Health & Welfare, K–12 | Daily Report

Photo by Louis FreedbergLunchtime at Marshall High in Los Angeles

As California prepares for another round of severe budget cuts, a child-advocacy group is recommending the state create a "Children's Cabinet" to coordinate the myriad services delivered by multiple state agencies.

The idea is one of numerous recommendations embedded in the 2011 California Report Card (PDF) issued this week by Children Now, an advocacy group based in Oakland. The report lays out a detailed "children's agenda" for the state, some of which would involve significant additional revenues – an unlikely prospect given the state's budget problems. 

But the suggested "Children's Cabinet" would cost little or nothing.

As outlined by Children Now, the cabinet would consist of the heads of all agencies and departments serving children, as well as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. It would be charged with "promoting and implementing information sharing, collaboration, increased efficiency and improved service delivery among and within the state's child serving agencies and organizations."

Currently, children's services in California are scattered among numerous state bureaucracies, and often operate in a duplicative fashion, or at cross-purposes to each other.

Ted Lempert, president of California Now and a former member of the state Assembly, said Gov.-elect Jerry Brown could set up the cabinet by executive order. "We are not proposing any new people or bureaucracy, so it is not going to cost the state money, and could save it money," he told California Watch.  The goal would be to break down the silos that departments tend to operate in.   He recalled, for example, when he served on a Gov. Schwarzenegger task force to set up health centers on school campuses, "I was stunned by the disconnect between the health folks and the school folks."

The Children Now Report Card spells out why California needs to do a better job in providing and coordinating services affecting many aspects of children's lives. It gives California an overall grade of C- when it comes to the overall well-being of its children.

In specific areas, the state gets even lower grades: D for its K-12 schools, D+ for the level of children's health coverage, D for their oral health, D+ for treating children with asthma, C for mental health services, and C+ for infant health. From the report:

California’s K-12 system, unfortunately, is failing far too many children. One out of every two students is below proficient in English Language Arts; 54% are below proficient in mathematics; and 64% are below proficient in science. Additionally, approximately one-fifth of California’s students fail to graduate from high school.

The opportunity and financial costs of such failings are staggering. The cost of 120,000 high school dropouts is estimated to be $46.4 billion in total economic losses.52 Although California has helped lead the nation in setting standards for what children should learn in K-12, the state’s own academic achievement goals remain woefully unmet.

The idea of a children's cabinet is not a new one. But, as in many other areas, California lags behind on this one as well. Some 20 states, including Maryland, Florida and Maine have established children's cabinets in some form. 

One advantage of California not having one is that it can benefit from the experiences of others to find the best way to set one up. That way it could avoid one pitfall: setting up yet another government bureaucracy that sounds good on paper, but does not effectively address the issues it was set up to resolve.