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Kerner and Kids

Work Remains

Carol Emig

I
n 1968, the Kerner Commission called for “the realization of common
opportunities for all within a single society.”1 When it comes to children
and youth of color, much remains to be done to secure that common
opportunity. Broadly speaking, the lives of many children of all races are
better today than the lives of children fifty years ago, yet serious racial and
ethnic inequities persist. Black, Hispanic, and American Indian children
are still more likely to live in poverty. They lag behind their white and
Asian peers on important well-being indicators that often predict long-
term success. Even as legislative, judicial, and regulatory actions target
inequities, work remains to address discriminatory policies and practices
that often have deep and overlooked historical roots.
This work is unfolding today in a demographic, economic, and policy
landscape greatly different from fifty years ago. This chapter briefly re-
views the major changes in the child and youth field since 1968 and sug-
gests future directions for policy and research.

The Changing Landscape for Children and Youth

Today’s population of children and adolescents is racially and ethnically
more diverse than ever before. In 1974, white2 youth constituted 77 per-
cent of the population under age eighteen but only 51 percent by 2015. As
illustrated in Figure 8.1, the percentage of children who are black rose
from 14 to 18 percent between 1974 and 2015, while the Hispanic child
population more than tripled, from 7 percent in 19763 to almost 25 per-
cent in 2015. Hispanics today are the largest group of minority children
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218  | Perspectives from the Fiftieth-Anniversary National Advisory Council

in the country, as well as the fastest-growing group of children. Demog-

raphers project that by 2050 Hispanics will be one-third of the child pop-
ulation, about the same proportion as white children.4 The population of
Asian children has also grown rapidly between 19885 and 2015, though
they account for only about 6 percent of the child population. American
Indian children have remained about 1 percent of the child population;
while they are among the most disadvantaged children in the nation,
their small numbers make it difficult to produce reliable data on their
health and well-being, and as a result, their needs are often overlooked by
the public and policy makers.
In addition to living in a more diverse nation, many of today’s children
experience family life differently from children in past decades. Children
today are more likely to live with a single parent (typically a mother). In
1960, 85 percent of children lived with two parents, compared to 69 per-
cent in 2016.6 Over the same period, the percentage of children living with
only one parent tripled, from 9 percent to 27 percent. Single-parent fam-
ilies, on average, have lower incomes than two-parent families, meaning
they have fewer resources available to meet their children’s needs and

90

80

70

60
Percentage

50

40

30

20

10

0
1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015

White non-Hispanic Black Hispanic

Asian American Indian

Figure 8.1 Racial/ethnic composition of children under eighteen, 1973–2015

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Poverty Tables: People and Families, 1959 to 2015,”
September 8, 2017, available at https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/in
come-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html; Child Trends, “Racial and Ethnic Composition of
the Child Population,” July 2016, available at https://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=racial
-and-ethnic-composition-of-the-child-population.
Note: Data for Black children are retrieved from “Black” data before 2002 and “Black Alone or
in Combination” data for 2002 and after. Data for Asian children are retrieved from “Asian Alone
or in Combination” data before 2002 and “Asian and Pacific Islander” data for 2002 and after.
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Kerner and Kids  |  219

