Nevada gets low marks for children’s well-being

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Wednesday, July 27, 2005 | 11:09 a.m.

Fewer teens are getting pregnant and dropping out of school and fewer infants and children are dying in Nevada, but more Nevada kids are living in poverty, according to a national survey released today.

And Nevada is worse off than the rest of the nation when it comes to parents without high school educations and with limited proficiency in English.

Overall, the study, titled "Kids Count 2005," ranked Nevada 32nd nationwide in terms of children's well-being.

"We have improved, but I don't think it's reason to rest," said Keith Schwer, of UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research and a spokesman for the report, an annual project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The study suggests that Nevada improved in six of 10 indicators about children's well-being during periods that extended over two or three years, depending on the category being measured. All of the numbers come from federal agencies.

Those improvements included infant mortality rate, which dropped from 6.5 per 1,000 births in 2000 to 6.0 per 1,000 in 2002, and child death rate, which went from 23 per 100,000 in 2000 to 19 per 100,000 in 2002.

As for teenagers, the report said the number of girls 15 to 19 years old who gave birth went from 63 per 1,000 in 2000 to 54 per 1,000 in 2002. And the percentage of teenagers from 16 to 19 who had dropped out of high school went from 16 percent in 2000 to 10 percent in 2003.

The decrease in teen births statewide mirrored a national trend, said Mary Rosenthal, adolescent family life program manager for the Southern Nevada Area Health Education Center, a Las Vegas nonprofit organization.

As for the reasons behind the trend, she said, "Nobody really knows."

In addition to federal and state programs to decrease teen pregnancy, she said, "You have to credit the teens themselves."

Rosenthal also said that the drop in teen births may be one of the causes of the sinking dropout rate.

Still, she said, "it's important that people don't become complacent," especially since Las Vegas is "being advertised as a place where you can escape from making good decisions."

Other data from the report linked to education included:

23 percent of Nevada's children lived with heads of household who did not finish high school in 2003, compared to 17 percent nationwide.

19 percent of Nevada's children lived with heads of household with limited English proficiency in 2003, compared to 12 percent nationwide.

20 and 23 percent of Nevada's fourth grade students scored at or above adequate reading and math levels, respectively, compared to 30 and 31 percent nationwide.

21 and 20 percent of eighth grade students scored at or above adequate reading and math levels, respectively, compared to 30 and 27 percent nationwide.

Agustin Orci, co-interim superintendent of the Clark County School District, said the figures on adults in children's households were due in large part to the Las Vegas Valley's service economy.

"There are so many entry-level jobs that don't require education," he said.

As for the figures on language, Schwer, spokesman for the study, said that with the valley's growth, "one of the key stories has been opportunities for ... immigrants who are willing to do the jobs we need filled."

Orci said having "so many children coming from all over the world" presents a challenge for the School District.

"It's hard to get them up to speed in one year," he offered as a partial explanation for the district's low test scores.

One of the district's responses has been to pour more funds into teaching English as a second language, including some programs aimed at parents -- "to get them more involved with the kids."

Schwer said one way of improving the indicators on parents and students would be by "limiting those kinds of people -- but that would be wrongheaded policy."

Instead, he said, the state needs to continue to work on diversifying its economy and raising the educational level of its residents, in order to "compete in the world market."

Another figure from the study also worried Schwer, though he had no explanation for it: the number of children living in poverty went from 13 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2003. In 2003, the poverty threshold for a family of two adults and two children was $18,660, according to federal guidelines cited in the report.

As for the state's overall ranking in this year's study, he said, "children inherit the future ... (and) each year, we have to ask -- are we doing the best for them?"