Schools closed and went remote to fight COVID-19. The impacts linger 5 years later.
Schools closed and went remote to fight COVID-19. The impacts linger 5 years later.
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5 years since COVID-19 declared a global pandemic
Tuesday marks five years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. On this day in 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, triggering lockdowns across the world.
Fox - 5 DC
American schools and the ways students learn have both changed since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago.
After local and federal health officials ordered schools to closein March 2020, most campuses in the U.S. shuttered and educators pivoted to virtual learning. Many students lost fundamental reading and math skills after learning remotely for months and some teachers left the profession altogether by the time schools returned the next school year, national data from the U.S. Department of Education shows.
Educators nationwide have said that their students returned to classrooms after the pandemic with lower academic skills than before and it's been a challenge to catch kids up.
Student academic setbacks are proving difficult to reverse. Recent national test scores from the National Center for Education Statistics show a bleak picture of recovery in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reading scores are worsening and math scores haven't recovered on a national average.
"The abrupt shift to remote learning challenged student and teacher engagement, dramatically decreased instructional time, and hindered student understanding," reads a report about the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on education from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a philanthropy focused on ensuring young people have access to opportunity.
Michael Petrilli, president of the national education policy think tank Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said the recent test results showing dismal academic recovery lead him to believe American education won't return to pre-pandemic levels until there's "a generation of kids who were not impacted by the pandemic."
Many of the kids affected by school closures during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and lost some of the most foundational skills in reading and math, Petrilli said.
"The fourth graders now were in kindergarten when they were sent home. Many were doing Zoom school," Petrilli said. "It's absolutely worth noting that this is a precious period – the early grades."
While educational impacts linger, supporters of school closures have said it was the right choice.
Last year, Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., a former high school teacher of 15 years, pushed back against Republican criticism and said closing schools was a safety response based on information available at the time.
'We don't need Brookings (Institute) data to tell us that if kids are not in school, they won't learn. That's pretty basic,' Hayes said, referencing the Washington think tank. 'But we also know if kids are dead, they don't learn.'
Here are a few ways education has changed in the past five years.
What's going on? Kids' reading, math skills are worsening, new test scores reveal.
Remote learning has enhanced digital interfaces in classrooms
Many internet tools that educators used during pandemic-based remote learning ‒ from math learning platform Zearn to game-based platform Kahoot! ‒ have a lasting presence in American classrooms today.
"One of the most immediate and visible changes brought about by the pandemic was the rapid integration of technology into the classroom," reads a recent report called "Rewiring the Classroom: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Transformed K-12 Education" from the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization.
"Before COVID-19, many schools were easing into the digital age," wrote Brian Jacob and Cristina Stanojevich for the Brookings Institution. "The switch to remote learning in March 2020 forced schools to fully embrace Learning Management Systems (LMS), Zoom, and educational software almost overnight."
Teachers now frequently use these digital tools – along with artificial intelligence – in their classrooms.
Behavioral problems
Educators are struggling to teach kids the skills they lost out on during remote learning while managing a surge in post-pandemic misbehavior, recent data from EdWeek shows.
More than 70% of 1,000 educators said in an EdWeek Research Center national survey that students were misbehaving more than they did before the pandemic.
Several studies show that kids lost out on fundamental socialization skills during pandemic school closures. Student behavioral problems and mental health needs have become a persistent problem for schools since then.
A spike in outbursts in America's classrooms coincides with a national youth mental health crisis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Several educators have also told USA TODAY over the last few years that students misbehave in class more often since the onset of the pandemic.
Wendy Gonzalez, a fourth-grade teacher at Downer Elementary School in Richmond, Calif., said that many of the students in her class didn't "know how to talk to each other" during the 2022-2023 school year.
'These are kids who spent most of their formative years – kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, when you're supposed to be learning social skills – not learning them. They don't have those social skills,' Gonzalez said.
More recently, Brittany Archibald-Swank, a veteran fourth-grade teacher at a public school in Urbana, Illinois, said she has had to pause her lessons almost daily over the last several years to help or comfort a student who is off task.
