Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 9, 1994                   TAG: 9405100013
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KIDS COUNT

The latest bad-news bearer: the 1994 KIDS COUNT Data Book, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It identifies nearly 4 million American children as extremely at risk. They're growing up in severely distressed neighborhoods characterized by high rates of poverty, female-headed families, teens who don't finish high school, unemployment and reliance on welfare.

Some of those children live in Virginia.

The study used 10 indicators of children's well-being to evaluate each of 50 states and the District of Columbia. The indicators: percentage of low-birth-weight babies; infant-mortality rate; child-death rate; percentage of births to single teens; juvenile violent-crime arrest rate; high-school graduation rate; percentage of idle teens; teen violent-death rate; percentage of children living in poverty, and of children in single-parent families.

Virginia's overall ranking was 24th - about halfway between the "best" (New Hampshire) and "worst" (D.C.).

Based on 1985-1991 statistics, the report found Virginia improving on four of the 10 benchmarks used to measure children's well-being.

The infant-mortality rate improved, falling from 11.5 deaths per 1,000 live births in '85 to 9.9 in '91. (But Virginia's rate was still one of the highest in the nation.) There were also modest improvements in Virginia's child-death rate and the percentage of children living in poverty, and a significant improvement in the percentage of teens not in school or in the labor force.

But Virginia's teen violent-death rate rose 21 percent between 1985 and 1992 - nearly twice the nationwide increase in this same period. The number of children in single-parent families rose 17 percent, also higher than the national average. Births to single teens in Virginia rose by 13 percent. The arrest rate for Virginia juveniles committing violent crimes rose 43 percent. There was a 3 percent increase in low-birth-weight babies.

Bored yet? Feeling a little like a 4-year-old at an Al Gore speech?

Last week, the KIDS COUNT report; last month, the Carnegie report; earlier this year, the Children's Defense Fund report - each saying much the same thing: America's kids are in trouble, and that spells continuing trouble for society down the road.

Margaret Brodkin, author of the child-advocacy book "Every Kid Counts," said this in 1993: "No more studies about how badly off children are. I'm so tired of it. I'm so tired of my colleagues doing it, and thinking that it makes a difference."

This is not to say that in-depth studies and thick reports on the dreary state of children don't serve a purpose. They inform us.

They should disturb us and move us to take action. Yet, mostly, we sit back waiting for someone else - maybe Al Gore - to do it.

Brodkin offers this slogan: "No more prizes for predicting rain. Prizes only for building arks."

So how about it? How many more trees have to die for grim reports on the problems of children before we use them to start building arks?