Connecticut political leaders earn low grades when it comes to addressing the needs of children. Connecticut citizens want state government to play a more active role in support of children's programs. Nearly 24,000 Connecticut children were abused or neglected in 1995. Our rate of substantiated child abuse is twice the national average. Half the children living in poverty in Connecticut have one or more employed parents.
Poverty exists throughout the state.
For example, one-third of students in Stamford, Danbury, Derby, Putnam, Middletown and Meriden are eligible for subsidized school lunches. Connecticut is a state of great contrast in terms of children's needs and accomplishments. Even though Connecticut ranks high nationally on some standard measures of child well-being, there are pockets of severe, continuing problems in rural towns, suburbs and cites. The high school graduation rate in Connecticut is the highest in the country. Despite this, many thousands of students come from districts where more than a third of each high school class drops our before graduation, including one-third of the class of 1996 in New Britain, New London and West Haven.