MAYOR DALEY’S STATE OF THE CHILDREN ADDRESS

Delivered at the Chicago Children’s Advocacy Center

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

I would like to thank the Northern Trust Company for sponsoring this luncheon, and I thank all of you for your generous support of the Chicago Children’s Advocacy Center.

I can assure you that no group of children is more deserving of our help than the victims of physical and sexual abuse.

These unfortunate young people have been a major concern of mine since I was State’s Attorney.

And the City of Chicago was committed to completing the Children’s Advocacy Center, that is why we contributed eight of the nine million dollars needed to make it a reality.

And today, thanks to your generous contributions, you’re helping us continue to address the needs of these young people.

The Center provides all the services that abused children need in one place – and in a caring, child-friendly environment.

It is dedicated to helping them overcome the trauma of child abuse. And it is equally dedicated to bringing their predators to justice.

As I travel throughout Chicago, people frequently ask what keeps me motivated, everyday.

What’s the most important thing I want to accomplish on behalf of our city?

While, there are, of course, many important priorities for our city, one goal stands out above everything else. Nothing is more important to me than improving the lives of our children, and helping them achieve their full potential, because when we do we’re also helping achieve the full potential of our city.

What good is it to build libraries if the children can’t read and why bother with public works projects if we’re not preparing our young people to be qualified to work?

According to the city’s Department of Public Health, on average a child is born every ten minutes in Chicago. Think of it. Every ten minutes, a new life begins in our city – and each of us, through our actions or inactions, has a say in how that life unfolds.

Whether that child will live a healthy life or have the skills for a good job or possess the abilities needed to be a good father or mother are all things that we can influence.

But, if we neglect our children, we are basically writing off the future of the City of Chicago – and as Mayor that is something I will not do.

In 1995, I assumed responsibility for the Chicago Public Schools, ignoring the advice of the many people who told me it was a hopeless task and political suicide.

It turned out to be just the opposite. School reform was embraced by people across the city, many of whom are in this room today.

Tens of thousands of students, parents, teachers, principals, business and community leaders went to work on what we knew would be a long-term project, with ups and downs along the way.

Just fourteen years ago, Chicago’s schools were called the worst in America.

Today, although there are still ups and downs from year to year, we can point with pride to clear and steady improvement in test scores, attendance, safety and learning environments in schools all across Chicago.

More young people are graduating than at any time in the last 20 years. More than half of our eighth-graders are at or above national averages in both reading and math for the second year in a row.

Four out of five elementary grades improved this year in every subject – reading, writing, math, science and social studies.

And, as a reflection of our commitment to help lift every student, for the first time we have fewer students in the bottom quarter on the Iowa test than the national average.

By most measures, our children are learning more and more each year.

Is there more to be done? Of course there is – but, year-by-year, our schools are moving steadily and strongly in the right direction.

And, that’s something that each of you here today and every person in the city of Chicago can be proud of.

As our school reform program has progressed, we have been learning, just as the children have.

And one thing we’ve learned is that many of our children have already fallen behind before they even enter kindergarten, because they didn’t have the same opportunities as those children who were raised in educationally rich environments.

When they enter kindergarten and the first grade, the rest of the class is off and running, and these children haven’t been given the same opportunity to even make it to the starting line.

No matter how much we improve the schools, it’s very difficult for them to catch up with their peers.

The danger, of course, is that these young people will drop out of school in frustration and fall victim to guns, gangs and drugs.

The answer is to provide more opportunities for quality early childhood education, because there is overwhelming evidence that it can help close the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students.

Earlier this month, researchers at the University of Wisconsin released a study that said every dollar spent on high-quality early childhood education programs saves society seven dollars in future costs of special education, delinquency, crime control, welfare and lost taxes.

In other words, money spent on early childhood education is money well spent.

Three years ago, we announced our Early Child Care and Education Plan, which expands and renovates child-care centers around the city and improves their programs.

Already, this program has added more than 4,800 licensed, full-day, full-year child-care spaces for low-income children.

But, we can do more to make sure that every child in Chicago is given the same start at a good education and a good life.

It’s time to add the next piece to our eight-year commitment to improve the education of all our children.

Today, I’m presenting the next steps we will take to improve the quality of early childhood learning in Chicago.

