New data: Many fewer US kids in foster care, By David Crary (AP), August 31, 2010, Washington Post: “The number of U.S. children in foster care has dropped 8 percent in just one year, and more than 20 percent in the past decade, according to new federal figures underscoring the impact of widespread reforms. The drop, hailed by child-welfare advocates, is due largely to a shift in the policies and practices of state and county child welfare agencies. Many have been shortening stays in foster care, speeding up adoptions and expanding preventive support for troubled families so more children avoid being removed from their homes in the first place. The new figures, released Tuesday by the Department of Health and Human Services, show there were 423,773 children in foster care as of Sept. 30. That’s down from 460,416 a year earlier and from more than 540,000 a decade ago…”

Kentucky kids’ status worsens, report says, By Deborah Yetter, August 31, 2010, Louisville Courier-Journal: “The nation’s economic problems continue to make life harder for Kentucky’s youngest residents, according to a new report by Kentucky Youth Advocates. ‘That should ring an alarm bell for everyone,’ said Terry Brooks, executive director of the non-profit research and advocacy group. ‘It calls for some action.’ The 2010 annual ‘Kentucky Kids Count’ report - released Tuesday - noted that unemployment in Kentucky reached 10.5 percent last year, the state’s highest rate since 1983. Almost one-third of the state’s families in which a parent is employed are considered low-income, or ‘working poor’ and nearly one-fourth of Kentucky children - 23 percent - were living in poverty in 2008, the report found.Kentucky Kids Count is a more detailed follow-up to the national ‘Kids Count’ produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which ranks all states on basic measures of child well-being. Kentucky ranked 40th and Indiana 33rd in this year’s report, released in late July…”

Phone troubles hang up Texas welfare requests, By Robert T. Garrett, August 31, 2010, Dallas Morning News: “Even as Texas spends hundreds of millions to hire more workers to process welfare applications, it has skimped on replacing obsolete phone systems at more than 300 offices. At some, phones are more than two decades old and prone to ‘port failures’ in which callers hear a ring, but no line actually rings in the office, officials said. Also, many newly hired workers do not have voicemail. Experienced workers and supervisors do, but they complain of occasional malfunctions, which can make entire offices unreachable. The situation has added frustration and complications for Texans applying for benefits as the economy sags…”

Milwaukee County evictions fell with stimulus, study shows, By Georgia Pabst, August 30, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “With a 2-year-old and a baby on the way, Jenny Furne said she started to worry that she and her growing family would be homeless. She said she moved to Milwaukee last year from another state to escape from a domestic violence situation and found a job in sales. But after she lost her job and couldn’t find another one, she fell a month behind in the rent on her north side apartment. Although she signed up for W-2, the state’s welfare-to-work program, she initially received a partial payment of $300, not enough to cover her rent of $510 a month. ‘Two weeks before having my baby, I got an eviction notice,’ said Furne, 24. ‘I was freaking out because I didn’t know if I would have a home to come back to with the baby.’ She went to Community Advocates and explained her predicament. Using federal stimulus money designed to stem evictions and prevent homelessness, the agency paid the $510 rent owed, buying Furne the time she needed to get her W-2 check and get on track. Furne isn’t the only one who has been helped from the brink of homelessness. According to a Harvard University study that looked at local eviction records, the influx of federal stimulus money to help stem homelessness coincided with 836 fewer evictions filed in Milwaukee County from August 2009 to March 2010, compared with the same period the previous year…”

• Record number in government anti-poverty program, By Richard Wolf, August 30, 2010, USA Today: “Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand. More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That’s up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007. ‘Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record,’ says Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, which surveys states for Kaiser Family Foundation. The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. ‘Private physicians are already indicating that they’re at their limit,’ says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers. More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years. Caseloads have risen as more people become eligible. The economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year also boosted benefits…”
• As unemployed lose benefits, more seek welfare benefits, By James Osborne, August 30, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “One morning in July, Lisa Carstarphen climbed out of her husband’s car and walked into the beige brick building that houses the offices of Camden County’s social services, wondering how at age 46 she ended up there. Two years ago, she was laid off from her $35,000-a-year job at Comcast. Now, with her unemployment benefits exhausted, she was broke. She stepped through the building’s glass doors into a crowded, fluorescent-lit room to wait her turn to sign up for welfare. As a child, she had accompanied her mother to the welfare office and swore she would never end up the same way. But here she was, surrounded by dejected faces, just as in her youth. Memories of nondescript jars of peanut butter and big blocks of government cheese came rushing back, and Carstarphen struggled to keep it together. ‘It was like going back in time. But I had no choice. My refrigerator was bare,’ she said. ‘For someone who has worked their whole life, it’s awful to ask for a handout. When my husband picked me up later, I busted out in tears.’ For the first two years of the recession, welfare caseloads followed the same steady decline of the decade and a half after President Bill Clinton’s transformation of welfare from a social-assistance program into what is essentially a job-training program for low-income families. But over the last six months, caseloads have begun to creep up, the product, experts say, of the continued sluggishness of the job market. Unemployed workers who have run out of unemployment benefits, like Carstarphen, are being pushed into the system…”

• The fastest-growing group among local homeless: families, By Lornet Turnbull, August 28, 2010, Seattle Times: “On this chilly May night in the parking lot of Southcenter mall, Cherie Moore is growing anxious. She and her 17-year-old son, Cody Barnes, sit almost unmoving in the cab of their old Ford Ranger, all their belongings crammed in the back - their 32-inch flat-screen television, a prized movie collection, Cody’s video games. Moore is down to her last $6. It’s nearing 10 o’clock and it’s been hours since the two have had a meal. Mall security has been circling. Moore knows they can’t spend the night parked here, but the 49-year-old single mother, born and raised in South King County, has no clue where to go. ‘I’m mentally exhausted,’ she says. While overall homelessness in King County has steadied, it appears to be rising among families, a trend playing out across the nation. Parents with children are the fastest-growing yet least-visible segment of the homeless population, far more likely to be doubled up in the homes of friends or living in their cars than to be at a busy intersection asking for help…”
• Refugees face homelessness all over again in U.S., By Lornet Turnbull, August 29, 2010, Seattle Times: “Every few weeks or so, the family of 10 would pack up and move yet again - the father and boys finding a bed or space on the floor with family friends in one part of King County, the mother and girls in another. Somali refugees who were first resettled in upstate New York before relocating here last fall, they shuffled between the homes of friends willing to put them up, sometimes sharing two- or three-bedroom units with the eight or 10 people who lived there. Once, the mother recounts, all 10 shared a single bedroom in a home, using each other as pillows to get through the nights. Refugee families like this one - displaced people from war-torn parts of the world - are confronting homelessness all over again in their new homeland…”
• Gates housing-first plan doesn’t come with housing money, By Lornet Turnbull, August 29, 2010, Seattle Times: “In the late 1990s, as out-of-work Ohio residents flocked to Columbus in search of jobs, many found themselves in a new predicament: They were homeless. The support system meant to help them, much like the one now in King County, was a network of agencies, each with different rules - a labyrinth with no clear way in and no easy way out. Families making repeated calls in search of help overwhelmed the system. And when putting them up in hotels became too costly, shelters started turning families away. In response, officials in Columbus created a more streamlined system - ‘one front door,’ they called it - a one-stop center that parents and children in need could enter day or night. The Columbus approach became a national model for helping families escape homelessness, and key parts of it are being incorporated in what ultimately could be a top-to-bottom overhaul of how homeless families in three Puget Sound counties are helped…”

