New Report Released: America's Children: Key national Indicators of Well-Being 2009

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics has released America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2009.  This report continues a series of annual reports to the Nation on conditions affecting children in the United States.  Indicators are supplied by NCES, IES and 21 other federal agencies.

Items of note from the report's section on education

• Performance of 4th and 8th graders in mathematics is at an all time high and performance in reading improved between 2005 and 2007. 
  
• The percentage of children ages 3-5 who were read to every day in the last week by a family member declined, from 60 percent in 2005, to 55 percent in 2007. 
  

The report has three demographic background measures and 40 selected indicators to describe the population of children and depict child well-being in the areas of family and social environment, economic circumstances, health care, physical environment and safety, behavior, education, and health. This year's report has a special feature on children with special health care needs. (From the IES Newsflash Service)