They reflect our commitment to provide the opportunity for a good education and a healthy, good life -- starting at birth -- to every child, regardless of economic, ethnic or social background.

They were developed together with many of Chicago’s leading education and early childhood professionals and are based on the findings of our Early Childhood Conference held in October 2002.

But our efforts address more than the education of our young children.

They also address their health. Children do not do well in school if they are sick or malnourished, if their birth weight is low, or if they received inadequate pre-natal care.

Fortunately, we’ve made significant progress in children’s health in our city.

According to the most recent data provided by our Department of Health, Chicago’s infant mortality rate stands at nine deaths per one thousand live births.

This is an all-time low, and it represents a drop of almost 40 percent in just ten years.

It translates into 300 young lives saved each year, and it’s a tribute to those parents who have heeded the importance of healthier pregnancies and better infant care.

The number of births to teenaged mothers has also fallen almost 31 percent in ten years. So too have the numbers of sudden infant death cases, mothers who smoke during pregnancy, mothers who received no pre-natal care and children suffering from lead poisoning.

Almost three-fourths of Chicago’s two-year-olds have received all their vaccinations – compared with only one-fourth in 1988. This is substantial progress.

But in every area of child and maternal health, I say: We can do better.

So here’s what we’re planning to do.

This fall, working in partnership with the Irving Harris Foundation and Civitas (sih-vih-TAHS), we will begin a citywide public awareness campaign called “Born Learning” to make sure every parent understands the fundamentals of healthy child development such as…

…when their child needs to get shots, what to do if their baby has a fever, how to breast-feed and how to tell if your child is developing properly from year-to-year.

And because we understand that parents are children’s first and most important teachers, the “Born Learning” campaign will also help them better understand how to cultivate in their children a love of learning, through daily activities that include reading and math.

Through the Irving Harris Foundation, the city is working with our sister agencies and local partners like the Erikson Institute, the Ounce of Prevention Fund and Voices for Illinois Children to develop parent-friendly materials that communicate the importance of early learning.

These materials will include videos, posters, brochures and print ads that will be distributed through public and private facilities including libraries, schools, museums, parks and neighborhood businesses.

And beginning this fall, as part of our campaign, every new mother in the city will receive a Born Learning packet shortly after giving birth. We’ll distribute around 50,000 packets a year containing the birth certificate and information on child development to mothers who might otherwise not have it.

This instructional information will also be posted on our City of Chicago and KidStart Web sites.

Also starting this fall, the Chicago Public Schools’ Cradle to Classroom program, which currently serves 4,000 teen mothers, and the Ounce of Prevention Fund will launch a new partnership aimed at expanding pre-natal and post-natal services to teen mothers.

This partnership will result in three new Doula sites in Chicago, which will provide one-on-one coaching to parents and pre-natal assistance to young, at-risk mothers.

In the first year alone we hope to reach more than 300 teen mothers who, perhaps, would never have had this individualized, intensive support.

Then in the winter, we will hold a citywide conference and training event for parents and caregivers of children ages zero to three. The conference will offer advice on how to help children begin learning and preparing to start school.

Parents and caregivers will receive strategies for promoting confidence, curiosity and self-control in infants and toddlers, as well as training on how to recognize social or emotional problems in young children, like fear and anxiety, that can impede learning.

We will follow this conference, with additional workshops throughout the city, where health professionals will be on hand to answer questions and provide additional information and resources.

Starting in January, the Chicago Department of Public Health will increase the number of nurse visits from 11,000 to 17,000 a year.

They will begin by offering home visits to all young at-risk mothers who deliver their children at Stroger, University of Chicago and Illinois Masonic hospitals –hospitals which service large numbers of high and low risk infants in the north, south, and near west parts of the city.

During these home visits health professionals will assess the physical and developmental well being of infants, provide parents with information on baby care, feeding and development, offer parenting tips and ensure that families have access to medical services, including immunization.

These visits will positively impact the health of thousands of children who, perhaps otherwise, would have gone without needed health care.

In addition, starting this fall, our Public Schools and Chicago Department of Human Services will work with pediatricians from major hospitals like Children’s Memorial and Northwestern University and City clinics to enhance outreach programs that help parents recognize basic health problems like asthma, lead poisoning and diabetes.

They will also help make sure all children receive immunization, vision, hearing and developmental screenings by the first grade.

