Newark’s kids’ conditions improving, but they still lag behind rest of NJ: report, By Seth Augenstein, February 6, 2014, Star-Ledger: “The good news: Newark kids are catching up to their peers across New Jersey in terms of poverty, health and education issues, according to statistics released today. The bad news: Newark kids still lag behind other New Jersey kids, according to those very same statistics. The annual ‘Kids Count’ report issued by the Advocates for Children of New Jersey today shows that the number of children living in poverty has decreased over the last decade, numbers of foster care placements and juvenile arrests have dramatically fallen, and college enrollment rates are up. But it also shows that Newark kids have vast room for improvement, compared to state averages, the authors said…”
Tag: New Jersey
Early Childhood Education
Lessons for de Blasio in New Jersey’s fee pre-K, By Javier C. Hernández, January 26, 2014, New York Times: “Teddy Lin’s teachers were worried. For the first few weeks of preschool, Teddy, a 3-year-old Chinese immigrant, cried nearly every day. While his classmates recited stories in English about dogs and elephants, he talked in Mandarin. Some days, he sat quietly and refused to play. His teachers responded with a radical plan. They began learning Mandarin, tutored his parents in reading, and paired Teddy with older classmates to teach him about topics like woodland animals. Within a few months, Teddy was performing on a par with his peers. Officials across the country, including Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, are looking to efforts like those in New Jersey as they seek to broaden access to free, full-day prekindergarten…”
Legal Assistance – New Jersey
As poverty rises, legal assistance dwindles for N.J.’s poor, By Salvador Rizzo, December 8, 2013, Star-Ledger: “They often live in the shadows: the battered women in need of restraining orders to keep their abusers at bay, the low-income families evicted from their apartments or turned away from emergency housing, the immigrant children seeking asylum as they flee the drug violence in their home countries. And they can’t afford to get their day in court. Every year, hundreds of thousands of New Jersey’s poorest residents run into legal problems that threaten to derail their lives, but only one in six will get a lawyer to fight for them, according to Legal Services of New Jersey, a network of nonprofit organizations that provides free legal assistance for the poor in civil cases such as fighting evictions or securing restraining orders…”