Poor Children

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has been castigated on the opinion pages for declaring that child labor laws "are truly stupid" and for suggesting that poor children be hired to clean the bathrooms of their schools in order to teach a work ethic they can't possibly learn at home because nobody there has a job. "Really poor children," he said at an Iowa fundraiser, "in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working, and have...

The historic Linwood estate has been known for many things, from hosting a Confederate general to its current mission to help children and adults with autism live a better life. But if the National Christ Child Society gets its way, the antebellum property in Ellicott City might one day become sacred ground. For it was in the whispers of a Linwood wheat field 134 years ago that an 11-year-old Mary Virginia Merrick felt the call of God on her heart and knelt among the golden stalks in prayer.

A Connecticut-based philanthropy specializing in child-oriented policy research will move its headquarters to Baltimore next year, city officials and the Annie E. Casey Foundation said yesterday.The $923 million foundation, founded by the family of one of the founders of United Parcel Service, expects to move from Greenwich, Conn., in September 1994. It is one of the 25 largest philanthropic foundations in America and the largest devoted exclusively to poor children and families, spokesman Bill Rust said.

Mitt Romney's ill-considered remark about the destitute, "I'm not concerned about the very poor," and his subsequent awkward explanation of it represented something more noteworthy than a rich man's gaffe. The question raised by the episode is not simply whether the candidate can articulate his views more clearly but whether the dire economic circumstances of tens of millions of Americans are truly understood, or can even be acknowledged, by the GOP. "We have a social safety net," Mr. Romney told his CNN interviewer Wednesday.

THIRTY-THREE YEARS ago tomorrow Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his ''I Have a Dream'' speech to the applause of 250,000 on the Washington Mall. Many great leaders spoke that day: A. Philip Randolph, Jr., of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Eugene Carson Blake, of the National Council of Churches; Walter P. Reuther, of the United Automobile Workers; Floyd B. McKissick, of the Congress of Racial Equality; Whitney M. Young Jr., of the National Urban...

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration released proposed legislation yesterday that would narrow the gap between rich and poor schools by redirecting federal education aid to give a greater share to poor districts.The "Improving America's Schools Act of 1993" would also increase federal funding to underfunded schools to $7 billion in fiscal 1995, an 11 percent increase from fiscal 1994, and would refocus existing programs to ensure that children from low-income families are encouraged to meet the same advanced academic standards now expected of middle-class children.

A Connecticut-based philanthropy specializing in child-oriented policy research will move its headquarters to Baltimore next year, city officials and the Annie E. Casey Foundation said yesterday.The $923 million foundation, founded by the family of one of the founders of United Parcel Service, expects to move from Greenwich, Conn., in September 1994. It is one of the 25 largest philanthropic foundations in America and the largest devoted exclusively to poor children and families, spokesman Bill Rust said.

Two of Harford's neediest elementary schools fear they'll soon lose a federal program designed to help poor children keep up with their classmates.The Chapter 1 program, which provides money for poor children at 12 county schools, likely will be dropped from Darlington and North Harford because of a cut of nearly $400,000, or about 15 percent, in federal funding for Harford, said Doris E. Carey, county supervisor of federal programs."

WASHINGTON -- Social Security officials have found evidence that the government improperly terminated disability benefits for many poor children, misinformed parents of their legal rights and actively discouraged some parents from appealing the decisions.To remedy that situation, officials plan several changes. They said they would help parents find lawyers and would probably send notices to thousands of families giving them a new opportunity to challenge the loss of cash benefits.Children who appeal have a good chance of success.

Former New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo urged a conference of child advocates and Methodist leaders yesterday to band together with a "heroic message" and grab their share of government surpluses to reduce the ranks of the nation's poor children."

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has been castigated on the opinion pages for declaring that child labor laws "are truly stupid" and for suggesting that poor children be hired to clean the bathrooms of their schools in order to teach a work ethic they can't possibly learn at home because nobody there has a job. "Really poor children," he said at an Iowa fundraiser, "in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working, and have...

Newt Gingrich wants to pay poor kids to clean toilets. And all of the right people are horrified. The Nation says Mr. Gingrich is running on "a platform that seems to have been written by the unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge. " The editors of the Newark Star-Ledger proclaim Mr. Gingrich wants to "bring back the days of Oliver Twist. " The host of "Meet the Press," David Gregory, suggests Mr. Gingrich's take on the inner-city poor is a "grotesque distortion. " This controversy started last month at Harvard, when Mr. Gingrich suggested in a speech that perhaps the best way to break the cycle of poverty in inner cities is to break the culture of poverty that sustains it by, among other things, paying kids to do janitorial work.

I empathize with Peter French's letter about the difficulties teachers in poor communities face ("Even without No Child Left Behind, teaching is debased," Sept. 29). My family arrived in America penniless in 1969 and we lived in the slums of Brooklyn, where I trudged through broken glass and filth to get to school every day. So I know a little about the poverty of which he speaks, and the mentality that makes children growing up in its midst difficult to teach. Too many parents behave as if they don't want to have anything to do with their children's education.

The recent decision by Frederick County's Board of County Commissioners to eliminate funding to its local Head Start program was surpassed in callousness only by the statements two male commissioners subsequently chose to make on child-rearing. After voting to cut the county's $2.3 million contribution to the Head Start program, which readies preschool children from low-income families for kindergarten, commissioners C. Paul Smith and Kirby Delauter remarked that the ideal households were those in which the women stayed at home with small children, as their wives did. They said this made not only for better child-rearing but also for better marriages.

One of the most important recent pieces of education research was released last year — and promptly ignored. The Century Foundation's report "Housing Policy is School Policy" confirms the seminal 1966 finding of Johns Hopkins University sociologist James Coleman: The school-based variable that most profoundly affects student performance is the socioeconomic composition of the school. In short, poor children do better if they attend schools with affluent children. The "new" news in the report?

I was dismayed to read your support of cutting education funding in your editorial of Jan. 4 ( "Easy choices and hard ones for Md.'s budget gap" . One in five residents of Baltimore City lives in poverty; the numbers of those in poverty in the county and in other jurisdictions are increasing. A quality education is what provides opportunities and hope to families that their children will experience less economic hardship. Poor children in the city and across the state will suffer disproportionately under any cuts to public education, and this is unjust.

WASHINGTON -- Advocates for children and some administration officials are saying that President Clinton's health plan would eliminate some benefits received by millions of poor children on Medicaid, including many who are disabled.Under the health plan's package of basic services, some Medicaid recipients under 21 could lose benefits they now have, including transportation to and from a doctor, certain types of hearing and vision care, physical rehabilitation and special education services.

W ith the goal of connecting the vast majority of Americans to next-generation broadband over the next decade, the National Broadband Plan that was unveiled by the Federal Communications Commission last week offers a road map to full digital inclusion in our country. If we succeed in meeting its goals, the plan could become one of the most influential documents of our era - a blueprint not only for a new birth of equality and civil rights in the Information Age, but also for a more dynamic, competitive and vibrant society for the rest of this century.

A citizens commission is recommending modest pay increases for the next Howard County executive and five-member council, despite falling revenues from the recession that forced officials this year to voluntarily cut their own pay via donations. The group, which is appointed once each term under a county charter requirement, voted to increase the next county executive's pay $2,500 per year, and County Council pay by a one-time $500 increment, all starting in December 2010, when the next crop of officials are to be sworn in. All six elected next year would also receive annual cost-of-living increases based on the consumer price index.