These programs have a common goal: guaranteeing the health care that your children and mine take for granted which should be made available to all the children of Chicago, regardless of income, ethnicity or background.

Children who do not get decent health care will not be able to keep up in school. It’s that simple.

But health care is only part of the solution. Many healthy children still arrive in kindergarten unprepared to learn, because they received too little educational interaction during their very early years.

The fact is, learning begins at birth, and the first few years of life are critical to a child’s future development. If we wait to provide learning experiences until the child is five, that child will start school at a disadvantage.

If we expect our children to succeed in school and in life, we have to offer them high-quality early childhood education, and we have to make sure their parents and guardians understand its importance.

This is not a simple task.

First of all, early childhood education is provided by a vast array of public, private and not-for-profit pre-school programs and day-care centers.

And they have different learning standards, depending on who’s funding the program.

So it’s a very fragmented system, with each program expecting something different from their children.

Our goal is to change that. For the first time this fall, the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Department of Human Services have developed a uniform set of learning standards which will be required in all city-funded early education programs.

These standards set expectations for how three or four year-olds should be progressing in terms of vocabulary, knowledge of the alphabet, recognizing words in print, listening comprehension, spelling, counting, recognizing shapes and patterns, and so on.

The standards align those currently used by the State of Illinois and Head Start, and will ensure that our early childhood educators receive a single, consistent message about what our children need to learn and that they are working towards the same goal.

With their implementation of these standards, more than 40,000 children ages 3 to 5 in our city will learn more than ever before.

The rollout of the uniform standards will include teacher training to equip early childhood educators with the most effective techniques and strategies for developing strong pre-reading and math skills in young children.

We will also work with private pre-school associations to make the standards available to private and state-funded centers and encourage them to embrace these standards.

And we will make the information available to parents through user-friendly materials that will be distributed through the schools, in libraries, and on the city’s KidStart Web site.

For the first time this fall, half of all CPS kindergarten children will receive literacy screening to determine their current reading levels and to help teachers identify resources to help all children become successful learners. Next year, every child in every kindergarten class will receive this screening.

We expect this to result in improvements in the number of children who learn to read, in increased graduations and fewer dropouts in the later grades.

To complement our classroom efforts, this fall, the Chicago Public Library will expand its early literacy programs by acquiring additional materials and serving more early childhood groups through its Look Out Kindergarten Here I Come and Get Wild About Reading programs.

In addition, they will establish more partnerships between neighborhood library branches and early childhood centers through the Great Kids Kraft grant, and launch the Great Kids Read family literacy program in 15 Chicago Park District sites throughout the city.

Another way to improve the quality of early childhood education in our city is to improve the quality of the teachers.

I’m pleased to announce today that a generous grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation will enable the City Colleges of Chicago to focus on improving the quality of early childhood teacher education in Chicago by strengthening their child development degree programs.

We’re improving the quality of both the education and the educators, but that’s still not enough.

We also have to make sure parents and guardians know how to get their children into these programs.

And that’s not as easy as it sounds. The eligibility requirements for federal and state early education programs are confusing, even to experts.

Imagine if you were a person trying to negotiate them in order to build a better life for your children.

There is probably no better-known early childhood education program in our nation today than Head Start.

Since it’s creation in the 1960s, Head Start has helped tens of millions of young children nationally and 400,000 here in Chicago, receive the health and educational basics that are routinely available to many middle and upper income children in our nation.

Head Start has been recognized time and again as an important part of our nation’s effort to provide our children with equal opportunities to learn and, for the most part it has worked well on behalf of our children.

But, it is not a perfect program, which is why it has been and will continue to be debated in Congress this year.

I want to be clear. Head Start needs to be improved on, not done away with.

This upcoming school year, there are 16,500 Head Start slots available to Chicago’s most needy children through Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Department of Human Services.

The problem is, as we prepare for school to open on September 2, there are still 2,000 open slots that need to be filled.

This is common. And, this year, as in years past, our school leadership team will undertake an aggressive outreach campaign through community organizations across Chicago to fill them.

But, right now, I want to make sure that every parent in Chicago understands that if your family is eligible to send your child to Head Start, you should take advantage of it. Your child will benefit. So will your family and our city.

