Tennessee continues to face challenges preventing many of its youngest residents from getting ahead, according to the new Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The annual report measures child well-being using indicators related to the economy, education, health, and family and community factors. This year’s report introduced a new scoring system, ranking states on a scale from zero to 1,000 to provide a broader picture of how children are doing across the country.

Robin Yeh, policy director for the public policy research organization the Sycamore Institute in Nashville, said Tennessee students are showing improvement, with education gains outpacing national trends.

“For Tennessee, our score in education was 439, which was a 40-point improvement from 2023, and also the second-largest score improvement in the country between last year and this year,” Yeh explained. “I think that's a really strong thing to highlight.”

Yeh acknowledged the data book showed a slight decline in economic well-being but Tennessee saw improvements in health indicators, including fewer low birth-weight babies and a decline in the child and teen death rate. The state’s family and community factors score climbed by 29 points, Yeh added. Two indicators improved and two held steady.

“The ones that we did improve on are related to the percentage of children in single-parent families and also the percentage of children where the head of the household lacks a high school diploma,” she outlined. “I think we are seeing those indicators improve.”

Tennessee ranked 42nd overall compared with the rest of the U.S. Yeh stressed policymakers can use both the overall ranking and the underlying data to decide where more work is needed.

Leslie Boissiere, vice president of external affairs for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, said the report is not just about numbers. Each data point represents a child who may or may not have the resources needed to thrive.

“It's a child who either has enough to eat or doesn't have enough to eat,” Boissiere emphasized. “It's a child who is either in a stable home and has access to quality education to put themselves on a pathway to thrive, or it's a child who doesn't have those necessities.”

The data book found fewer Tennessee children are living in high-poverty neighborhoods than the national average, though the number of uninsured children increased over the past year.

Source: Public News Service