At these clinics, income no object, By David Wahlberg, August 29, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal: “They assembled in a parking lot on a hot afternoon: diabetics, men with toothaches and chest pain, a woman with torn cartilage, workers whose low wages or job losses left them uninsured. Mary Lyons waited for the free clinic to open so she could refill her nine medications. A diabetic with heart disease and a persistent cough, she works nights cleaning meat processing machines, making enough to get by but not enough to buy insurance, she said. She relies on the clinic for medical care. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without it,’ said Lyons, 61. Free clinics have become a prominent safety net in rural Wisconsin, especially in the southwest part of the state, where clinics have opened in the past four years in Boscobel, Dodgeville and Richland Center. Another, in Prairie du Sac, has been around for more than a decade. Volunteer doctors at the clinics care for the uninsured without charge and offer drugs at deep discounts. The need for free care around the state and the country could drop once the new federal health care reform law fully kicks in by 2014, some say. But Robin Transo, who opened Boscobel’s free clinic in the walk-out basement of a hearing clinic run by her husband, isn’t so sure…”

• A tale of two recoveries, By Michael A. Fletcher, August 27, 2010, Washington Post: “The massive government effort to repair the damage from Hurricane Katrina is fostering a stark divide as the state governments in Louisiana and Mississippi structured the rebuilding programs in ways that often offered the most help to the most affluent residents. The result, advocates say, has been an uneven recovery, with whites and middle-class people more likely than blacks and low-income people to have rebuilt their lives in the five years since the horrific storm…”
• On Katrina anniversary, recovery takes hold, By Campbell Robertson, August 27, 2010, New York Times: “This city, not that long ago, appeared to be lost. Only five years have passed since corpses were floating through the streets, since hundreds of thousands of survivors sat in hotel rooms and shelters and the homes of relatives, learning from news footage that they were among the ranks of the homeless. For most of the last year, in many parts of the city, the waters finally seemed to be receding. In November, a federal judge ruled that much of the flooding after Hurricane Katrina was a result of the negligence of the Army Corps of Engineers, vindicating New Orleanians, who had hammered this gospel for four years. In January, the federal government cleared the way for nearly half a billion dollars in reimbursement for the city’s main public hospital, an acceleration of funds that led to the announcement this week that nearly two billion more would be coming in a lump-sum settlement for city schools…”
• Billions in Katrina relief funds still unspent, By Geoff Pender, August 27, 2010, Miami Herald: “More than a quarter of the $20 billion in Housing and Urban Development relief funds earmarked for Gulf states after Katrina remains unspent five years after the storm, a fact noticed by at least one congressional leader eager to spend it elsewhere. In June, U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, ordered data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development into how much remains unspent from the more than $20 billion in Community Development Block Grant hurricane relief funds earmarked for Gulf states after the 2005 storms. The answer: about $5.4 billion, including $3 billion of the $13 billion earmarked for Louisiana and $2 billion of the $5.5 billion for Mississippi…”
• New Orleans five years after Katrina: Chins up, hopes high, August 26, 2010, The Economist: “It is still obvious to any visitor-especially one who ventures out of the French Quarter, with its restaurants and night clubs, into the unstarred districts of the city. Something awful happened here in the not-too-distant past. The signs are everywhere: empty lots overgrown by weeds, ramshackle, leaning houses, derelict public buildings still awaiting restoration. Some houses feature ‘Katrina tattoos’ sprayed by rescuers as they completed house-by-house searches in 2005. Nobody at home. And yet New Orleans has undoubtedly recovered its essence. The old neighbourhoods are almost intact, and the city’s irrepressible people have mostly returned. Experts estimate that perhaps 360,000 people now live in a city that was home to around 100,000 more on the day disaster struck. Those who left were probably disproportionately black and poor. Yet the city’s large black majority, still there and mostly still poor, has ensured that the extravagant culture of New Orleans has survived the flood unharmed…”
• Disasters widen the rich-poor gap, By John Mutter, August 25, 2010, Nature.com: “As the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, recovery in New Orleans is patchy. The hurricane flushed out many of the poorer people. For those who remained, almost without exception, the poorer neighbourhoods have experienced the slowest repopulation and recovery of basic amenities such as schools, shops and petrol stations. The poorest district of New Orleans - the Lower Ninth Ward - has about 24% of its former residents, whereas the wealthy Central Business District has seen 157% repopulation. Low-income black workers were seven times more likely to lose their pre-Katrina jobs than higher-income white workers. And low-income people have found it more difficult to attain basic living conditions, including good access to health care - in 2008 there were 38% fewer hospital beds available in New Orleans than before the storm…”

Drive to overhaul low-performing schools delayed, By Sam Dillon, August 23, 2010, New York Times: “Secretary of Education Arne Duncan set an ambitious goal last year of overhauling 1,000 schools a year, using billions of dollars in federal stimulus money. But that effort is off to an uneven start. Schools from Maine to California are starting the fall term with their overhaul plans postponed or in doubt because negotiations among federal regulators, state officials and local educators have led to delays and confusion. In this sprawling district east of Los Angeles, for example, the authorities announced plans earlier this year to use the program to convert Pacific High, one of California’s worst-performing schools, to a charter school, involving a comprehensive makeover. But with time running short this summer, the San Bernardino district switched course, adopting only smaller changes - a crackdown on tardiness and extending the school day, among others - that officials said would be more manageable…”