support their aspirations. Moreover, when compared to children raised

by two married biological or adoptive parents, children with single par-
ents on average are in poorer health and are more likely to experience
emotional or behavioral problems.7
Family structure varies by race and ethnicity. Black children in the
United States are more likely than white or Hispanic children to live with
only one parent, usually their mothers. For all three groups, the percent-
age of children living with one parent has increased over the decades,
with the sharpest rate of increase among white children and lowest among
Hispanic children. In 1960, 7 percent of white children lived with one
parent; in 2015, 22 percent did, a more than threefold increase. For black
children, the rate of increase was more than double, from 22 percent in
1960 to 54 percent in 2015. Among Hispanic children, 21 percent lived
with one parent in 1980, rising to 29 percent by 2015.8
Today’s children and youth are also more likely to live in families in
which the only parent or both parents are employed; specifically, they are
more likely to have a mother in the workforce. In 1974, fewer than half of
all mothers with children under the age of eighteen were in the labor
force, compared to 70 percent in 2015.9 Maternal employment rates also
vary by race/ethnicity: in 2015, 76 percent of black mothers were in the
labor force compared to 70 percent of white mothers and 62 percent of
both Hispanic and Asian mothers.10 Changing parental employment pat-
terns have affected a wide swath of American families; parental leave,
early care and education, and after-school and summer care barely reg-
istered on the policy radar in the 1960s but are prominent concerns
today.
Children continue to be the poorest age group in the United States. As
Figure 8.2 illustrates, poverty rates for all racial and ethnic groups have
fluctuated between 1975 and 2015 but have been consistently higher for
black, Hispanic, and American Indian children than for white and Asian
children. In 2015, poverty rates for black children were 33 percent, 31
percent for American Indian children, 29 percent for Hispanic children,
and 12 percent for white children. Our knowledge of the damage that
poverty inflicts on children has deepened in recent decades, underscoring
further the urgent need for action.

CHILDREN AND YOUTH TODAY

Against this demographic and economic backdrop, how are children and
youth faring? For many indicators of well-being, trends in recent decades
are positive: school readiness has improved, high school graduation and
college enrollment rates are up, teen birth rates have fallen, and place-
ments in juvenile facilities are down. However, for each of these indica-
tors, and others, large racial and ethnic disparities remain. For example:
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220  | Perspectives from the Fiftieth-Anniversary National Advisory Council

50.0
45.0
40.0
35.0
Percentage

30.0
25.0
20.0
15.0
10.0
5.0
0.0
1959 1966 1973 1980 1987 1994 2001 2008 2015

Total White non-Hispanic American Indian

Black Hispanic Asian

Figure 8.2 Children under eighteen living below the poverty line, 1959–2015
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Poverty Tables: People and Families, 1959 to 2015,”
September 8, 2017, available at https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/in
come-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html; U.S. Census Bureau, “CPS Table Creator,” avail-
able at http://www.census.gov/cps/data/cpstablecreator.html.
Note: American Indian data may be unreliable in comparison to other races. Data for Black
children are retrieved from “Black” data before 2002 and “Black Alone or in Combination” data
for 2002 and after. Data for Asian children are retrieved from “Asian Alone or in Combination”
data before 2002 and “Asian and Pacific Islander” data for 2002 and after.

• A ll children have demonstrated improvement on a variety of

early school readiness measures within the past twenty-five
years, including letter recognition,11 counting to twenty,12 writ-
ing their name,13 and reading words in a book;14 but Hispanic
children have lagged behind their white and black peers on the
indicators for which we have data from 1993 to 2012.
• In 2015, 91 percent of all twenty-five- to twenty-nine-year-olds
had earned at least a high school diploma. By race/ethnicity, the
rates of diploma attainment were 95 percent for whites; 92 per-
cent for blacks, and 77 percent for Hispanics.
• For college completion, white/nonwhite disparities are even
more pronounced: 43 percent of white twenty-five- to twenty-
nine-year-olds held a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to
21 percent of blacks and 16 percent of Hispanics.15
• While teen birth rates have fallen for all racial and ethnic groups,
the rates for black (35 per 1,000) and Hispanic (38 per 1,000)
females ages fifteen to nineteen remain higher than those for
white females (17 per 1,000).16
• Juvenile detention rates have fallen by half in the past twenty
years (from 356 per 100,000 youth in 1997 to 173 in 2013), but
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Kerner and Kids  |  221

the percentage of black youth in residential placements has re-

mained steady (at 40 percent), and the percentage of Hispanic
youth has increased (from 18 to 23 percent).17 As discussed later
in the chapter, these disparities are evident earlier in young
people’s lives—for example, in unequal administration of school
discipline practices.
• Disparities in incarceration rates are even more glaring for
young adults: black males between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-nine far outnumber whites and Hispanics in state or fed-
eral prisons and local jails. In 2010, 9.7 percent of black men
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine were in federal or
state prison or local jails, compared to 3.9 percent of Hispanic
and 1.5 percent of white men.18

