Early Steps Forward

November 3 Wright Edelman, Founder and President Emerita, Children’s Defense Fund (CDF)

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Fifty years after the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) was founded, some of CDF's marks of impact go all the way back to the beginning including CDF's first report, Children Out of School in America. Children Out of School in America, was built on a Massachusetts task force's local research on children who were not enrolled in school in Boston. CDF staff examined official federal and state data and from that analysis, determined there were two million children nationwide who were out of school for at least three months, including 750,000 children between 713 years old. But there was no clear information on who these children were and why they were at home. To learn more, CDF staff knocked on 8,500 doors in 30 census tracts in nine states to find families whose children were not in school and ask them why not.