July 9, 2021
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Detention facilities can present a challenging environment
to manage the risk of transmission of infectious
diseases, including
COVID-19. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
has a number of detention facilities around the
country. As of March 2021, ICE
had confirmed over 10,000 cases of COVID-19 among
detainees within its detention facilities, and
recorded 8 deaths. The authors
reviewed how ICE has responded to COVID-19 in its
detention facilities. To guide immigration detention
facilities' response to
COVID-19, ICE developed the COVID-19 Pandemic Response
Requirements. These protocols address facility intake
processing, screening and
testing, and social distancing, among other requirements.
According to officials from six selected facilities,
these requirements were
routinely implemented. However, some reported that
quarantine of detainees was difficult at times due to
infrastructure limitations,
and detainee compliance with mask wearing was an ongoing
challenge. As of March 2021, individual facilities
were generally responsible
for working directly with state and local health
authorities to administer COVID-19 vaccines to
detainees.
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Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office
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Each year, more than 700,000 adults leave U.S. prisons and
return to local communities. While these individuals
are serving their time,
prison facilities are responsible for both incarcerating
them and providing them with rehabilitative programs
so that when they return
to their communities, they are better equipped than they
were when they left. Education services can not only
improve the lives and
conditions of those in prison but also help these
individuals compete for jobs in those communities when
they are released. In today’s
economy, having a college education is critical if one
wants to compete in the job market. Two-thirds of job
postings require some
level of college education. Recently, there has been a
resurgence of interest at the federal and state levels
in expanding higher
education in prisons, particularly expansions that offer a
path to degrees or industry-recognized credentials.
This tool aims to
provide guidance on key questions about in-prison college
programs and help corrections officials in assessing
such opportunities and
partnering with colleges to implement an in-prison college
program. This guide is intended to be a starting point
for corrections
officials who are considering partnering with a college to
implement an in-prison college program within their
prison facilities or who
currently have such a program and would like additional
information to help ensure the success of that
program. The guide is relevant
for two-year and four-year college programs.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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In 2020, a year defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, the
crime rate in California’s 72 largest cities declined
by an average of 7%,
falling to a historic low level. From 2019 to 2020, 48
cities showed declines in violent and property
felonies, while 24 showed
increases. The 2020 urban crime decline follows a decade
of generally falling property and violent crime rates.
These declines
coincided with criminal justice reforms that have lessened
penalties for low-level offenses and reduced prison
and jail populations.
Though urban crime declined overall in 2020, some specific
crime types increased while others fell. As in much of
the country,
California’s urban areas experienced a significant
increase in homicide (+34%). They also saw a rise in
aggravated assault (+10%) and
motor vehicle theft (+10 %) along with declines in robbery
(-15%) and theft (-16%). Preliminary 2021 data point
to a continued decline
in overall crime, with increases continuing in homicide,
assault, and motor vehicle theft. An examination of
national crime data, local
economic indicators, local COVID-19 infection rates, and
select murder and domestic violence statistics
suggests that the pandemic
likely influenced crime.
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Source: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
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This report focuses on the workforce talent supply and
demand gaps across Florida as a whole. In addition,
separate metro skill reports
mirror the analysis of in-demand career areas,
competencies, and skills within nine Florida
metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). With
a population of nearly 22 million, Florida is the 3rd most
populous state in the nation. Florida’s population
grew by 1.6 million
residents (8%) over the previous five years, the fastest
growth rate among the 10 most populous states.
Florida’s total employment was
measured at more than 9 million non-farm jobs in early
2020. In addition, Florida created more than one out
of every 11 U.S. jobs
between 2015 and 2020. Key findings include that four
career areas showing promise of advanced wages and
long-term
resiliency-healthcare, Information Technology (IT)/Math,
Business/Finance, and Architecture/Engineering. In
addition, the report finds
that jobs in Florida are built around employment in
several career areas which have the state’s largest
oversupply of skills. These
areas include hospitality, sales/customer services, and
office/administrative services. Undersupplied career
areas, such as
healthcare, business/finance, IT/Math, and
Architecture/Engineering, offer many of the highest
average wage rates to Florida’s workers
and the volume of undersupply gaps between employer demand
and workforce supply are large enough to have dramatic
effect on Florida
employment.