Many students in her class "bring a lot of trauma with them that impacts how they learn and how they react in a school setting," she said late last year.
Behavior vs. books: US students are rowdier than ever post-COVID. How's a teacher to teach?
Teacher turnover
Educators who were frustrated by remote learning and other conditions quit teaching and departed from classrooms across the nation, leaving school administrators nationwide with shortages of teachers and substitutes on staff, according to a RAND survey from 2021. About 8% of educators left the teaching profession after the 2020-2021 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.
New teachers have replaced some veteran educators since the pandemic, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.
New research on the lingering effects of the pandemic on teachers from University of California, Santa Cruz Professor of Education Lora Bartlett and her colleagues show that the pandemic-era "hastened a downward spiral in career satisfaction and longevity for teachers."
"The biggest declines in satisfaction took place in places where teachers described experiencing a lack of support and respect from school leaders and the public during the pandemic and felt that their expertise was often ignored, including in plans to address post-pandemic learning loss," Bartlett wrote in an email.
Some educators shared in the research that "increased political intervention" during the COVID-19 pandemic "that sought to curtail teacher freedom and decision-making around curriculum materials and instruction" also played a factor, Bartlett said.
Disadvantaged students were the most likely to enter classrooms with new teachers, substitutes, teachers with the least amount of training, and a shrinking number of the most experienced teachers, based on a USA TODAY analysis.
To address teacher shortages, some states have tailored their requirements and funded programs to attract teachers to the profession, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Alternative schools to traditional neighborhood schools
Many parents who were upset by school closures opted to move their kids outside of their neighborhood public schools – and have kept them there, according to data from EdChoice, a nonprofit organization which advocates for school vouchers.
One set of survey results by the National School Choice Awareness Foundation shows that interest in school choice grew during the pandemic. More than half of the 3,820 parents of school-aged children the group surveyed in 2023 either had considered or were considering a new school at the time.
Some families chose to enroll their kids in micro schools or other small learning communities while others moved to charter schools, homeschooling or private schools that were open for in-person learning during the pandemic, according to data from EdChoice.
School choice advocates also capitalized on parent dissatisfaction with public schools to create new alternatives to traditional education.
Several states have since passed legislation that entitles every child's family to use public funds for other schooling options, according to EdChoice's "School Choice in America" dashboard.
President Donald Trump has elevated the modern school choice movement since his first presidential term during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now in his second term, Trump signed an executive order in January directing his newly-appointed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to bolster school choice programs and calling on Congress to pass two related bills: the School Choice Now Act and the Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act.
Trump signs executive order Bolstering school choice
Chronic absenteeism
New data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that student attendance dipped during COVID-19 and student attendance rates haven't recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Chronic absenteeism rates among students grew from 15% to 26% between 2018 to 2023, due to the pandemic, according to an analysis from the American Enterprise Institute. Chronic absenteeism refers to when a student misses 10% of more of the school year.
Chronic absenteeism Is schools' 'biggest problem.' Five reasons kids are missing school.
The organization reports the trend began during the COVID-19 pandemic and continued when schools returned to in-person learning.
"The urgent need to recover from pandemic learning loss will be severely hampered by current rates of chronic absenteeism, making it the most pressing post-pandemic problem in public schools," according to the American Enterprise Institute's analysis.
