WASHINGTON — Despite making progress in most areas, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ remained mired at 46th among states for overall child well-being in the 2015 KidsCount report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
The report said ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ improved in 11 of 16 indicators it uses to measure child well-being, including standardized test scores, the teen birth rate and all four health criteria: low-birthweight babies, teen deaths, substance-abuse rates and children without health insurance.
But those marginal improvements were not enough to keep pace with gains in other states, or to offset areas where ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ dropped.
ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ has “been at the bottom of this list most of the years this report has come out,†said Josh Oehler of the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Children’s Action Alliance, which collaborated with the Casey Foundation on the state’s portion of the report.
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While Oehler said he was disappointed with the state’s numbers, he said advocates were encouraged by areas where the state is making progress.
The state made a remarkable jump in its ranking on teen substance abuse, for example, going from 45th to 17th place, as the number of teens abusing drugs or alcohol fell from 9 percent in the benchmark year of 2007-2008 to 6 percent five years later, the numbers used for this year’s report.