FoodShare program expands reach in Brown County, By Malavika Jagannathan, August 27, 2010, Green Bay Press Gazette: “Northeastern Wisconsin residents continue to need and use federal assistance to help buy groceries through the FoodShare Wisconsin program, a trend not likely to change soon as the economy continues to falter. FoodShare Wisconsin supplemented 10,032 households in Brown County last month, according to the most recent data compiled by the state’s Department of Health Services. That’s a 45 percent increase of households using the benefit, formerly known as food stamps, compared with July 2008. The funding disbursed through the program has almost doubled from about $1.4 million in July 2008 to $2.8 million last month, thanks partially to an influx of cash from federal stimulus legislation that took effect last year. The number of participants is increasing, but many more people could be receiving the assistance and are not because they don’t know they are eligible, said Jim Jones, the state’s FoodShare director…”

• Joblessness in America: A stickier problem, August 26, 2010, The Economist: “The economy stopped shrinking a year ago, but America’s unemployment problem is as big as ever. The official jobless rate was 9.5% in July, and would be higher still had many people not given up searching for work. Some 45% of the unemployed have been out of a job for more than six months-the highest proportion since the 1930s. And judging by the recent rise in applications for unemployment benefits, the situation may soon get worse rather than better. Why is joblessness still so high? The prevailing view among policymakers is that unemployment is a painful reflection of the economy’s weakness. Americans are out of work because the slump was deep and the recovery has been lacklustre. Stronger demand will eventually solve the problem…”
• Unemployment and the mid-terms: To help or not to help, August 26, 2010, The Economist: “The gargantuan statue of a dining-room chair that graces the centre of Martinsville is a tribute to the legacy of the local furniture-making industry. That legacy is grim, however: for decades, local factories, bested by foreign competition or automating to keep pace with it, have been shedding workers or shutting up shop altogether. Earlier this year American of Martinsville, a 100-year-old furniture manufacturer whose headquarters overlooks the giant seat, declared bankruptcy and closed its local factory, eliminating 225 jobs. Another local firm, Stanley Furniture, recently laid off 530 workers. Two other big local industries, textiles and tobacco, are equally sickly. Unemployment in the town, which was already 9% before the recession, is now 20%. Martinsville also happens to sit in one of the most marginal congressional districts in the country. At the most recent election, in 2008, Tom Perriello, a Democrat, ousted the Republican incumbent by just 727 votes, even as the district voted against Barack Obama for president. In November Robert Hurt, a popular state senator, aims to recapture the seat for the Republicans. Both candidates agree that the biggest local concern is unemployment. The same is true of America as a whole, where polls consistently rank the state of the economy, and unemployment in particular, as the voters’ main worry (see chart). But the two candidates, in keeping with the orthodoxy of their parties, have very different ideas about how to reduce it…”
• Economics focus: Bad circulation, August 26, 2010, The Economist: “Americans are used to thinking of their job market as lithe and supple. Employment snaps back quickly after recessions. Workers routinely shuttle between industries and cities to wherever jobs are abundant. But in the past decade, the labour market has resembled an ageing athlete. Each new injury is more painful and takes longer to heal. More than a year into the current economic recovery the unemployment rate remains stuck close to 10%, raising concerns about the kind of sclerosis that continental Europe suffered in the 1980s. The slow rehabilitation is in part because the economy suffered a trauma, not a scrape. The fall in GDP during the last recession was easily the largest of the post-war period, and output remains well below its potential. Few had expected a rapid return to full employment, but even modest expectations for jobs growth have not been met. Employment has actually fallen since the end of the recession; and unemployment would be even higher than it is were it not for discouraged would-be jobseekers quitting the workforce. Some economists now fret that other barriers besides weak demand stand between workers and jobs, and that high unemployment is partly ’structural’ in nature…”

Pakistan flood sets back infrastructure by years, By Carlotta Gall, August 26, 2010, New York Times: “Men waded waist deep all week wedging stones with their bare hands into an embankment to hold back Pakistan’s surging floodwaters. It was a rudimentary and ultimately vain effort to save their town. On Thursday, the waters breached the levee, a demoralizing show of how fragile Pakistan’s infrastructure remains, and how overwhelming the task is to save it. Even as Pakistani and international relief officials scrambled to save people and property, they despaired that the nation’s worst natural calamity had ruined just about every physical strand that knit this country together - roads, bridges, schools, health clinics, electricity and communications. The destruction could set Pakistan back many years, if not decades, further weaken its feeble civilian administration and add to the burdens on its military. It seems certain to distract from American requests for Pakistan to battle Taliban insurgents, who threatened foreign aid workers delivering flood relief on Thursday. It is already disrupting vital supply lines to American forces in Afghanistan…”

Study links poverty to depression among mothers, By Donna St. George, August 26, 2010, Washington Post: “More than half of babies in poverty are being raised by mothers who show symptoms of mild to severe depression, potentially creating problems in parenting and in child development, according to a new study. In what was described as the first detailed portrait of its kind, researchers reported that one in nine infants in poverty had a mother with severe depression and that such mothers typically breastfed their children for shorter periods than other mothers who were poor…”

Proposed cuts would slash services for poor, mentally ill, other Texans in dire need, By Robert T. Garrett, August 26, 2010, Dallas Morning News: “Some of Texas’ most vulnerable residents - the very poor, the mentally ill, those suffering from birth defects, and children from troubled families - would lose state support and services under several new budget-cutting proposals. In one of the deepest proposed cuts, made public Tuesday by the Health and Human Services Commission, monthly welfare payments to extremely poor households with children would be cut about 20 percent, to an average of about $57 per person a month. In two-parent families, payments per person would be slashed by half, to about $33…”

Elderly and disabled immigrants may lose financial aid, By Alexandra Zavis, August 22, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Some of the poorest elderly and disabled people admitted to this country on humanitarian grounds will lose their cash assistance in October unless they have naturalization applications pending, federal officials say. Letters have been sent to 3,800 recipients of Supplemental Security Income, including some in California, warning them that their eligibility for the federal program could end Sept. 30, said Lowell Kepke, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration. The deadline has caused concern among refugee advocates, who point out that some of these legal immigrants aren’t able to pass the citizenship exam or can’t yet apply because of delays processing their green cards. The refugees, asylees and other humanitarian immigrants are admitted to the U.S. because they have been victims of war, persecution or other disasters in their home countries…”

