No one ever gets good grades in Ted Lempert’s class. The report cards he hands out every year are laden with D+s and C-s, with an occasional B+ thrown in more for effort than achievement.

Lempert is executive director of Children Now, an advocacy group fighting for better services for California’s kids. Each year since 1989, Children Now has issued the California Report Card, a snapshot showing how our children are faring in the areas of education, health care, nutrition, safety and the other issues that affect their well-being. The report card is intended to be a call to arms, a reminder to policy makers of the dire needs of a population whose tiny voices are easily shouted down in the lobbyist-clogged halls of the Capitol.

This year, however, Lempert has an idea that he hopes will turn Californians into A students. It’s more than a curriculum change. It’s a movement.

Flipping through the 2010 report card last week, I was struck by the depressing sameness of these reports. Health coverage: D+. K-12 education: D. More than 12 percent of our children are obese, 580,000 kids can’t afford dental care and 1 out of 5 will drop out of high school. Even with progress in reducing teen drug use and providing after-school care, the report card is still a downer.

On the eve of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget message, in what is certain to be another dreadfully tight budget year riddled with cuts to children’s programs, I figured Lempert, who has been with Children Now for 5½ years, would be weary of handing out yet another lousy lack-of-progress report. But I found him surprisingly upbeat.

“This is indeed the worst of times in the 20 years we have been doing this,” he said. “But it’s also a time of great opportunity.”

Opportunity? For what?

“In the worst of times, you put your kids first,” he said. “Any family would do that. So here is an opportunity to get people to say, ‘Wait a minute. We need to focus on the future. If we are not protecting kids, what are we doing to our future?’”

Lempert says voters support spending for education and children’s health care. Yet as a former San Mateo County supervisor and state assemblyman, he recognizes that he needs more than a pile of data to get attention in Sacramento. He needs more than a patchwork of well-meaning advocacy groups milling around the Capitol wringing their hands about kids in an election year when the state is facing a $20 billion deficit. What he needs is a coalition with clout: parents, teachers, doctors, cops and others who are willing to lobby for a kids’ agenda.

So he is launching such a lobbying organization. It’s called The Children’s Movement. The goal of the movement is to get groups like the state PTA, community organizations and faith groups, business leaders, Realtors and educators to set priorities for kids and pressure lawmakers to put kids first in budget decisions.

“This doesn’t just make moral sense, it’s about economics,” he said. “If we want our state to thrive decades from now, we can’t shortchange kids.”

To read this year’s report card or to join the Children’s Movement, go to www.childrennow.org.

I hope Lempert will be able to recruit followers to his movement. And that the movement will succeed in bringing home better grades for California.