism rates for court-involved teens through ongoing mentorship and paid internship opportunities, will be expanding outside of the city for the first time by establishing a new program upstate in Syracuse.

The typical K–12 teacher works 54 hours a week. More than half of those hours are spent on non-teaching tasks, which traditionally include attending meetings and grading homework, but more recently have also expanded to helping students manage their mental health and troubleshooting tech issues.

Nearly 9 in 10 high school and college students say that they use AI technology for school.

“There’s just such deep loss of familiarity... [and] easy access to family and community and culture [when entering foster care]. Being separated from siblings just compounds that trauma — and then it also impacts the nature of that sibling relationship for a long time, sometimes for a lifetime.”

The Foundation has launched a new suite of tools to help local youth justice systems across the country assess their performance and identify actionable changes that can help strengthen both policy and practice.

“Educators do not want to suspend and expel students. It’s something they are resorting to because they have found there aren’t enough resources to accommodate their students’ needs in the classroom environment.”

In the U.S., women earn 40% more doctoral degrees and nearly twice as many master’s degrees as men — a trend that’s been witnessed across not just graduate schools, but also professional degree programs such as law school and medical school.

“The stricter the policy, the happier the teacher and the less likely students are to be using their phones when they aren’t supposed to. We’re also finding that focus on academics is higher in schools that do not permit students to keep their phones nearby… in their backpacks or back pockets.”

“When kids have safe places to play, learn and connect offline, screens stop filling that gap. We need to make sure kids are getting the fundamentals — sleep, nutrition, exercise and communication with their parents. If those pieces are in place, screens don’t have the same power.”

The families of one-third of the infants and toddlers in the U.S. struggled to make ends meet in 2024 due to the rising prices of diapers and formula, maternal mental health challenges and the exorbitant cost of child care.

“[Librarians are] not just checking books in and out. They’re teaching your kids about media literacy, safety online, how to vet an article for truthfulness.”

Although reports of child abuse and neglect decreased slightly in 2024, the number of reports made each year remains significantly higher than it was a decade ago.

“In this period when a young child’s brain is in a rapid period of development, poverty is an impediment to that development. It increases the risk of behavioral and emotional challenges both at home and in school.” — Leslie Boissiere, vice president of external affairs with the Foundation

Using the Functional Family Therapy model with foster families and the children in their care is associated with safer living environments for kids in foster care and increased placement stability. Register for our February webinar to learn more.

“When kids use generative AI that tells them what the answer is… they are not thinking for themselves. ...They're not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They're not learning about different perspectives in the world because they're actually not engaging in the material.”