PROMISING DIRECTIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY

As the data above suggest, we have a long way to go to reduce and ulti-
mately eliminate race-based disparities in child and youth outcomes.
There are many possible policy avenues to pursue. Here, I briefly highlight
three areas where past gains provide a springboard for future progress or
where there is an opportunity to reach large numbers of children: univer-
sal health insurance for children and youth, early care and education, and
school discipline policies. In these cases, the principles underlying the
Kerner Report’s recommendations still apply: “to mount programs on a
scale equal to the dimension of the problems; to aim these programs for
high impact in the immediate future, in order to close the gap between
promise and performance; and to undertake new initiatives and exper­
iments.”19

Health
Health insurance coverage for children and youth has expanded, albeit in
fits and starts, since the creation of Medicaid in 1965. Medicaid provided
health insurance to low-income individuals, including those in families
receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Beginning in the
mid-1980s and continuing to 2002, incremental changes in income and
age eligibility, phased in over time, culminated in the extension of Med-
icaid coverage to all children through age eighteen in families with in-
comes below the federal poverty line and to children up to age six in
families with incomes at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty line.
In 1997, the Children’s Health Insurance Program provided federal funds
to states to cover children in families with incomes too high for Medicaid
but too low to afford private insurance. Nearly every state had imple-
mented the program within two years of the funding becoming available,
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and all states had implemented a program by early 2000.20 Passage of the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 expanded eligibility
even further, to include all Americans at or below 138 percent of the fed-
eral poverty line. A 2012 Supreme Court decision made states’ adoption
of this expansion optional and, consequently, not all states did so. But as
of January 2017, thirty-two states (including the District of Columbia) had
exercised this option.21
Research examining the effectiveness of Medicaid expansion in these
states found significant reductions in uninsured rates (particularly among
the most vulnerable populations, including children) and positive im-
pacts on access to care, use of services, affordability of care, and financial
security among low-income Americans.22 By 2015, a record 95 percent of
U.S. children had health insurance. Coverage for Hispanic children,
whose levels had lagged behind those of black and white children, reached
a record high of 93 percent. Nevertheless, research suggests that as many
as a quarter of low-income Hispanic families with children are not aware
that they could apply for Medicaid and other forms of public assistance.
Additionally, fears of revealing the undocumented status of household
members may prevent some parents from applying for Medicaid for their
children. For some families, language and cultural factors may also be
impediments.23
As of June 2017, Congress was considering health care legislation that
would, among other things, limit the availability of Medicaid, which pro-
vides health insurance to 43 percent of the nation’s children. Yet research
attests to the value of health insurance to children’s short- and long-term
well-being. Children who have health insurance are more likely to get
health care, more likely to be healthy, and more likely to have better edu-
cational and long-term economic outcomes24—compelling reasons for
health care policy in the United States, whatever its form or financing, to
include universal coverage for children.

Early Childhood
Perhaps the biggest shift in the public’s and policy makers’ thinking when
it comes to children is the widespread recognition of the value of invest-
ments in early childhood,25 spurred by research on early brain develop-
ment,26 rigorous evaluations of early education programs,27 and projec-
tions of positive returns on such investments.28 Head Start, established in
1965, stood virtually alone for decades in terms of federal investment in
early childhood. Today, there are publicly funded prekindergarten pro-
grams in most states. In the 2015–2016 school year, Florida, Oklahoma,
Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia each served more than 70 ­percent
of the four-year-olds in their jurisdictions.29 Universal prekindergarten
programs exist in Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Boston, New York City,
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Kerner and Kids  |  223

