Kentucky is moving up, but still sitting toward the bottom in an annual report ranking the well-being of children across the U.S. and the 2024 Kids Count Data book.

Kentucky received an overall ranking of 38 out of 50.

That's up two places from last year.

This year's report, released by Kentucky youth advocates, focused on children's educational outcomes and what's keeping them from learning.

We're in that bottom rung of states when it comes to children and well-being.

It reminds us that Kentucky is not the best place in America to be young.

I always begin with economic well-being because my hypothesis is that of the 16 indicators that we look at, absolutely the the canary in the coal mine, if you want to call it that, is the data point about the the number of children in poverty.

The good news is that we began to inch in a positive direction around the percentage of children in poverty.

We improved just by one percentage point, but it's at least in the right direction.

So we should take of we should take encouragement from that.

But we also have to remember, even with these numbers, that more than 200,000 kids in Kentucky woke up this morning living in poverty.

What we have seen over more than three decades of kids count data is where childhood poverty lies.

Today is where those other indicators will be tomorrow.

The theme of the book, as you know, this year, for the first time in 35 years of kids count, is education.

Just the most cursory look at the education indicators shows one commonality, which is we're getting worse on every national indicator of education.

You know, in some of the numbers are astounding.

Seven out of 10/4 graders do not meet meet minimal national proficiency in reading.

Eight out of 10/8 graders are unable to meet minimal national proficiency when it comes to math.

And this is a national phenomenon, but it's certainly very true in Kentucky is the dramatic rise in chronic truancy and absenteeism.

One in four Kentucky students recorded an attendance record considered chronically absent for the last year measured.

I mean, you want to know why eighth graders can't do math?

Because they're never in math class.

And so we've got to get creative and innovative in how do we get those young people to school on a regular, stable basis.

The General Assembly and the governor talk a lot about workforce, and I understand that.

Can you project what Kentucky's workforce in two decades is?

Two out of ten employees can do math and three out of ten employees can read at a national level.

So you're talking about an achievement crisis today, but you're talking about a workforce tsunami tomorrow.

I think that the most alarming stat maybe in the whole report is the increase in child and teen mortality rates.

Recent data shows that 91% of homicides in Kentucky are the victims were age 1 to 17, and that 66% of those deaths involved firearms.

I know there's a lot of folks who don't want to talk about it, but we're either going to talk about the role of guns in our society or we're going to talk continue to talk about increased in child mortality rates.

Interesting data.

Kentucky youth advocate says some of the ways to improve child well-being include providing access to tutoring, mental health services after school care, low or no cost, school meals and reliable Internet service.