Contributing: Savannah Kuchar, USA TODAY
Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
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CNN
29 minutes ago
- CNN
Once home to the CIA, this tiny Southeast Asia runway was considered ‘the most secret place on Earth'
Deep in the sweltering jungles of central Laos, a 4,500-foot stretch of cracked concrete cuts through the trees — an airstrip without an airport, in a village where many have never been on a plane. But behind its crumbling control tower and bomb-cratered runway lies a hidden chapter of America's Cold War history — a site once known as 'the most secret place on Earth.' The village of Long Tieng sits in central Laos, about 80 miles northeast of the capital, Vientiane. Today, it's a sleepy settlement of a few thousand people who mostly rely on the land to carve out a living. There are a couple of restaurants, two guesthouses and a handful of multipurpose shops selling everything from rice to farming tools made from repurposed bombshell metal — a nod to the village's agricultural roots and wartime past. At the village center lies the airstrip. It no longer serves aircraft, instead now functioning as a kind of outdoor community center: children ride scooters, farmers herd cattle and elderly villagers take early morning strolls before the intense heat engulfs the valley. But 50 years ago, the scene was vastly different. From the 1960s to the early 1970s, Laos played a central role in the United States' fight to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Long Tieng was the secret headquarters of a US-backed Hmong anti-communist army fighting against the communist Pathet Lao forces, which were supported by the North Vietnamese Army. At its height, tens of thousands of inhabitants — Hmong soldiers, their families, refugees from other parts of Laos, Thai soldiers and a small contingent of American CIA operatives and secret US Air Force pilots, dubbed 'Ravens' — called this place home. It was the heart of the largest paramilitary operation ever conducted by the CIA. At one point in time, the tiny airstrip handled 900 daily take-offs and landings, making it one of the busiest airports in the world. Cargo planes would offload crucial supplies including ammunition and food, which would then be loaded onto smaller planes that flew to even smaller airstrips around the country. Despite the scale of the base, it was so secret even some of those participating in the war in other locations did not know of its existence, says Paul Carter, a Laos Secret War specialist who lives in Southeast Asia. 'The war in Laos was so compartmentalized … I knew guys who participated in that war, they did not even know Long Tieng existed until the late 1960s when they started letting the reporters in there,' he tells CNN. From this remote mountain village, the CIA-backed Hmong army, led by the charismatic General Vang Pao, fought not only the communist Pathet Lao forces but also conducted guerrilla operations — destroying North Vietnamese supply depots, blowing up critical supply routes and generally harassing communist forces — all with full support from the US. As part of this secret war, the US launched a brutal bombing campaign that paralleled its broader military operations in Vietnam. And because international agreements barred direct military involvement in Laos, the effort fell almost entirely on the CIA. American pilots flew thousands of missions from Long Tieng's airstrip, which was known by the codenames Lima Site 98 and Lima Site 20A. Fifty years after the fall of Long Tieng in 1975, I set out to explore the remnants of the US presence in the area. I was drawn here after reading the book, 'A Great Place to Have a War' by Joshua Kurlantzick. It pulled me into a world I'd never known — a hidden Cold War battleground on the sidelines of the Vietnam War. Watching old, grainy newsreels of reporters wandering around the base only deepened my fascination. Somewhere along the way, I realized I needed to see Long Tieng with my own eyes. Before long, I find myself in Vientiane with an old college friend who I've convinced to come along for an adventure and Mr. Pao — the only driver I could find with a car suitable for the journey. Pao says he used to work at the mines near Long Tieng and is familiar with the area, though he admits he's only visited the village once before. Several tour companies organize trips, but the number of tourists that visit Long Tieng still pales in comparison to Laos' major tourist destinations like Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng. Chris Corbett, owner of Laos Adv Tours and Rentals, tells CNN that his company operates around 10 motorbike tours a year to the site, taking a total of around 40 people to the village. He said his guests mainly come from the United States, Australia and Europe. Today, the village remains largely cut off from the rest of the country. Though just 80 miles from Vientiane, the drive takes over eight hours. Beyond the capital's outskirts, roads quickly degrade — first into unsealed