Kentucky drops health insurance fee for some poor kids, By Deborah Yetter, August 24, 2010, Louisville Courier-Journal: “Kentucky has dropped a $20 monthly premium that some low-income parents had to pay for state health insurance for their children. The charge ended last month, when the new state budget took effect, according to Gov. Steve Beshear. He had pledged to eliminate the fee for coverage through the Kentucky Children’s Health Insurance Program, or KCHIP, a Medicaid program for low-income children. ‘In these tough economic times, we’re doing everything we can to make sure children have access to quality health care,’ Beshear said Tuesday. The governor had included the measure, which will cost the state about $370,000 a year, in his proposed budget, and lawmakers approved it when they passed the spending plan in May…”

• $75M Payday,By Mary Vorsino, August 25, 2010, Honolulu Star-Advertiser: “The $75 million Race to the Top federal grant announced yesterday for Hawaii schools will kick-start some of the biggest reform initiatives ever seen in the state’s public education system, educators say. The money will be targeted on efforts to turn around low-performing schools, boost student achievement, better evaluate teacher effectiveness and steer low-performing teachers out of the classroom. Officials say although the changes are sweeping, they are also doable — through measured phase-ins and targeted work to help students, teachers, principals and schools in need of the most help…”
• Race to the Top losers: Why did Louisiana and Colorado fail?, By Amanda Paulson, August 24, 2010, Christian Science Monitor: “Nine states and the District of Columbia have emerged as winners in Round 2 of the closely watched Race to the Top competition, the Department of Education’s innovative - and controversial - competition to reward reform efforts. Together, they were competing for $3.4 billion available in federal funds. In order of their rank, the winners are Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, Florida, Rhode Island, D.C., Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio. ‘We funded as many states as we could [until we] ran out of money,’ said Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a press call with reporters, noting that just a few points separated some of those states who failed to make the cut from the winners. ‘I can’t overstate how strong the applications were in the second round.’ Still, the big news among many education experts was who lost - particularly Louisiana and Colorado, widely considered leaders in education reform with priorities that are strongly aligned with those favored by the administration. And some of the winners - including Maryland, Ohio, and Hawaii - raised eyebrows, as well…”
• Eastern states dominate in winning school grants, By Sam Dillon, August 24, 2010, New York Times: “When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced on Tuesday the latest states to win the Race to the Top competition - and a share of $3.4 billion in federal financing - he said they were chosen because they outlined the boldest plans for shaking up their public school systems. But others noted another common denominator: geography. Of the dozen states that have won major grants to date in the two-part grant contest that is the Obama administration’s signature education initiative, 11 are east of the Mississippi and most hug the East Coast, including Florida and Georgia in the South and New York and Massachusetts in the North. Among the winners, Hawaii is the lone geographic exception. Educators in many of the states that did not win, or did not even participate in the competition - which includes every state from Tennessee west to the Pacific - said they were hamstrung from the outset…”

Federal government throws up roadblock to Florida’s Medicaid reform, By Jermy Cox, August 23, 2010, Florida Times-Union: “Federal health officials want changes to be made to the Medicaid experiment that has put private managed-care companies in charge of covering thousands of patients in Northeast Florida. In a letter last week, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told state officials that it wouldn’t extend the program through an expedited process, as Florida had sought. Instead, the agency said it wanted to undertake a more rigorous review that would take into account ‘issues that have been raised in reviews’ of the program. The letter didn’t specify what issues federal officials want to address. While internal reviews have painted a positive picture of the program, it has come under fire from critics and some outside analysts. Expectations were high in 2005 when Florida won federal approval to place Medicaid patients in certain counties into privately run managed-care plans. Duval and Broward counties kicked off the reform program in 2006. Baker, Clay and Nassau followed in 2007…”

• The face of the newly poor, By Yvonne Wenger, August 22, 2100, Charleston Post and Courier: “Every day, an average of 112 people — most of them the newly poor — sign up for free government health care in South Carolina. Since the recession officially hit in December 2007, some 3,300 people a month, on average, have signed up for Medicaid in a state that outpaces the nation for poverty, obesity and diseases such as diabetes. Yet, South Carolina’s political leaders have been among the most vocal in the country in opposition of the new health care law. The new law is intended to provide insurance coverage to a portion of the nearly 17 percent of state residents estimated to be without it. But it won’t come cheap: The law will cost the cash-strapped state nearly $1 billion more over the next decade, even after the federal government kicks in its share. Advocates and academics alike say the federal plan is critical for South Carolina’s future prosperity. Healthy workers draw in new businesses, they say, and an educated population starts with children who aren’t sick when they go to school. But many say Medicaid is only part of the answer to South Carolina’s grave health care needs. Others think government-run health care should not be the solution…”
• Signing up for Medicaid more difficult, By Yvonne Wenger, August 24, 2010, Charleston Post and Courier: “Tens of thousands of South Carolinians likely are eligible for government-run health care but aren’t signed up because bureaucratic red tape creates obstacles, advocates said Monday. Sue Berkowitz, director of Appleseed Legal Justice Center, and John Ruoff, program director for South Carolina Fair Share, said Medicaid enrollment isn’t keeping pace with the need, despite the seemingly rapid increase during the state’s deep and prolonged economic downturn. Advocates are working to identify how great the need is, but an exact number isn’t clear. More than 750,000 people are estimated to be without health insurance in the state, although not all of them are eligible for Medicaid. A report Sunday by The Post and Courier revealed that as many as 112 people a day sign up for Medicaid in South Carolina. More than 90,000 have enrolled since the recession officially hit in December 2007…”

Wisconsin makes push on free birth control, By Janet Adamy, August 18, 2010, Wall Street Journal: “Wisconsin is pushing to expand a controversial program that uses federal Medicaid funds to provide free birth-control pills, vasectomies and other forms of contraception to low-income people, an effort made possible by the federal health-care overhaul. It and 26 other states already provide free contraception and other reproductive-health services through a Medicaid pilot project to lower-earning women who otherwise wouldn’t qualify. Among other things, the women get access to prescription birth control, Pap smears, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and, in some states, infertility treatments. Women qualify for Wisconsin’s program if they make up to $21,600 a year for single people-twice the federal poverty level…”

Food stamp stampede, By Alana Listoe, August 22, 2010, Helena Independent Record: “Halfway through the month, Scott Crooks had $8.94 left in food stamps, and after a trip to the grocery store on Thursday to buy some ground beef, just $3.33 remained. It wasn’t a difficult decision to buy beef. The 24-year-old AmeriCorps Vista had ingredients at home to make tacos and spaghetti, thus making it possible to split the meat and use it for both meals, stretching his food a few more days. Crooks isn’t alone. More Montana citizens receive federal assistance to pay for their groceries than ever before. Some use the help to feed their children. Many are on a fixed income due to a disability. Others, like Crooks, work but don’t earn enough to buy basic necessities, so they use food stamps to bridge the gap. The number of recipients has climbed steadily every month for the past two years, with 12 percent of the state population receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. That’s about 3 percent higher than it was two years ago at this same time…”

