Co-authored by Kevin Lindsey of First Focus

As the nation pays tribute to and reflects on the life and work of Robin Williams, it is notable that Williams earned Academy Award nominations and one Oscar for his incredible portrayal of teachers dedicated to making personal connections to young people that...

In 1997, facing a crisis where 1 in 7 children had no health insurance coverage in the United States, a Republican-led Congress worked with President Bill Clinton to pass bipartisan legislation creating the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) - a federal-state partnership that offers health insurance coverage to over eight...

Children are "fleeing for their lives," according to journalist Sonia Navario, who has investigated the root causes, circumstances, and plight of vulnerable migrants who have been traveling -- often by themselves at enormous risk -- to the United States and other countries throughout the Americas from the Central...

As we confront problems in society, the lives of children in this country and across the world would improve if we would more often just ask and answer one simple question: is it in the best interest of the child?

While some adults seem not to care at all,...

As parents, we have the responsibility to make the right choices for our children, especially in the early years. Over time, that slowly changes, as we begin to help guide our child's choices so that they learn for themselves "to make the right choices."

And, as adults in society, we...

According to a new report by Sarah Binder at the Brookings Institution entitled Polarized We Govern?, "Today, 75 percent of the salient issues on Washington's agenda are subject to legislative gridlock."

And at Vox, Andrew Prokop has pulled together five charts from a variety of...

Conventional wisdom offers a few dictums that should apply to the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), including:

• "Don't mess with success."
• "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
• "Leave well enough alone."

For the sake and well-being of 8 million children across the nation receiving health...

"Actions speaker louder than words but not nearly as often." -- Mark Twain

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan released his fiscal year 2015 budget proposal last week, but the rhetoric in the document and out of the Committee often seem at odds with the budget choices that are...

The Miami Herald series entitled "Innocents Lost" deserves a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into 477 deaths of children that were a part of the child welfare system in the State of Florida over the past six years. More than 70 percent of the children who died were...

Facts and evidence can be a mixed bag. There are facts and evidence that sometimes reinforce and other times dispute the thoughts, beliefs and ideology that each of us hold. We should all be open to hearing facts and evidence that challenge our preconceived notions and beliefs. As Mary Roach...

The idea of the American dream -- the idea that the opportunity for achieving one's hopes and dreams along with successful upward mobility is available to each successive generation regardless of circumstances of birth or zip code is a concept deeply help by the American people. According to...

Money matters. It is a very simple notion in a capitalist society. Although there are deniers of this fact when it comes to children, such as those who insist the vast inequities in school funding somehow do not matter, the facts overwhelmingly point to just how very important it is.

The Newseum in Washington, D.C., has a permanent exhibit of Pulitzer Prize winning photographs that silences crowds and brings forth a range of emotions in people. As Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Eddie Adams explains, "If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out...

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared "all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States" as something that "can and must be done." Despite a group of defeatists declaring failure, the fact is that major progress has been made in this battle.

As

At the Save Texas Schools rally in March 2011 on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol, I was fortunate to be in Austin and present to see Perrin-Whitt Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent John Kuhn's passionate speech against the billions of dollars in proposed cuts to education...

It's time to restore American leadership, and the place to start is by investing in our future, our children. Both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt give us examples of the leadership that kids need once again today.

Over a century ago, in 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt looked out on a nation...

You simply don't gamble with our children's health. Unfortunately, as the House of Representatives chose to use the Continuing Resolution (CR) as a vehicle for its 42nd effort to defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare, it "mistakenly" put the health of millions of our nation's children...

The Southwest is a place of great opportunity, enchantment, and grandeur, and yet, also a place of poverty and inequality in the United States. Through its children, it is also a place that will play an expanding and critically important role in either the successes or failures of our nation....

A few weeks ago, Melissa Harris-Perry appeared in a "Lean Forward" promotional ad for MSNBC and said:

We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had kind of a private notion of children: Your kid is yours and totally your...

In the face of the shooting deaths of 20 young children and six adults in Newtown, CT, people all across this country were hopeful that something might actually get accomplished with respect to gun violence when Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) came together to work...