dirt tracks, then into rugged mining roads scarred by landslides and potholes. Visibility is often poor — dust kicked up by mining trucks combines with smoke from slash-and-burn agriculture. At times, we crawl forward, barely reaching 5 mph. Part of the road winds over a rugged mountain pass with no guardrails, just a sheer drop into the valley below. Sitting in the back of the car, I grip the seat in front of me as our driver edges closer to the cliffside, the tires skimming loose gravel. At one point, our driver glances back and warns us that if we get a flat tire out here, we'll likely be stuck for a long time — maybe hours. There's no phone signal. We nod silently and keep going. As we approach Long Tieng, the rough dirt road suddenly gives way to smooth pavement. Cresting the final mountain pass, we expect to glimpse the airstrip — but thick smoke shrouds the valley, limiting visibility to a few hundred meters. Descending into the village as the sun sets, there's little sign that 30,000 people once lived here. Family farms now occupy land once filled with barracks and command centers. Military convoys have long been replaced by scooters and cattle. We stay in a guesthouse next to the airstrip. It's barebones — a wooden bed and a single creaky fan that spins with little effect. There's no air conditioning, and the humid air hangs heavy and unmoving. It's hard to sleep — not just because of the heat, but because I can't stop thinking about what this place had once been. The next morning, we walk down the center of the airstrip as the sun rises over the valley. Once one of the busiest runways in the world, it now lies silent. Tall grass sprouts from potholes left by artillery strikes. The crumbling control tower is only half its original height, and the hangars at the far end sit abandoned — rusting reminders of a war long past. As I walk along its length, I notice the absence of signposts, statues or any form of commemoration. Despite the airstrip's historical importance, there's nothing to mark it. Among those who operated out of Long Tieng during the war were the Ravens, a secret group of active-duty Air Force pilots who volunteered to serve in Laos. Their primary role was to act as forward air controllers (FACs), flying low behind enemy lines to identify and mark targets for US Air Force bombers. 'They were just kind of taken off the books,' Carter says. 'They operated under a different cover.' The Ravens wore civilian clothing and were issued US Embassy ID cards. In some cases, Carter notes, pilots were also issued US Agency for International Development (USAID) identity cards. The Ravens often flew in pairs — an American pilot in front and a local Hmong 'backseater' who communicated with ground forces. But they weren't alone over the skies of Laos. Pilots from Air America, a secret CIA-owned airline, also operated in Long Tieng; they flew in crucial supplies to the base and conducted daring search and rescue missions to recover downed pilots deep behind enemy lines. 'I landed there pretty much every other day,' Neil Hansen, a pilot stationed in Laos during part of the war, tells CNN. Hansen worked for Air America between 1964 and 1973 and detailed his experience in the book, 'FLIGHT: An Air America Pilot's Story of Adventure, Descent and Redemption.' 'I was flying a C-123, bringing in munitions, supplies and fuel for 'the little birds,' which would then distribute it to other sites,' Hansen recalls. As part of his mission, he also transported 'CIA customers.' During one flight in 1972, Hansen was shot down over the Plateau de Bolevan in southern Laos. 'After getting my crew out and bailing out, I watched the C-123 fall out of the sky and explode,' he says, noting he was rescued by Air America helicopters shortly after. About 100 meters west of the airstrip stands a two-story house that once served as the headquarters of General Vang Pao, the leader of the CIA-backed Hmong army. From this remote compound, Pao worked closely with American operatives to coordinate a covert war, marshaling thousands of Hmong fighters while receiving US air support, weapons and humanitarian aid in return. Set behind a tall fence and overgrown garden, the house still feels separated from the rest of the village — distant, guarded. A sign on the front door, written in English, reads: 'No entry without permission.' It's the only English sign we've seen in the entire village, and it stops us in our tracks. With no one around, we circle the property, peering through dusty windows, unsure whether we can get inside. An older man in weathered military fatigues appears nearby. Without saying a word, he approaches, slowly dangling a key in front of our faces. He doesn't speak English, but types out a number on his phone. We nod and hand over the cash. A moment later, we're inside. The house is not what I expected. I'd imagined a preserved time capsule, cluttered with mementos or forgotten artifacts — but the rooms are eerily empty. No furniture, no decorations, no posters or portraits of the general. In the