California kids falling behind in health, education

San Jose Mercury News, January 3, 2008

An Oakland-based youth advocacy group, Children Now, gave low marks to the state of children's health and education in California and urged leaders to boost funding and take action. The 2008 California Report Card, created by the group assigned letter grades to certain health and educational factors affecting California's children, assigning health insurance a C, and obesity a D. The report also found that fewer than half of the state's families can afford the basics of housing, child care, food, health insurance and transportation.