The high cost of our homeless, By Jenel Few, August 22, 2010, Savannah Morning News: “For the past 12 years, Samuel Wayne Anderson has spent most nights in a shelter, a cheap motel, a makeshift campsite or a cell at the Chatham County jail. The 72-year-old veteran with a long, white beard and penchant for liquor spends most of his days hanging out in downtown Savannah. He’s a regular at the Inner City Night Shelter and the free health clinics downtown. Many know him as the man who totes an open 32-ounce bottle of King Cobra, asks tourists for change and makes it hard for them to enjoy the scenic squares in the Historic District. Anderson is chronically homeless. He has family in Ellabell that love him. His son Stephen Anderson is currently serving with the military in Iraq. But for whatever reason, the old man’s preference for alcohol and a solitary life has drawn him to the street for most of his adult life…”

9 states, DC get $3.4B in ‘Race to the Top’ grants, By Dorie Turner (AP), August 24, 2010, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “More than 13 million students and 1 million educators will share $3.4 billion from the second round of the federal ‘Race to the Top’ grant competition, the U.S. Education Department said Tuesday. The department chose nine states - Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island - and the District of Columbia for the grants. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said 25,000 schools will get money to raise student learning and close the achievement gap. The ‘Race to the Top’ program, part of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, rewards states for taking up ambitious changes to improve struggling schools. The competition instigated a wave of reforms across the country, as states passed new teacher accountability policies and lifted caps on charter schools to boost their chances of winning…”

Children of Katrina still are suffering, By Janet McConnaughey and Lindsey Tanner (AP), August 24, 2010, Detroit Free Press: “A startling number of children displaced by Hurricane Katrina still have serious emotional or behavioral problems five years later, a new study found. More than one in three children studied — those forced to flee their homes because of the August 2005 storm — have been diagnosed since then with mental health problems. These are children who moved to trailer parks and other emergency housing. Nearly half of the families studied still report household instability, researchers said. ‘If children are bellwethers of recovery, then the social systems supporting affected gulf coast populations are still far from having recovered from Hurricane Katrina,’ the researchers said. The study was published online Monday in the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. Lead author David Abramson of Columbia University in New York said researchers were astonished by the level of distress…”

GAMC health plan hits new snag, By Warren Wolfe, August 23, 2010, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “State officials said Monday they might retool the payment formula for hospitals participating in an experimental new health plan for some of the state’s poorest residents — a further sign that the revised General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) program launched last spring is not working out the way authorities had hoped. The discussions began because Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in Minneapolis has had a smaller percentage of potential patients enroll than the other three participating hospitals and, as a result, is getting paid more than twice the amount per patient…”

Rural hospitals face challenges across the state, By Charles Oliver, August 22, 2010, Dalton Daily Citizen: “The economic downturn, cuts in state and federal health care programs, and attempts by private businesses to rein in their own health care costs have combined to create a ‘perfect storm’ that threatens small rural hospitals across the state, according to Jimmy Lewis, CEO of HomeTown Health, which represents 55 rural hospitals in Georgia including Murray Medical Center. ‘We could wake up tomorrow and have 10 hospitals about to close,’ said Lewis. Forty-one Georgia hospitals have closed since 1980, according to the Georgia Hospital Association, many of them small rural hospitals. The problem that rural hospitals face is that their ‘payer mix’ is typically heavy in patients on Medicare and Medicaid and those without insurance…”

• Economy led to cuts in use of health care, By Robert Pear, August 16, 2010, New York Times: “The economic crisis in the United States has reduced the use of routine medical care, and the cutbacks here are much deeper than in countries with universal health care systems, researchers say in a new report. The study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds that ‘Americans, who face higher out-of-pocket health care costs, have reduced their routine medical care’ much more than people in Britain, Canada, France and Germany. Individuals and families in all five countries lost income because of unemployment and lost wealth because of steep declines in stock prices…”
• 8.4 million Californians lack health coverage as the ranks of the uninsured swell, study finds, By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, August 23, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “The number of Californians who lost jobs and health insurance probably increased in every county last year, according to a study released Monday by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. The new analysis found that 37 counties — including Imperial, Kern and Shasta — had uninsured rates above the statewide average of 24.3%. ‘Different parts of the state were more adversely impacted than others, but really it is spread across the state,’ said one of the study’s authors, Shana Alex Lavarreda, the center’s director of health insurance studies. ‘You have counties from Kern to Shasta that were hit very hard with averages over what we saw in Los Angeles,’ she added. The report backs up the findings of a previous study the center released in March that showed nearly one in four Californians lack health insurance. According to the latest estimates, the state’s uninsured population has reached 24.3%, or about 8.4 million, up from 6.4 million in 2007…”
• 85,000 lost health insurance in Sacramento area, UCLA study finds, By Bobby Caina Calvan, August 24, 2010, Sacramento Bee: “Researchers issued yet another grim statistic Monday on the toll of the recession: 2 million additional Californians - 85,000 of them in the capital region - lost their health care coverage during the recent economic slide. As a result, difficult decisions are playing out in living rooms and across kitchen tables as families struggle with joblessness and tighter finances, according to the authors of a new UCLA study that gives a county-by-county account of the state’s swelling numbers of uninsured, now estimated at 8 million. In Sacramento County, 17.6 percent of the non-elderly population went uninsured at some point last year, compared with 13.1 percent in 2007. In two years, the ranks of the county’s uninsured climbed by 63,000 people - bringing the total to more than 224,000, according to the study by the University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Health Policy Research…”

Deep cuts in family services proposed for 2012-13, By Corrie MacLaggan, August 20, 2010, Austin American-Statesman: “More than 14,000 Texans who are now in state programs designed to prevent child abuse, neglect and delinquency would lose those services under a state budget-cutting proposal, according to Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Tom Suehs. The Department of Family and Protective Services is suggesting cutting its prevention and early intervention programs by $73.7 million - 84 percent - in the face of the state’s projected $18 billion shortfall for the 2012-2013 budget. The programs contract with nonprofits and local governments to provide services such as mentoring, parenting classes and family crisis intervention counseling. Advocates for at-risk children say that the cuts would be disastrous for low-income families, who are the primary recipients of such services. And they say that stripping programs designed to keep children out of the juvenile justice and child welfare systems would be costlier to the state in the long term…”