foyer, dozens of artillery shells are stacked neatly in one corner, with several mortar rounds resting nearby. It's surreal to see these instruments of war arranged with such quiet precision. Through a translation app, the man warns us not to touch anything — some might still be live. Upstairs, a single wooden desk and chair have been placed near a panoramic window facing the airstrip. I sit down, imagining General Vang Pao and CIA officers in this very spot, directing B-52 bombing runs on communist strongholds. The war — so vast, so devastating — had largely been coordinated from this small, simple room. It was almost impossible to reconcile the scale of the conflict with the modesty of this setting. We climb up to the roof. From there, the view stretches across the old airstrip and into the mountains that once shielded Long Tieng from attack. Today, the village is quiet. A few people walk slowly down the main road. Stray dogs nap in the sun. It's hard to believe that tens of thousands of people once lived here. Today, the impacts of the intense US bombing campaign on Laos are still being felt. Of the 270 million sub-munitions dropped on the country, an estimated 30% did not detonate, according to the Mines Advisory Group (MAG). These unexploded ordnances continue to kill, injure and hinder development across the country, according to MAG. Around the hills of Long Tieng, villagers still rarely venture off established roads and trails to avoid unexploded munitions. Full US-Laos relations were restored in 1992 and since 1995, the US has invested more than $390 million in a Conventional Weapons Destruction program aimed at addressing the legacy of the war. However, questions remain about future US funding of explosive ordinance clearance in Southeast Asia following the Trump administration's widespread suspension of foreign aid. 'I fell in love with Laos,' says Hansen. 'I look back on my time as exciting and a place where I could immerse myself in the culture. I was fulfilling a purpose where I knew I was accomplishing something that was needed.' Back in Long Tieng, children riding scooters zoom past my friend and me, their tires bumping over the broken concrete that once launched warplanes into the sky. I now understand why the community gravitates toward the airstrip whenever they can: it's one of the few open spaces cleared of unexploded ordnance. A rare place where children can play without fear of becoming another casualty of a war that ended 50 years ago. The legacy of a secret conflict — barely remembered back in the United States.
New York Post
44 minutes ago
- New York Post
You're saying these Long Island towns wrong — even the ones you think you know: ‘Butchered'
This will have you spit out your 'cawffee.' It's a dead giveaway that someone isn't from Long Island if they bungle how to pronounce local communities – but it turns out even 516 and 631 lifers are doing it wrong. Teams like the New York Islanders and Long Island Ducks even post videos of out-of-town players brutally mincing Wantagh, Patchogue and other Native-American names. Advertisement 6 The New York Islanders and Long Island Ducks post videos of out-of-town players brutally mincing Wantagh, Patchogue and other Native-American names. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post But you may not have to venture far to find folks messing up Massapequa and Ronkonkoma, which have been anglicized over the past few centuries. Their real pronunciations sound unrecognizable to the modern ear, according to former longtime Unkechaug Nation Chief Harry Wallace, an expert in Algonquian. 'Our language wasn't written in the sense of being translated into English or French — the sound is what they're trying to copy,' Wallace, based on on the island, told The Post. Advertisement He compared how Algonquian is the root base of many different Native American languages, some of which were spoken on Long Island, much like the Romance languages, such as French, Spanish, and Italian, all of which stem from Latin. However, during colonial times, much was lost in translation because the European settlers 'didn't know how to spell,' especially with hard consonants like the letter 'H,' which are vital to the Algonquian language, he added. From there, readers would only see, but not hear, the real pronunciation. Ultimately, it turned into a telephone game that has been ongoing for a few hundred years. Advertisement Wallace recognizes that there's no one official way to sound out some towns, such as Wantagh, which islanders say as 'wan-tah.' And the local way of saying Patchogue as 'patch-hog' is pretty close to its origin, he said. These, however, are some Native American-named local towns that even the most bona fide residents are getting wrong, according to Wallace. Copiague 6 Algonquian is the root base of many different Native American languages, some of which were spoken on Long Island. Copiague Chamber of Commerce / Facebook Advertisement Townsfolk and the recorded voice on the Long Island Railroad alike sound out this Suffolk community