and Washington, D.C.30 Most publicly funded prekindergarten programs

serve primarily four-year-olds, but the proportion serving three-year-olds
is increasing. Looking at younger children, the federal Early Head Start
program, established in 1994, and the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early
Childhood Home Visiting initiative, established in 2010, are notable ex-
amples of programs focused on infants and toddlers.
Promising as these investments are, they are not sufficient to prepare
all children for school, nor are they enough to close racial and ethnic
disparities in school readiness. Black children are more likely than white
or Hispanic children to be enrolled in full-day preschool programs
(39  percent versus 25 and 22 percent, respectively), 31 but overall, the
United States is far behind many other developed nations in the percent-
age of children participating in early education programs and in spending
(as a share of gross domestic product) on early care and education.32 In-
creasing enrollment for all groups could be done by following the lead of
the jurisdictions noted above that provide universal prekindergarten, or
it could be done via programs targeted specifically at young children from
disadvantaged families and communities.
Expanding access to early care and education programs is only part of
the puzzle, though. The programs themselves must be high-quality, at-
tending to not just cognitive development but also the multiple develop-
mental domains that contribute to school readiness, including physical
health and safety and social and emotional development. Research has
established the association between high-quality early care and education
programs and better child outcomes across multiple domains; poor-qual-
ity programs, on the other hand, are associated with negative ones. 33
Moreover, children who begin kindergarten with strong school readiness
skills tend to continue to thrive, while those who are less prepared on
average continue to lag behind.34 Unfortunately, there is wide variation in
preschool quality nationwide, and investments in quality have not kept
pace with our growing knowledge of many of the elements that contribute
to quality care.35
Staff are key to the quality of early care and education programs, yet
the early childhood workforce is characterized by low compensation and
limited opportunities for professional development, especially in commu-
nity-based childcare programs, including family childcare, whose partic-
ipants are more likely to be low-income families.36 Education, training,
and ongoing professional development for the early care and education
workforce, as well as better compensation, are essential to creating and
sustaining a high-quality early care and education infrastructure. Recent
research also points to the need for an equity focus here. Black children
are suspended from preschool at almost four times the rate of white chil-
dren. Seeking to understand why, researchers at Yale identified implicit
bias against black children by both white and black teachers.37
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224  | Perspectives from the Fiftieth-Anniversary National Advisory Council

Racial and ethnic disparities in child outcomes emerge early. Analyses

by Child Trends found that disparities in child outcomes associated with
race exist as early as nine months of age, with black, Hispanic, Asian, and
American Indian children lagging behind white children in cognitive,
social, behavioral, and health outcomes. Worse still, these gaps widened
between nine and twenty-four months.38 The Child Trends researchers
found a similar pattern of widening disparities when outcomes were an-
alyzed by family income. So ensuring children a path to success also re-
quires more attention to infants and toddlers.
The evidence base in this regard is growing. Findings from the Early
Head Start Research and Evaluation Project show statistically significant
positive improvements in children’s cognition and levels of aggressive
­behavior.39 Early evaluation findings from Educare, a comprehensive
birth-to-five program operating in more than twenty disadvantaged com-
munities across the country, showed impressive gains in kindergarten
readiness, including among children with limited English proficiency.40
The economist and Nobel laureate James Heckman found positive an-
nual rates of return from investments in high-quality early care and edu-
cation programs targeted to disadvantaged children. The returns on in-
vestment took the form of better educational, economic, health, and
social outcomes and reduced costs in remedial education, health, and
criminal justice. Heckman concludes that “the highest rate of return in
early childhood development comes from investing as early as possible,
from birth through age five, in disadvantaged families.”41

School Discipline
As promising as early childhood investments appear to be, they alone will
not overcome the effects of poverty, discrimination, and other factors that
disadvantage many children. To sustain the gains of high-quality early
childhood investments, we need to continue to invest in proven interven-
tions to promote quality and access from preschool through high school.
One notable area of reform focuses on shifting away from school disci-
pline policies and practices that disproportionately exclude students of
color and students with disabilities from school. In the 2013–2014 school
year, 2.8 million K–12 students received one or more out-of-school suspen-
sions, with black students almost four times as likely to be suspended from
school as white students. (Hispanic and American Indian students were
also more likely to be suspended than white students, but the practice is
more pronounced for black students.) Children with disabilities, mean-
while, were twice as likely to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions
as their peers without disabilities.42 The data indicate that these suspen-
sions are often for relatively mild forms of misconduct for which school
officials have considerable discretion, not for violence or criminal activity.43
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Kerner and Kids  |  225