For the homeless, federal changes promise better access to health care, By Mary Agnes Carey and Andrew Villegas, August 20, 2010, Washington Post: “Homeless and unemployed, Tianne Hill said she dreads getting mail at the city shelter on Guilford Avenue where she lives because it often includes medical bills she can’t pay. The 40-year-old former waitress and short-order cook owes about $6,000 for abdominal surgery. She’s expecting another bill soon for emergency treatment of a seizure. And she has other conditions that require expensive care: asthma, arthritis, anxiety and depression. Like many other homeless people, Hill is uninsured and ineligible for Medicaid, the state-federal program that covers millions of other poor Americans. But beginning in 2014, Medicaid greatly expands under the new health-care law to include adults without children, who generally have been excluded. The Medicaid expansion also will enable agencies that serve the homeless to divert resources now spent on medical care to other services such as finding housing and jobs. The new law provides another boost through a five-year, $11 billion expansion of the community health center system that treats many in this population…”

• Operators: State subsidy drives families into low-quality day care, By S. Heather Duncan, August 23, 2010, Macon Telegraph: “Day care providers say the state of Georgia is depressing the day care market and leaving poor families with no choice but to attend the worst day cares. The state pays most of the cost of day care for eligible low-income families by directly reimbursing the day care provider. The state sets that reimbursement payment based on geography and a study of day care rates in the local market. Federal rules require that the state survey the day care market every two years, but Georgia last conducted a survey in 2005 - and last increased its reimbursement in 2006. Congress is now considering a large increase in child care assistance funding. Day care owners say the state should use any new funding to increase its reimbursement rates…”
• Day care assistance funds drying up as need deepens, By S. Heather Duncan, August 23, 2010, Macon Telegraph: “For parents such as Vanita Adams, government help with day care costs made the difference between employment and welfare. Adams, who works as a parent aide for the Macon-Bibb Equal Opportunity Council, received a state subsidy to help her send her two sons to after-school care for about a year. ‘I was separated when it started, and becoming a one-income household was very hard,’ she said. Her divorce was eliminating some of the child care help she had received from family members at the same time she lost income through furloughs. ‘Without the help, I probably would have been out of a job,’ Adams said. Her plight is common. A quarter of Georgia children younger than age 5 receive some kind of subsidized child care, according to a 2010 report by the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute. And since the recession, demand is higher than ever, child care advocates say…”

How many poor Arabs are there? Time to find out, By Nadim Kawach, August 21, 2010, Emirates 24|7 News: “Arab nations need to create a common data network and a map for poverty in their region as part of a strategy intended to upgrade their socio-economic information and combat poverty, according to an official Arab group. Despite widespread poverty in many regional countries, Arab governments still far lag behind in gathering accurate data on local poverty and need to change criteria used in measuring poverty and preparing indexes in this respect, the Khartoum-based Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD) said. In a study released this week, AOAD said a poverty index should be based on family consumption data instead of GDP per capita income…”

Food stamp discount for buying produce, By Patrick G. Lee, August 19, 2010, Boston Globe: “More than two dozen cities and towns in Western Massachusetts will be the focus of a major federal initiative being announced today to increase low-income families’ consumption of fruits and vegetables, as part of the nation’s efforts to combat obesity. The Agriculture Department awarded $20 million to Massachusetts and a Cambridge-based research firm to test whether providing subsidies for buying produce will encourage food stamp recipients in Hampden County communities - including Springfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke - to eat more nutritious meals. Of the 50,000 households in Hampden County that rely on food stamps, several thousand will be offered a 30-cent discount for every dollar spent on fresh fruits and vegetables, while other families will continue to pay full price. Households will be tracked for 15 months to see whether their eating habits change and health outcomes, including obesity rates, improve. State officials hope to begin the program in fall 2011. The experiment, authorized by the 2008 Farm Bill, will guide policy makers in Washington as they consider how to revamp food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, to promote better dietary habits among Americans…”

Judge: Accused still need public defenders, but bill the state, By Madeleine Baran, August 18, 2010, Minnesota Public Radio: “Karen Duncan walked into an Owatonna court room Tuesday with a bold request. Duncan, the chief public defender for 11 counties in southeastern Minnesota, asked a judge to free her and her staff from 46 criminal cases she said they are simply too overworked to handle. It was the first such request from a public defense system that is straining statewide from staff and budget reductions. Judge Casey Christian denied Duncan’s request, saying that defendants have a constitutional right to representation. But he told Duncan she could hire private attorneys for those defendants and send the bill to the state…”

Special Report: Homelessness in Fort Collins, August 19, 2010, The Coloradoan: “This Coloradoan special report examines homelessness in Fort Collins with a focus on how the newly launched Homeward 2020 plan will work to end the issue of homelessness in the next decade…”

• Medicaid shortfall: $64 million gap in Alabama budget threatens services, By Markeshia Ricks, August 19, 2010, Montgomery Advertiser: “Alabama is enjoying its low­est infant-mortality rate in state history and the state’s top doc­tor said part of the reason is be­cause of a program that is now faced with a $64 million hole in its budget for fiscal 2011. Medicaid, the state and feder­ally funded health-care program for low-income people, absorbed the cost of care for many preg­nant women who lost their jobs and/or their health insurance in the past two years because of a down economy. The federal government is providing $133 million for the program, but that is far less than the $197 million that lawmakers expected and budgeted for the program for fiscal 2011 which starts in just over a month. Failure to fill that $64 million shortfall could not only cause a reduction in direct services to needy people, it could hurt the state’s entire health care system and its economy…”
• Report: Nebraska Medicaid costs likely to soar, By Nancy Hicks, August 18, 2010, Lincoln Journal Star: “The price tag for federal health care reform is ’staggering and shocking,’ Gov. Dave Heineman said Wednesday as he released the results of an independent study. The state will pay $526.3 million to $765.9 million more over the next 10 years for required expansion of Medicaid, the health care program for low-income Americans, Heineman said. The cost could force the state to cut funding to education or raise taxes, he said. The $765 million represents an 8.5 percent increase in state spending over 10 years, assuming the highest participation rate. ‘This unfunded and unparalleled Medicaid mandate is unfair and unsustainable to Nebraska and other states,’ Heineman said during a news conference focused on a report by Milliman Inc., an independent actuarial firm. But the report also indicates 145,000 additional low-income Nebraskans will have access to health care through Medicaid, said Sen. Jeremy Nordquist, a member of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee…”