as 'co-peg,' but really it should be pronounced closer to 'co-pi-ah-e' with a short 'I' and long 'E,' he explained. '[Europeans] would elongate the A when they read it…and that's all they would hear after,' Wallace added of what translates loosely to grove or forest. Massapequa 6 As with other Algonquin hard consonants, the real sound is 'Mass-a-peek' without the open vowels at the end. Massapequa Park / Facebook The town that has caught the eye of President Trump over as it fights to keep its Chiefs team logo in the face of a state ban on Native American mascots isn't straightforwardly pronounced 'Mass-a-pequa,' said Wallace, who opposes the school using the name. As with other Algonquin hard consonants, the real sound is 'Mass-a-peek' without the open vowels at the end, he added, explaining that it means place of great water. Cutchogue 6 While it's spoken today as 'cutch-hog,' Wallace said the real way is 'cutch-e-hoki,' spelled as 'kecheahki.' Alamy Stock Photo Unlike Patchogue, residents aren't remotely close to getting the pronunciation of the quiet North Fork escape spot on. While it's spoken today as 'cutch-hog,' Wallace said the real way is 'cutch-e-hoki,' spelled as 'kecheahki.' Advertisement In the same vein as Massapequa, it translates to mean great place. Setauket 6 Wallace says it as 'Se-tau-ah-ki' and added its definition is place of streams, something the north shore enclave by the Long Island Sound is known for. Alamy Stock Photo Similar to Cutchogue, Setauket, spoken like Secaucus in New Jersey, is a world apart from its perceived pronunciation. Wallace says it as 'Se-tau-ah-ki' and added its definition is place of streams, something the north shore enclave by the Long Island Sound is known for. Ronkonkoma Advertisement 6 Its prototypical 'Ron-cahnk-ama' pronunciation — which Neil Patrick Harris projected on the LIRR 2 a.m. drunk train in a sitcom — should be 'Ronkon-koman.' James Messerschmidt That's right, Long Island's showstopper that's been a punchline on 'How I Met Your Mother' and an Artie Lange monologue on an insufferable Yankees fan 'has been butchered,' Wallace said. Its prototypical 'Ron-cahnk-ama' pronunciation — which Neil Patrick Harris projected on the LIRR 2 a.m. drunk train in the sitcom — should be 'Ronkon-koman,' he explained. Advertisement The town name derives from its kettle lake, formed by the glacier that carved North America, which was sacred to its native population. One translation for Ronkonkoma is 'deep cavern place' in reference to the lake, which is tied to urban legends of hauntings and drownings attributed to a Native American-related curse — a story Wallace has explicitly called bunk on.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Arkansas stuck among bottom five states for child well-being, report shows
(for Carter's Kids) Arkansas remains among the worst states for child well-being, ranking 45th nationwide for the second year in a row, according to the annual Annie E. Casey Foundation report released Monday. The group's 2025 KIDS COUNT Data Book measures 16 indicators of child well-being in four categories: education, health, economic well-being and family and community. The report ranked Arkansas: 36th in education 45th in economic well-being 46th in family and community 47th in child health Arkansas has consistently ranked in the bottom 10 states overall and in the specific categories. The state's statistics worsened for the majority of indicators in 2023, the year the data in Monday's report was collected. The report drew comparisons between 2023 and 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread socioeconomic impacts on families. In that time, Arkansas saw a decrease of children who live in poverty or whose parents lack secure employment, but the state's rates of children in those situations outpaces the national rates, according to the report. In 2023, 144,000, or 21%, of Arkansas children lived in poverty, only a 1% decrease since 2019. The state also had fewer children in high-poverty areas with 68,000 in 2023, a 2% decrease since 2019. Aecf-2025kidscountdatabook-embargoed Other indicators remained stagnant, such as 37% of children in single-parent households and 12% of high school students not graduating on time, according to the report. The state 'cannot become complacent as the result of modest improvements,' said Keesa Smith-Brantley, executive director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in a press release. AACF is a member of the Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT network. 'We should be particularly alarmed by the outcomes for our teens,' Smith-Brantley said. 