CDF Freedom school Policy Priorities

The Children’s Defense Fund champions policies and programs to improve the odds for America’s children. We focus our advocacy on the whole child because we believe children don’t come in pieces. We seek to end child poverty, give every child a healthy start, a quality early childhood experience, a level education playing field, and safe families and communities free from violence—with special attention to children involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Our policy and advocacy work includes raising awareness, gathering and analyzing data, publishing reports and research, highlighting promising practices, seeking legislative and administrative improvements and, perhaps most importantly, implementing policies so they truly benefit the most vulnerable children. Through this work, we seek to advance and achieve our mission to Leave No Child Behind®.

Child Poverty

We envision an America where no child lives in poverty and all children have the opportunities they need to reach their full potential. Protecting children against the lifelong consequences of poverty will improve their life and reduce child poverty in future generations. As a country, we have the resources to end child poverty now and must create the will to do so. We cannot afford to wait. The future of our children—and our nation—depends on it.

We work to end child poverty and ensure all families have resources to nurture their children by promoting improvements to policies and programs we know work. Ending child poverty will take a multi-pronged approach. To end child poverty now, we must:

Ensure Children’s Basic Needs are Met: We must increase investments in housing assistance for poor families, so they all can afford a safe and stable home to raise their children. We must also increase the value of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to cover a larger portion of the nutrition needs of children, so they are healthy and ready to learn.
Increase Employment and Make Work Pay: We must increase wages for working families, improve tax credits to ensure more low-income families benefit, expand subsidized jobs with special attention to the needs of young adults disconnected from school and work, and provide access to quality, reliable child care.
Level the Playing Field for Poor Children: To reduce child poverty long term, children also need access to affordable, comprehensive physical and behavioral health care, affordable high-quality early development and learning opportunities, high performing schools and colleges, and families and neighborhoods free from violence.

Child Health

All children in America should have access to health and mental health coverage and care that is comprehensive, affordable and easy to get and keep regardless of income, zip code, place of birth or immigration status.

We work to ensure all children in America have access to health and mental health coverage and care that is comprehensive, affordable, child-appropriate, and easy to get and keep regardless of income, zip code, place of birth of immigration status. We must:

Hold the Line to Ensure Children Do Not Move Backward: Despite historic gains in health coverage for children, Medicaid, CHIP and the ACA continue to face serious attacks. CDF continues to fight to protect and strengthen these critical sources of health coverage for children to ensure children continue to move forward, not backward.
Finish the Job of Enrolling All Eligible Children in Comprehensive, Affordable Health Coverage: We want to maximize the promise of Medicaid, CHIP and the ACA by ensuring every eligible child is enrolled in affordable health coverage that guarantees all necessary services, is affordable and is easy to get and to keep.
Advance Innovative Policies and Practices to Improve Children’s Access to Health Coverage and Care: Child-appropriate coverage should be central to all health reform proposals from their inception. We work to develop, organize, and promote innovative policy changes to ensure all children are covered.

Education

We envision a public education system where every child has opportunities to gain the social, economic, and cultural and political capital necessary to realize their full potential to support their future families and give back to society. All students must be assured of the robust enforcement of our nation’s civil rights and education laws and freedom from discrimination. Education should be the great equalizer, leveling the playing field for all children. This means a public education system with equitable resources for all, including equitable access to high-quality teachers and programming within school districts and schools. It also means a public education system where children are not trapped in schools isolated by race and poverty and privy to discriminatory discipline policies and practices. There must be special recognition and attention to the educational needs of children who are poor or low income, as well as children with disabilities, English language learners, and children who are homeless, in foster care or returning from juvenile detention.

We work to eliminate discriminatory education policies and practices and the inequitable distribution of resources that undermine equal educational opportunities for all students. To ensure all children an equitable education, we must:

Promote Equitable School Funding: We must eliminate the inequitable distribution of resources that undermine equal education opportunities for students, especially poor and low income students, children of color, children with disabilities, English language learners, and children who are homeless, those who are in foster care and those returning from juvenile detention.

Work to Reduce the Achievement Gap: We must build support within schools so children have access to experienced teachers, a diverse teacher pipeline, and high quality programing they need to succeed.

End the School-to-Prison Pipeline: We must eliminate discriminatory discipline practices in school districts and schools, enhance school climate and promote educational success for every child.

Expand After-School and Summer Literacy Opportunities: Provide new resources to expand summer and after-school literacy and cultural enrichment programs for children to curb summer learning loss and close achievement gaps.