State’s rate of infant deaths hits lowest point in history, By Markeshia Ricks, August 19, 2010, Montgomery Advertiser: “Alabama’s infant-mortality rate has dropped from a 10-year high in 2007 to the lowest in its history in 2009, State Health Of­ficer Donald Williamson said Wednesday. Williamson believes part of the reason the number of babies who die during their first year of life is down is related to the economy. Alabama’s infant-mortality rate stands at 8.2 deaths per 1,000 live births according to numbers released Wednesday, down significantly from a high of 10 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2007, though still well above the national rate of 6.5. Alabama had 513 infant deaths in 2009, which was also the fewest number of babies to die in the state since tracking began more than a century ago. The number of infant deaths in 2009 was 99 fewer than in 2008, according to the state Depart­ment of Public Health…”

• Feds offer aid to renters as well as homeowners, By Kathleen Pender, August 15, 2010, San Francisco Chronicle: “Congress and the Obama administration have committed tens of billions of dollars to keep homeowners in their homes. Renters, who make up about one-third of households nationwide - and close to two-thirds in San Francisco and other large cities - wish the government would do a little more for them. For homeowners, Obama’s Making Home Affordable program obtained $50 billion from the Troubled Assets Relief Program plus $25 billion, mainly from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Originally this money was supposed to help homeowners refinance or modify subprime mortgages (which qualified as troubled assets). More recently it has been used to help those who can’t pay their mortgage because they are unemployed. Last week, the Treasury said it is using $2 billion to help unemployed homeowners in 17 states, including California…”
• Habitat for Humanity uses federal funds to rehab metro Detroit homes, By Tammy Stables Battaglia, August 16, 2010, Detroit Free Press: “Habitat for Humanity, an agency known for building new houses, is using funds from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program to rehab old ones. The program, created in 2008 under President George W. Bush, provides communities and organizations funding to redevelop residential properties. That money must be allocated to projects by Sept. 19. In 2006, seven of 52 Habitat homes in Michigan were rehabs. The organization rehabbed 104 of its 221 homes during the first three months of this year, and there are dozens more projects to be completed, Habitat officials said…”
• Red tape slows North Texas agencies in disseminating federal funds to fight homelessness, By Neena Satija, August 15, 2010, Dallas Morning News: “Getting federal stimulus money to those in need had a slow start in North Texas, with understaffed agencies bogged down in paperwork. Now that the initiative is in full swing - the job has only gotten harder. North Texas received $25 million for the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Rehousing program in September. As of March, it had only spent $2 million. Now, it has spent $7 million and helped 7,800 households. But a faster flow of dollars means a bigger maze of red tape…”

• Jobless claims rise to highest level in 9 months, By Christopher S. Rugaber (AP), August 19, 2010, Washington Post: “Employers appear to be laying off workers again as the economic recovery weakens. The number of people applying for unemployment benefits reached the half-million mark last week for the first time since November. It was the third straight week that first-time jobless claims rose. The upward trend suggests the private sector may report a net loss of jobs in August for the first time this year. Initial claims rose by 12,000 last week to 500,000, the Labor Department said Thursday…”
• Markets fall as jobless filings rise, By Christine Hauser, August 19, 2010, New York Times: “Equity investors on Wall Street found bad news staring them in the face again Thursday. Disappointing reports about the job market and a regional slowdown in manufacturing reminded traders that the economic recovery was beginning to slow and that the job market would continue to be weak because of it. Shares on Wall Street were down more than 1.5 percent in afternoon trading after the Department of Labor said that initial claims for unemployment insurance rose last week to a seasonally adjusted half a million people, the first time since November that they have reached that level. The jobless claims climbed by 12,000 to 500,000 from the previous week’s revised 488,000…”

Las Vegas shortchanged in federal funding for homeless, By By Joe Schoenmann, August 18, 2010, Las Vegas Sun: “Homeless numbers in greater Las Vegas have topped 13,000, with the recession leaving people jobless, then pushing parents and children out of their homes and onto the street. It’s happening all around the country, but the human toll here could be compounded because federal formulas lead to uneven homeless funding, giving cities such as Pittsburgh more than $10,000 to serve each homeless person while the Las Vegas area receives about $500 per individual. Southern Nevada has 2 percent of the country’s homeless, but gets just 0.4 percent of $1.7 billion in funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Funding over the years has fluctuated, providing $5.8 million in 2005, $7 million in 2007 and $6.8 million in 2009…”

Health centers to get $250 million in grants to build clinics, boost services, By Darryl Fears, August 18, 2010, Washington Post: “Health centers across the country are lining up for a shot in the arm from the Obama administration: $250 million in federal grants to build clinics and bolster services at existing clinics for low-income patients such as public housing residents, the homeless, seasonal farmworkers and others who struggle to pay for care. The administration announced last week that the nation’s 1,100 health centers, which operate nearly 8,000 clinics in medically underserved areas, can apply for the grants through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)…”

Food stamps agency requests staffing boost, By Robert T. Garrett, August 17, 2010, Dallas Morning News: “Texas’ system for handling requests for food stamps and other aid will require more than 1,900 additional state workers over the next few years to keep up with heavy demand, a top official has told state leaders. However, Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs asked for slightly more than 1,500 new eligibility workers in a recent preview of how much money his agency will request in the next two-year budget cycle. Commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman denied Monday that Suehs pared his budget request to help state GOP leaders cope with a massive budget shortfall. ‘We’ll request all the staff we believe we need,’ she said…”

High turnover complicates study of choice schools’ progress, By Jason Stein, August 12, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “A long-range study evaluating voucher schools in Milwaukee is finding little difference in academic achievement between their students and those in public schools, state auditors said Thursday. But the study is complicated by the fact that three years into the research, most of the private school students selected for it are no longer attending schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Only 1,097, or 40.2%, of the 2,727 voucher school students selected for the study in the 2006-’07 school year were still part of the choice program by the 2008-’09 school year, according to the report by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau. ‘It’s a very mobile population,’ state Auditor Jan Mueller said of Milwaukee students. The report analyzed data and results gathered by academics at the University of Arkansas to compare math and reading test scores of choice program students with those of similar students in Milwaukee Public Schools. The report looked at a representative sample of voucher students attending third through eighth grades during the 2006-’07 school year, as well as all ninth-graders…”

Who’s teaching L.A.’s kids?, By Jason Felch, Jason Song, and Doug Smith, August 14, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “The fifth-graders at Broadous Elementary School come from the same world - the poorest corner of the San Fernando Valley, a Pacoima neighborhood framed by two freeways where some have lost friends to the stray bullets of rival gangs. Many are the sons and daughters of Latino immigrants who never finished high school, hard-working parents who keep a respectful distance and trust educators to do what’s best. The students study the same lessons. They are often on the same chapter of the same book. Yet year after year, one fifth-grade class learns far more than the other down the hall. The difference has almost nothing to do with the size of the class, the students or their parents. It’s their teachers…”