Discipline policies that exclude students from school can have lasting
negative consequences for the suspended students. For instance, a longi-
tudinal study of more than one million seventh- through twelfth-grade
students found that those who are suspended from school even once in
their first year of high school are more than twice as likely to drop out as
students who have no history of school removal.44 Additionally, sus-
pended or expelled students are almost three times as likely as other sim-
ilarly situated students to become involved with the juvenile justice sys-
tem within a year of leaving school.45 To make matters worse, a strong
body of research concludes that excluding students from school does not
improve either individual behavior or school safety.46
While certainly not the only path to more equitable educational out-
comes, keeping students in school and engaged in learning has to be part
of the solution.
States and communities across the country are using alternative ap-
proaches to prevent and address disruptive behavior, such as social-­
emotional learning initiatives,47 positive behavioral interventions and
supports,48 restorative justice practices,49 and early warning systems
aimed at intervening proactively with students who have the potential to
disrupt school or threaten school safety.50 Evidence indicates that these
approaches are associated with reductions in school dropout rates and
with increased academic achievement.51
Most of these approaches are preventive and may not include ready
strategies to help educators respond to student behavior during an inci-
dent or administer appropriate consequences to prevent a recurrence.
There is more work to be done here to provide teachers and other school
personnel with interventions, other than suspensions and expulsions,
that hold young people accountable for their behavior, keep offending
students on track academically, and avoid disparities by race and disabil-
ity. This area is ripe for the kind of innovation that the Kerner Commis-
sion called for fifty years ago.

The ESSENTIAL ROLES of Data and Evidence

This chapter relies on data to substantiate the racial and ethnic disparities
in children’s opportunities to exercise their right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. Reliable data can shine a light on groups of children
who are overlooked and underserved and dispel harmful myths and mis-
conceptions. The quantity and sophistication of data on children and
youth available today far exceed what was available to the Kerner Com-
mission. Most of the data cited in this chapter are from federal govern-
ment sources, so their continued availability depends on maintaining
adequate funding for the various federal statistical agencies. This data
infrastructure underpins our understanding of whether the benefits of
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our society accrue equally to all children, regardless of race, ethnicity, or

creed. Thus, this is also bedrock information for assessing a wide range of
efforts to eliminate disparities.
This chapter also cites evidence of effective policies and programs in
the areas of health, education, and early childhood. Again, when com-
pared to fifty years ago, the evidence is plentiful for how to advance the
health and well-being of children, yet we still have much to learn. We
need more (and more rigorous) evidence of how to protect and promote
child and youth well-being, and we need to know how to scale up evi-
dence-based policies and programs to reach larger numbers of children.
Finally, we need better and more sophisticated ways to develop and use
evidence that reveals disparate outcomes for different racial and ethnic
groups. It is not sufficient simply to report disparities; we need to under-
stand what drives them. Both cultural competence and a racial-equity
lens are needed to inform research and evaluation, lest we overlook im-
portant contextual, historical, and cultural factors that might provide
insight into disparate outcomes and suggest adaptations that would allow
all children to reap the benefits of a program or policy. This is ultimately
how we will fulfill the Kerner Commission’s call for “new initiatives and
experiments that can change the system of failure and frustration” in the
twenty-first century.52
Achieving the vision of the Kerner Commission remains a work in
progress. It may be that each generation of Americans will struggle anew
with the challenge of creating a more perfect union. On the Kerner Re-
port’s fiftieth anniversary, looking at America’s children and youth, we
can say with pride that we have made progress. We must also admit, with
dismay, that we have much further to go.