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This blog post originally appeared on Huffington Post.In 1991, the bipartisan National Commission on Children called for action on increasing health insurance coverage to our nation's children and pregnant women. As they found:Good health is essential to children's growth and development and in their future prospects. While most American children are born and remain healthy, far too many are vulnerable to problems that lead to serious illness, disability, and even death. This country has the knowledge and the tools to save children's lives and improve their physical and mental health.Six years later, bipartisan efforts in both the Senate and...

Just before Thanksgiving, the Denver Post ran an op-ed by two senior political strategists, Hank Brown and Barry Jackson, that looked at first as though it might explore federal policy issues from a children’s perspective:"Earlier this month, voters pressed the "reset" button on their government in Washington.  Exit polls showed we were concerned about the economy and whether our kids are going to be better off than we are. …"But it started going downhill right after that. In the next 800 words or so, the op-ed outlined a policy agenda on nearly a dozen federal issues that matter...

Over 1,200 organizations from across the country recently urged Congress to extend the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which is estimates to cover more than 10 million children this coming year. Senator Jay Rockefeller has long been a leader for children's health coverage and explains why there is urgency in Congress taking up legislation to extend the program as soon as possible. Eight million reasons to extend the Children's Health Insurance Program - @SenRockefeller - http://t.co/kpmuK114T9 #CHIPworks #ExtendCHIP — Bruce Lesley (@BruceLesley) November 20, 2014 Eight million reasons...

Eight years ago, I led a research effort at Spitfire Strategies that informed the development of the Just Enough Planning Guide. That tool – built by Spitfire with funding from the Moore Foundation – offered an accessible and effective resource for nonprofit campaign planners.Well, it just got better. The new Planning to Win guide, launched this month by Spitfire, is still easy to use, and it still challenges nonprofits to choose the best path to victory and build a realistic plan that aligns with available resources. And – thanks again to the Moore Foundation – it’s still...

Eight years ago, I led a research effort at Spitfire Strategies that informed the development of the Just Enough Planning Guide. That tool – built by Spitfire with funding from the Moore Foundation – offered an accessible and effective resource for nonprofit campaign planners.Well, it just got better. The new Planning to Win guide, launched this month by Spitfire, is still easy to use, and it still challenges nonprofits to choose the best path to victory and build a realistic plan that aligns with available resources. And – thanks again to the Moore Foundation – it’s still...

According to the U.S. Department of Education, over 1.1 million children are currently experiencing homelessness across the country. These children come from a diverse range of communities, but all face difficulties including hunger, health problems, and the risk of exploitation and violence.However, under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) current definition of homelessness, many of these children do not qualify for much-needed housing and other wraparound services. Fortunately, leaders in both the House and Senate are taking action by addressing the shortcomings of the HUD definition to ensure that all homeless children receive the necessary supports from...

In recent years, federal accountability for education has focused solely on outcomes while remaining silent on the inputs necessary to bring about those outcomes. In other words, students, teachers, and schools are being punished when they do not meet certain federal standards for achievement on standardized tests. Those punishments include holding children back, not allowing students to graduate, mass teacher lay-offs, and closing schools. This trend has only intensified in the last few years with policies that raise the standards even higher, such as Race to the Top and the implementation of Common Core in most states. While standards have...

According to a new report by Sarah Binder at the Brookings Institution entitled Polarized We Govern?, "Today, 75 percent of the salient issues on Washington's agenda are subject to legislative gridlock."And at Vox, Andrew Prokop has pulled together five charts from a variety of sources, including Binder's research, that highlight how Congress is extremely: (1) gridlocked; (2) unpopular; (3) polarized; (4) unproductive; and, (5) expensive.With important issues facing our nation, very little is getting done. And for our nation's children, stalemate in Congress precludes action on addressing a wide array of problems, including: changing child welfare financing even...

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize, so it’s no surprise that he knows a thing or two about communications. His column today was nominally about party politics, but the same lesson is also important for kids’ advocates: if you want to win, drop the pessimism.Expanding on these themes on today’s Morning Joe, one of the other guests observed that candidates are getting the opposite advice from their advisors. Pollsters and political operatives look at the pessimism reflected in the poll numbers and caution candidates avoid sounding “tone-deaf,” by reflecting that pessimism back to voters. But,...

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001, which requires students to take state-administered standardized tests in math and reading/language arts in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 in addition to once per the grade spans 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12, students, teachers, and schools have become unnecessarily overburdened by the growth of standardized testing. A new bi-partisan bill introduced by Representative Gibson (R-NY) and Representative Sinema (D-AZ), the Student Testing Improvement and Accountability Act (H.R.4172), revises NCLB to end this mandatory over-testing and return to standardized tests offered once per grade span.The over-testing that...