Early Childhood Development

We envision an America where every child regardless of race, gender or family income has access to a continuum of high-quality, comprehensive early childhood opportunities that meet their needs and the needs of their families. Providing every child this Head Start with the help of caring families and communities is necessary to guarantee a successful passage to adulthood.

We work with policymakers and community leaders to ensure every child a high-quality, early childhood education that builds a strong developmental foundation for the rest of their lives. To ensure all children a head start, we must build a high-quality continuum of early childhood opportunities for every child, including:

Paid Family Leave so families welcoming a new child into their homes can bond with and support that child’s development before they have to return to work.
Voluntary Home Visiting so new parents can understand the supports and resources available to them.
Quality, Affordable Child Care so children’s development can be nurtured while their parents are at work.
Early Head Start and Head Start for the poorest children and families so that their early needs can be met in a comprehensive way.
Quality Preschool so children enter school ready to learn.
Full-Day Kindergarten so children do not miss the critical step between preschool and first grade.

Youth Justice

All children deserve to grow up at home in safe, stable families, receive a quality education in safe, supportive schools, and participate in peaceful, thriving communities. Every child should be able to have a childhood that provides the time and space for learning, mistakes, and restorative correction by caring adults with knowledge of adolescent brain development and a child’s capacity to change based on neuroscience. To the extent that children are deemed to have committed a punishable offense per the juvenile justice system or a crime per the adult criminal justice system, they are entitled to adequate legal representation and a response that is age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate, culturally-responsive, gender-responsive, and trauma-informed in the least-restrictive, most-safe setting in order to facilitate rehabilitation, promote healing, ensure positive youth development, and reduce recidivism.

We work to ensure more humane and rehabilitative prevention and treatment for all children who come in contact with the juvenile justice system, especially children of color who historically have been disproportionately impacted. To stop the criminalization of children and ensure justice for all youth, we must:

Ensure Federal Resources for Youth Justice Reform: It is imperative to reauthorize, update, and fully fund the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). Reauthorization and updates are long overdue. First passed in 1974, the JJDPA provides federal standards for care and custody to protect children who come in contact with the juvenile justice system and funding for states to improve their juvenile justice systems and delinquency prevention programs. States must uphold four core protections for children including: the deinstitutionalization of status offenders, removal from adult jails, separation from adults by sight and sound, and address disproportionate minority contact. The JJDPA has been awaiting reauthorization since 2007.
Close Youth Prisons and Invest in Restorative, Community-Based Solutions: Youth prisons are often harmful, large, outdated, punitive places in which children are locked in secure facilities without the compassion, services and support needed to rehabilitate and not recidivate. Elected officials must protect children and increase public safety by closing youth prisons and investing in restorative, community-based solutions close to home.
End Solitary Confinement of Children: Solitary confinement refers to the involuntary placement of isolating a child in a cell, room, or other spot for any reason other than as a temporary response to the threat of immediate physical harm. Facilities refer to this practice in various ways, including isolation, room confinement seclusion, or segregation. Solitary confinement is detrimental to the health and well-being of children. It exacerbates issues rather than resolving them, and it must end.

Gun Violence Protection

All children in America should be guaranteed the right to live, learn and grow up safely—free from violence and fear. CDF envisions a nation in which children and teens feel safe in their communities and classrooms and leaders at all levels protect children not guns.

We work to demand elected officials protect children not guns by advocating for common sense gun safety and gun violence prevention measures. To ensure all children a safe start and future, we must:

Implement Universal Background Checks: Current federal law does not require background checks for gun sales at gun shows, on the internet or between private individuals. Background checks do not prevent legal gun purchases but they could prevent child and teen gun deaths. We must extend background check requirements to cover all gun sales.
Prohibit Firearm Access for High-Risk Groups: We must keep guns out of the hands of those who would use them to harm children, families and communities. People convicted of domestic abuse or other violent crimes should have restricted gun access.
Enact Child Access Prevention Laws: Child and teen gun deaths are preventable and child access prevention laws can reduce accidental shootings of children by as much as 23 percent. We must require that guns be stored safely so children and teens cannot access them unsupervised.
Require Child Safety Features for Every Gun: It is outrageous that the Consumer Product Safety Commission can regulate the sale and manufacture of teddy bears and toy guns but not real guns. We must subject all guns to safety regulations, including childproof safety and child lock requirements.
Ban Military-Style Weapons: Military-style weapons have no place in our communities. We must ban assault weapons, high-capacity ammunition magazines, bump stocks and other devices which allow shooters to increase the rate of fire in semi-automatic weapons.
Fund Gun Violence Prevention Research: To tackle the gun violence epidemic in America, citizens need information not guns. We must repeal the Dickey Amendment banning federally-supported research on gun violence and its causes.

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