• Troubled childhood linked to heart disease as adult, By Sharon Jayson, August 14, 2010, USA Today: “Troubled childhoods can lead to a host of health problems in adulthood, with heart disease as a prime possibility, suggests new research presented today. ‘Many diseases first diagnosed in mid-life can be traced back to childhood,’ Karen Matthews, a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, told a session at the American Psychological Association meeting here. Matthews, who directs the university’s Mind-Body Center, has published many studies on stress affecting women and children, environmental influences and risk for cardiovascular disease. She says the evidence shows that heightened reactivity to adverse childhood experiences, such as lower socioeconomic status, isolation and negative events can affect the development of disease…”
• Childhood stress leads to adult ill health, studies say, August 14, 2010, BBC News: “A series of studies suggest that childhood stress caused by poverty or abuse can lead to heart disease, inflammation, and speed up cell ageing. The American Psychological Association meeting heard that early experiences ‘cast a long shadow’ on health. One UK expert said more and more evidence was suggesting a physical impact of stress in childhood. In one study, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh looked at the relationship between living in poverty and early signs of heart disease in 200 healthy teenagers…”

Atlanta grad rate doesn’t add up, By Alan Judd and Heather Vogell
, August 15, 2010, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Thousands of high school students vanished from the rolls of Atlanta Public Schools in the past eight years, often with few hints to where they went. Schools recorded many of them as “transfers” to other systems, at times without proof that the students hadn’t dropped out altogether. In 2008, a consultant to the district estimated recently, school officials couldn’t document the whereabouts of more than one-third of the district’s departed students. The mass exodus from Atlanta’s high schools may be the primary reason for one of the district’s proudest academic achievements: a dramatic increase in its graduation rate, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows. District officials boast that the rate of students getting diplomas within four years has risen 30 percentage points since 2002. But the rate’s only surge, from 43 percent to 72 percent, came between 2003 and 2005, the Journal-Constitution’s analysis of state data found. During that time, the district removed from its rolls about 30 percent of all pupils in grades nine through 12 - roughly 16,000 students…”

Triumph fades on racial gap in city schools, By Sharon Otterman and Robert Gebeloff, August 15, 2010, New York Times: “Two years ago, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, testified before Congress about the city’s impressive progress in closing the gulf in performance between minority and white children. The gains were historic, all but unheard of in recent decades. ‘Over the past six years, we’ve done everything possible to narrow the achievement gap - and we have,’ Mr. Bloomberg testified. ‘In some cases, we’ve reduced it by half.’ ‘We are closing the shameful achievement gap faster than ever,’ the mayor said again in 2009, as city reading scores - now acknowledged as the height of a test score bubble - showed nearly 70 percent of children had met state standards. When results from the 2010 tests, which state officials said presented a more accurate portrayal of students’ abilities, were released last month, they came as a blow to the legacy of the mayor and the chancellor, as passing rates dropped by more than 25 percentage points on most tests. But the most painful part might well have been the evaporation of one of their signature accomplishments: the closing of the racial achievement gap…”

Denmark tightens its generous jobless benefits, By Liz Alderman, August 16, 2010, New York Times: “How long is too long to be paid to go without a job? As extended unemployment swells almost everywhere across the advanced industrial world, that question is turning into a lightning rod for governments. For years, Denmark was held out as a model to countries with high unemployment and as a progressive touchstone to liberals in the United States. The Danes, despite their lavish social welfare state, managed to keep joblessness remarkably low. But now Denmark - which allows employers to hire and fire at will while relying on an elaborate system of training, subsidies for those between jobs and aggressive measures to press the unemployed into available openings - is facing its own strains. As a result, it is beginning to tighten up…”

Ind. wait list for Medicaid waivers tops 10 years, Associated Press, August 14, 2010, Chicago Tribune: “Some Indiana residents with developmental disabilities are waiting more than a decade to receive Medicaid waivers even though the state has more than tripled the number of people approved for such aid since 2001. State officials acknowledge a long wait for the more than 21,000 people on the waiting list for the waiver but say more than 4,600 are receiving other waiver services while they wait. ‘The reason some have to wait so long is that we want to make sure the most needy get the waiver the quickest,’ said Marcus Barlow, spokesman for the Family and Social Services Administration. ‘That forces others on the waiting list to wait longer for services…’”

• WA gov announces $51M in cuts to state welfare, By Rachel La Corte (AP), August 12, 2010, Seattle Times: “Fewer people will qualify for a state welfare program that provides child care subsidies and help finding a job under cuts announced by Gov. Chris Gregoire on Thursday. She said that at least $51 million is being cut from WorkFirst, the state’s welfare-to-work program, because while enrollment continues to rise, matching funds from the federal government have remained flat since the 1990s. The program, started in August 1997, helps low-income families with support and training in getting and keeping jobs, offering things like monthly stipends and child care subsidies. Most of the cuts will come from granting fewer extensions to families who reach the five-year time limit and lowering the income eligibility for the child care subsidy. Other cuts will be made to employment, education and training services…”
• Gregoire: $51M to be cut from state welfare aid, By Brad Shannon, August 13, 2010, Tacoma News Tribune: “Gov. Chris Gregoire asked state government agencies to get ready for across-the-board budget cuts of 4 percent to 7 percent as soon as October and ordered a phase-in of $51 million in cuts to state welfare aid. Gregoire painted a gloomy scenario, with state budget reserves now totaling just $72 million for the remaining 10 months of the budget cycle. The money cushion could disappear if revenue forecasts in September and November show further tax losses, which Gregoire said Tuesday she expects…”

Nebraska has yet to sign up for stimulus funds to help low-income residents, By Nancy Hicks, August 13, 2010, Lincoln Journal Star: “Nebraska is one of two states that have not signed up to get federal stimulus money intended to help low-income residents with things such as paying back rent and buying school clothes. The state could get from $6.34 million to as much as $28.7 million, but it must apply before the end of the month. The money can be put in the hands of low-income families to help keep them off cash assistance, to keep them from being evicted or to help with job training, said state Sen. Jeremy Nordquist of Omaha. ‘It is a great way to stimulate the economy and help those families out in tough times,’ he said. State leaders, who for several weeks had been saying they were reviewing the issue, said Thursday they will apply for money…”