Illinois child deaths linked to neglect, abuse at 30-year high

Emonie "Star" Beasley-Brown lived just three weeks before she was suffocated. Her grandmother was accused of placing her hands over the infant's mouth to hush her crying as the 14-year-old mother stood by.

Clayton Condiff, four months old, died after being dropped, shaken and suffocated. And three days later — during a year of record child deaths from abuse and neglect in Illinois — two-month-old Julia Duda drowned in a bathtub. Police said the mother left her baby alone while she made coffee, records show.

The three infants as well as a fourth battered child died in Chicago during one five-week span in summer 2012. They are among the 111 children who lost their lives from abuse or neglect in Illinois in the fiscal year that ended June 30, a figure that doesn't include 10 deaths still under investigation, according to records. The majority died before they were 1 year old.

The Tribune reported last Tuesday that more children died of abuse and neglect in Illinois in fiscal 2013 than at any time in the past 30 years. The increase represents a 23 percent spike over the two previous years and is the highest since the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services began keeping such data in 1981, records show.

DCFS Director Richard Calica attributed the recent rise in abuse and neglect findings in part to improved investigations and data collection as well as to continued stresses found in many of the homes that child welfare officials investigate.

"There's a direct correlation between the economy and child abuse," he said...............

Inner city blight, nurtured dependence and crime -- products of decades of Democratic Party rule -- are now used as tools to demand that more money be funneled to unions to "fix" the broken people they've created.

"Poverty" not race, is the new liberal hammer.

The real 21st-century problem in public education".......The October 2013 Southern Education Foundation study indicates clearly that poverty, which has long been the biggest obstacle to educational achievement, is more important than ever. It is our true 21st century problem. Fifty years ago, we educated mostly working-class kids and up, and we did not expect those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder to graduate. Now we educate all students, including the very poorest and otherwise disadvantaged. And we expect them all to graduate. Compounding this shift, a large and growing proportion of U.S. students students live in poverty and even concentrated poverty, have a disability, and/or are learning English as a second language. THAT is the paradigm shift, and we need a totally new set of policies to address that 21st century reality.

In 2000, students who were eligible for free or reduced-price meals made up at least half of the student body in four states. Just eleven years later, over half of public school students are poor in 17 states, including every Southern state but Virginia and Maryland, and most Western states. Student poverty is the dominant reality in schools in three of the biggest states – California, Texas, and Florida—and nearly the majority in New York, Michigan, and Illinois. The 21st century has sharply increased the proportion of parents who are unemployed, whose jobs do not pay enough to provide basic food, shelter, clothing, and health care for their children, and/or whose immigrant status limit their capacity to navigate the education system and restrict them to a shadow economy....."

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