By Gretchen Keiser

The federal goal of school readiness for every child by the year 2000 still remain a “massive amount of rhetoric” unless more funding is given to early childhood education and child care, according to a recently released report.

A survey of 1990 state funding of these two priorities for children showed a range in spending from a high of $152.04 per child in Massachusetts to a low of 24 cents per child in Idaho. But even the top 10 ranking states were turning away children and families in need of help, according to the report by the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF).

The report was released in Atlanta March 5 during the national CDF convention focusing upon election year strategies to make programs for children a higher national and state priority.

Using 1990 census figures for population and state data, the report compared spending on programs where the states had discretion over funding and policies in order to determine the level of state commitment. Federally funded programs such as Head Start were not included. The programs surveyed were those that help low-income families purchase child care, provide pre-school education to children, provide child care assistance to families and children in special need, such as teen parents, families with a risk of abuse, or migrant and refugee families.

The states ranking highest in order, following Massachusetts, were Alaska, which spent $93.17 per child: Vermont, spending $81.48 per child; Connecticut, spending $78.52 per child and New York, which spent $70.49 per child.

The bottom five, with Idaho fiftieth, were Montana, North Dakota, Nevada and South Dakota, all spending less than five dollars per child. Ranking 45th was Virginia, which spent $6.31 per child, while relatively poor neighboring West Virginia ranked 29th and spent $19.70 on each child.

Eight Southern States ranked in the bottom third of all states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia, but neighboring Florida ranked ninth in nation, South Carolina ranked 20th and North Carolina ranked 24th.

The report concluded that all states were spending too little, but that some were making children a pitifully low priority in comparison with other projects. In 1990, for example, 11 states spent at least 24 times more on corrections and prison than on the care and development of young children. Eleven states spent 100 times more on higher education than on helping children get a strong foundation for learning.

Vermont, which ranks third in State spending, estimates that it will only serve 35 percent of eligible families, according to the report, and Minnesota, which ranked in the top 20 states, has 1,900 eligible families on waiting lists for child care assistance in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area alone.

“Ensuring that every child is ready to enter school by the year 2000 is a goal widely shared by the Bush Administration, Congress, state policy makers, and the business community,” the report, written by Gina Adams and Jodi R. Sandfort, said. “However, the broad support for this goal means absolutely nothing for children, especially our poorest youngsters, without the dollars necessary to turn the massive amount of rhetoric around school readiness into real opportunities for low-income children.”

The report recommended full funding of Head Start by the year 1995 through the implementation of the School Readiness Act pending in the Senate and an additional expenditure of $2.1 billion for Head Start. It also expressed concern that increased federal funding not result in decreased state spending and asked Congress to fulfill a promise to provide $100 million in 1992 for a program to expand funds for child care in future years.

Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children’s Defense Fund and attorney Hillary Clinton, the wife of Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, is chairman of the board.

At an interfaith service during the Atlanta convention, Senior Bishop John Hurst Adams of the African Methodist Episcopal Church said children need to be fed in body and soul. “We need bread to feed their hunger, but we need roses to feed their spirit,” he said. Heroes and heroines are needed for “God’s children,” he said, identifying those heroes and heroines as people who enlarge the definition of what is possible, those who create a moral climate where justice is sought, and those whose “responses to the issues of life resonate with both body and soul.” Archbishop James P. Lyke, OFM, of Atlanta, led a prayer of intercession for children.

The Reverend Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said President Bush’s talk of a “new world order” lacked a vision of justice and compassion “where the bountiful resources would be thankfully received and gratefully shared.”

Candidates should be asked “if they have seen God’s vision,” she said. “Ask them if they can hear God’s call and then ask them if they are prepared to say, ‘Here I am, send me,’” referring to the prophet Isaiah’s willing response to God.

The book of Isaiah depicts a vision of the new Jerusalem: “In her, no more will be found the infant living a few days only, or the old man not living to the end of his days…They will not toil in vain or beget children for calamity, for they will be a race blessed by Yahweh, and their children with them.”

“This, my friends, is a vision of a world made new,” Reverend Campbell said.