But, we have come to realize that there is something fundamentally wrong about the Head Start program that puts us in this position every year of rushing to fill vacancies just before school starts.

Today, a family of four can earn no more than $18,400 for their child to enter Head Start.

But, that’s far too low and unreasonable. First, Chicago’s cost of living is higher than in other cities.

And, in today’s economy, families who earn far more are still probably going to struggle to find a way to both put food on the table and send their child to an early childhood center.

In addition, federal income standards for participating in other programs is higher, but for some reason these standards do not apply to Head Start.

We could dramatically expand the pool of potential families whose children could benefit from Head Start, if we increased the income eligibility requirement in Congress. And, that is what I hope they will do before the end of this session.

Raising the income threshold to just $24,000 for a family of four, which is the Medicaid eligibility cutoff, would increase the pool of potential families by another 5,000 to 6,000 here in Chicago.

I have written both Secretary Tommy Thompson, of the Department of Health and Human Services and members of the Illinois Congressional delegation proposing this and other changes.

But, even if Head Start is reformed and expanded, we can do more to provide parents and guardians with the information they need and find an early learning center for their child.

The Day Care Action Council of Illinois has launched a new childcare hotline, which provides consultants to help parents sort through the maze of available public and private early childhood programs. Our KidStart Web site also directs parents to public and private childcare agencies.

These are excellent efforts, but they don’t make up for the fact that our childcare system is needlessly complicated.

So, we will work to simplify and streamline the eligibility standards for federal and state-funded child care programs in order to better meet the needs of low-income parents.

But, we also need to do more to expand the number of opportunities for low-income parents.

This fall, CPS will add another 1,100 pre-school slots for at-risk children bringing the total to almost 24,000 young children served through our public schools.

We also need to pay attention to those working families who earn a little too much to qualify for fully subsidized day care, even though both parents work and they want to send their child to an early childhood program.

These hardworking families should not be forced to sacrifice the early education of their children to make ends meet.

This fall we will add 300 new slots to our tuition-based pre-school program, but under our plan, we will work to expand affordable preschool opportunities even further by creating new partnerships with community based organizations across Chicago.

But, to be honest, these efforts will not work, especially given the fragmentation of the system, unless we hold the many groups we will partner with accountable for their actions.

Therefore, I am also creating a Born Learning Advisory Council, which will consist of leading child care professionals and will have the important responsibility of coordinating the execution of this plan, holding the agencies accountable for their funding and progress and planning our year to year efforts to take our commitment to the next level.

Taken together, I believe that the steps we are taking today represent important next steps in our city’s commitment to provide quality early learning opportunities for the children of our city.

And, because they rely on better coordination and the smarter use of existing resources, they will not cost taxpayers any more to implement.

And, the “Born Learning” public awareness campaign will not cost taxpayers one cent.

It will be financed through funds provided by private donors.

And I assure you it is designed to supplement – not detract from – our continuing effort to improve the K-through-12 educational system in our city.

The coming school year offers the hope of even more progress for the children in the Chicago Public Schools.

Our Reading Initiative, which is at the core of all our efforts to turn our schools around, will expand this year.

The Chicago Math and Science Initiative begins this fall, with enriched programs and renovated high school science labs.

Our children will return to even safer schools, because of increased security as a result of high school security audits.

And, thanks to the support of local taxpayers, we will invest another $340 million dollars in construction and repairs, bringing our total school capital investment over eight years to almost $4 billion dollars.

But I want to remind everyone here today that we still have over $2 billion dollars in unmet capital needs.

With the first day of school only two weeks away, I’m asking all of you, once again this year, to help us make sure that every child is in school, ready to learn, on Tuesday, September 2, 2003.

In closing, I want to thank all of you, once again, for all you’ve done for the children of our city.

Together, we have taken a school system that was once considered the worst in the nation, and made it the national model of reform.

Together, we have made great strides in infant and maternal health.

And, working together, we will develop an early childhood education system that will ensure that every child – regardless of family income – has made the most of these critical first years of life.

We can all take pride in the fact that the children of our city, on the whole, are much better off than they were a decade or two ago – healthier, better educated, better prepared to become the future leaders of our city.

But we still have far to go.

So when you leave, remind yourself, as I do, that every ten minutes a new child is born in Chicago.

And then, challenge yourself do something more on behalf of Chicago’s children.

Thank you.

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