Kicking the habit

Cecilia Sirianni's small office at Massabesic High School can sometimes get a bit messy. Piles of donated clothes and boxes of snacks fill cabinets and shelves — all for students at the rural district in York County, Maine. For more than a decade, a big part of Sirianni's job has ... Show More

This August will present a milestone: 20 years since welfare reform. The federal government overhauled the cash assistance program for poor families, replacing it with a new system called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.Among the biggest changes, states now contr ... Show More

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says more than 50 million people across the country live in “food deserts” – low-income communities where it can be hard to find healthy food. According to the last census, in 2010, almost 2 million of those people live in the Houston area alone ... Show More

Sandra Plantz, an administrator at Gallia County Local Schools for more than 20 years, oversees areas as diverse as Title I reading remediation and federal grants for all seven of the district’s schools. In recent years, though, she has leaned in hard on a role that is overlooked ... Show More

The high poverty rate among children was long seen as an enduring fact of American life. But a recent analysis has shown that the number of young people growing up poor has fallen dramatically in the past few decades.The reasons for the improvement are complicated, but they have ... Show More

Many Americans pay more for child care than they do for their mortgages, even though the wages for those who provide the care are among the lowest in the United States.Democrats see the issue as a fundamental market failure and are pushing a plan to bridge the gap with federal su ... Show More

During the pandemic, an enormous amount of money — about $5 trillion in total — was spent to help support the newly unemployed and to prop up the U.S. economy while it was forced into suspension.But the funds came with few strings and minimal oversight. The result: one of the lar ... Show More

The number of K-12 students experiencing homelessness in California has surged by the thousands. That’s according to new enrollment data from the state’s Department of Education.Reporter: Joe Hong, CalMatters A new investigation finds that after police killings, many California l ... Show More

The United States had 71,000 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday. Back in June, Dr. Anthony Fauci said he wouldn't be surprised to see 100,00 cases per day. That grim prediction is getting closer to reality. While the economy is in a recession and tens of millions of people have lo ... Show More

The economic situation in Afghanistan is perilous. Banks have run out of cash. In some areas, Afghans are selling their belongings in ad hoc flea markets. Parents wait around hospitals and clinics in the hopes of getting treatment for severely malnourished children.We hear about ... Show More