'We're trending in the wrong direction for teens not attending school and not working and teens who are overweight or obese. And while Arkansas's teen birth rate improves each year, we're stuck at or near the bottom because of the policy choices and investments we're not making.' In 2023, 17,000 Arkansas teens were neither working nor attending school, a 3% increase from 2019. Children and teens between the ages of 10 and 17 saw a 4% increase in obesity rates from 2019 to 2023 while the national rate remained stagnant, according to the report. Additionally, Arkansas had almost double the national rate of teen pregnancy in 2022, even after a 17% decrease since 2019. By 2023, the state's rate had dropped from 25 to 24 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19, according to the Casey Foundation report. The national rate is 13 births per 1,000 females. 'Those babies are more likely to be born in families with limited educational and economic resources, and if you have a baby as a teen, there are simply going to be more challenges with finishing high school, going on to college and working [up and] out of poverty,' AACF policy director Christin Harper told reporters in a Wednesday news conference about the report. President Donald Trump's administration has attempted to withhold Title X family planning grant funds, which include teen pregnancy prevention efforts. This is one of several recent federal actions that Harper and other AACF leaders said would put child well-being in Arkansas at risk. Nearly 3,400 Arkansas babies were born with low birth weights in 2023, a 0.4% increase since 2019. Being born at less than 5.5 pounds, often caused by premature birth, creates health risks for children not only in infancy but throughout childhood and even into adulthood, according to a 2024 Casey Foundation report that highlighted the racial disparities among children's health, particularly affecting Black Arkansans. 2025-KCDB-profile-embargoed-AR Arkansas also consistently has among the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality nationwide, but it remains the only state that has taken no action to adopt the federal option of extending postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months after birth, according to KFF. More than half of births in Arkansas are covered by Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance system for low-income Americans. Additionally, Arkansas' rate of child and teen deaths worsened from 2019 to 2023, totaling 300 per 100,000. About half of the more than 800,000 Arkansans on Medicaid are children. An additional 50,000 children in Arkansas, or 7%, were uninsured in 2023, a 1% increase from 2019, according to the KIDS COUNT report. A federal budget bill moving through Congress would make deep cuts to Medicaid spending, reducing the program by $625 billion over 10 years, and shift some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps, to state governments. As of March, 235,927 people in Arkansas received SNAP benefits, the Advocate previously reported — approximately 7.6% of the state population. AACF leaders said last week that they are concerned the budget bill will worsen child well-being in Arkansas if it receives approval from Congress and Trump. Arkansas' SNAP program contains a work requirement, and the state has taken steps to impose a work requirement for recipients of the Medicaid expansion program. The federal budget bill would also add new Medicaid work requirements for some able-bodied adults. AACF has repeatedly denounced such requirements. U.S. House GOP mandates Medicaid work requirements in giant bill slashing spending Children who live in households at risk of poverty 'are especially likely to fall off of health care [coverage] because their parents can't meet the work requirements,' said Maricella Garcia, AACF's race equity director. The organization is also concerned about the 43,000 Arkansas children aged 3 and 4 who were not in early childhood education programs between 2019 and 2023, AACF education policy director Nicole Carey said. This number increased 6% between 2015 and 2018, according to the report. Fourth-graders in Arkansas were 3% less proficient in reading in 2024 than in 2019, according to the report, and state officials have made improving childhood literacy a priority in the past few years. The wide-ranging LEARNS Act of 2023 implemented literacy coaches in public schools graded 'D' and 'F' by the Department of Education. Under the new education law, students who don't meet the third-grade reading standard by the 2025-26 school year will not be promoted to 4th grade, but $500 tutoring grants will be available on a first-come, first-served basis with priority to those to be held back in third grade. Carey pointed out that the fourth-graders of the most recent school year were in kindergarten at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. 'When they did their testing in the school year of 2023-24, that was when a couple of those literacy pieces [of LEARNS] were still being implemented, so we really can't say yet if the literacy coaches in the 'D' and 'F' schools or those literacy tutoring grants are going to impact this indicator,' Carey said. 'There's definitely hope that they will.' Nationwide in 2024, '70% of fourth graders were not reading proficiently, worsening from 66% in 2019 — essentially undoing a decade of progress,' the report states. 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