 | Children Now’s advocacy efforts, including testifying at legislative hearings and communicating with key legislators about the importance of afterschool programs in academic achievement, health, fitness, and safety, helped protect Proposition 49 from strong pressure to cut its funding, ensuring continued afterschool opportunities for approximately 400,000 kids. |
| Senate Bill 429, co-sponsored by Children Now and signed into law in 2011, addresses the issue of summer learning loss for students in need by enabling summer program providers to better meet the distinct needs of individual communities. The bill increases flexibility in program hours, enrollment, and facilities use. |
| Children Now protected $11 million in federal funding for quality improvements in early education by effectively opposing the Administration’s unexpected proposal to dismantle the Early Learning Advisory Council (ELAC) and return the funding, including $1.8 million to plan and coordinate the creation of an early learning data system. |
| Children Now was instrumental in the passage of Assembly Bill 2244, a federal health care reform implementation bill that ensures 575,000 California children with pre-existing conditions can access health coverage. |
| Children Now played a lead role in the 2011 passage of Assembly Bill x1 21, which extended an assessment on managed care plans to partly fund the state’s Healthy Families insurance program. Without these funds, as many as 300,000 children would have lost their health coverage. |
| Children Now led a diverse coalition in securing legislative support to override the Administration’s proposed elimination of the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) in the 2011-2012 budget. Stronger data on students and schools is foundational to the success of California’s education system. |
 | Senate Bill X5 2, co-sponsored by Children Now and signed into law in 2010, ensures researcher access to student-level data, a critical component of better using data to improve the state’s education system. The bill passed both houses of the Legislature with unanimous support. |
| Following a comprehensive strategic planning process, Children Now launched The Children’s Movement of California to organize the broad but otherwise diffuse support for prioritizing children’s health and education in public policymaking. You can join the Movement here. |
| Senate Bill 1357, co-sponsored by Children Now and signed into law in 2010, defines “chronic absence” as a key indicator of academic failure/dropout, requires the California Department of Education to incorporate attendance data into the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS), and establishes the intent to use this data to create early warning systems. |
| Children Now successfully urged the federal government to include language in the Affordable Care Act stating that a “maintenance of effort” applies to both Medicaid and CHIP in state budgets. In California, that language saved 900,000 children from losing health insurance through the Administration’s proposed elimination of the Healthy Families program, a proposal dropped due to the new federal requirements. |
 | The crafting and passage of Senate Bill 19, which removes all barriers to the use of achievement data linked to individual teachers and principals for the purpose of evaluation, a critical step in ensuring that California is eligible to compete for the federal Race to the Top education funding. |
 | Assembly Bill 2759, co-sponsored by Children Now and signed into law in 2008, increases the efficiency of California’s preschool system, providing thousands more children with access to programs. |
| The 2008 California County Scorecard of Children’s Well-Being is an innovative online tool enabling the discovery of best practices in improving children’s well-being; it’s another example of the critical role Children Now plays in researching and bringing attention to children’s issues. See it here. |
| Senate Bill 1629, co-sponsored by Children Now and signed into law in 2008, introduces stronger accountability measures to improve early care and education program quality for over 1.7 million California children. |
| Senate Bill 1298, co-sponsored by Children Now and signed into law in 2008, initiates the data system needed to improve all children’s educational achievement. All of the nearly 6.6 million children in early care and K-12 education in California will benefit. |
 | After attending a national Children Now conference on children’s educational programming, FCC Commissioners champion federal policy expanding the quantity of children’s educational programming. The policy went into effect in 2007 and is credited to the work of Children Now. |
 | Senate Bill 437, co-sponsored by Children Now and signed into law in 2006, streamlines the enrollment process for public children’s health insurance in California, so tens of thousands more children get the coverage that’s available to them. |
| Assembly Bill 172, co-sponsored by Children Now and signed into law in 2006, expands preschool programs, resulting in 12,000 more slots being created for children. |
| Senate Bill 638, co-sponsored by Children Now and signed into law in 2006, protects and implements the voter-approved Proposition 49, equitably expanding after school programs to hundreds of thousands more children throughout California. |
 | Dora the Explorer is the first Latina cartoon heroine, instead of the rabbit that was originally planned for the show, because Nickelodeon executive Brown Johnson attended a national Children Now conference on the lack of diversity in children’s shows. |
 | Launched in 1998, Children Now’s “Talking with Kids About Tough Issues” has helped hundreds of thousands of parents speak to their children about drugs, sex, violence and other difficult issues. |