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Source: Florida Chamber Foundation
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This report examines whether teachers were required to
help students with their academic or social and
emotional needs outside regular
school hours in public and private schools in the United
States in school year 2017-18, by selected school
classification. In 2017–18,
one-fifth of principals (20%) said that teachers in their
school were required to help students with their
academic needs outside
regular school hours. This was more often required of
teachers in private schools (28%) than in public
schools (17%). The difference
between private and public schools was largely due to
traditional public schools. There, 16% of teachers
were required to give such
support. Public charter schools (32%) were much more
similar to private schools (28%) when it came to
requiring teachers to help this
way. Ten percent of principals said that teachers in their
school were required to help students with their
social and emotional needs
outside regular school hours. As with academic support,
this was more often required of teachers in private
(20%) than public schools
(8%).
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Source: National Center for Educational Statistics, U.S.
Department of Education
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Reduced access to in-person learning is associated with
poorer learning outcomes and adverse mental health and
behavioral effects in
children. Although access to in-person, hybrid, and
virtual learning modes varied throughout the school
year, during January–April
2021, access to full-time in-person learning for
non-Hispanic White students increased by 36.6
percentage points, 31.1 percentage
points for non-Hispanic Black students, 22.0 percentage
points for Hispanic students, and 26.6 percentage
points for students of other
race/ethnicities. To increase equitable access to
full-time in-person learning for the 2021–22 school
year, school leaders should focus
on providing safety-optimized in-person learning options
across grade levels in all geographic areas.
Vaccination and other efforts to
reduce levels of community transmission should be
intensified.
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Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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Determining apprentice compensation is a key part of every
apprenticeship program. Wage schedules set an
apprentice’s compensation as
they progress and gain skills through the apprenticeship.
This fact sheet provides guidance for apprenticeship
program sponsors and
employers by reviewing important elements of wage
schedules, sharing examples, and offering tips. By
setting an appropriate wage
progression, programs can reward apprentices for gaining
skills, motivate them to gain competencies, and
prepare them for all parts of
an occupation.
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Source: Urban Institute
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To identify the best approach to applying Health Impact
Assessment for complete street projects in Florida,
this report provides a
comprehensive literature review and case studies. Health
Impact Assessments are s systematic framework
developed by public health
researchers as a method for considering how transportation
and land use decisions effect public health. After
examining, existing
Health Impact Assessment tools in the U.S. and elsewhere
in the world, the report found that the Integrated
Transportation and Health
Impacts Model tool is the best choice for implementation
in Florida, because it has had successful
implementations in the United
States, including multiple Metropolitan Planning
Organizations in California and in Nashville,
Tennessee. The model includes three
transportation impacts that are important in Florida:
physical activity, air pollution, and traffic injuries
with pedestrians and
cyclists. Case studies of important model implementations
in the United States were then examined in greater
detail (including greater
Nashville, five major California metropolitan areas, and
the county including Sacramento, California). From
these case studies, useful
perspectives and modeling techniques that can be
replicated for a potential model application in
Florida were identified. The Nashville
case demonstrated that model implementation can be coupled
with other regional planning initiatives to increase
public support for
active transportation investments. The Sacramento county
case showcased a disaggregate approach that can
highlight underlying health
disparities in neighborhoods with diverse socioeconomic
and racial and ethnic backgrounds. Model
implementations for multiple
California metropolitan areas provided a modern software
architecture that can be replicated in Florida.
Combining the results of the
literature review and case studies, a modeling framework
was developed to integrate transportation and health
impact assessment for
metropolitan area transportation planning in the U.S. A
regional travel demand model may be combined with the
model and integrated
into the standard regional transportation planning process.
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Source: Florida Department of Transportation
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America’s youngest workers, especially young workers of
color, have taken a hard hit from COVID-19. In
addition to education and career
plans upended by the pandemic, huge numbers of the jobs
young workers held pre-pandemic disappeared overnight.
Although unemployment
overall is starting to ease as the economy begins to
recover, millions of young people remain unattached to
either school or the labor
market. Strategies to connect young adults to jobs that
set them up for success now and into the future are
urgently needed, and
employers play a critical role. Strategies may include:
(1) Orientation sessions to support the process for
onboarding new employees;
(2) Tools to guide performance feedback conversations; and
(3) Trainings related to youth development practices,
such as
trauma-informed management and managing with empathy.
Another way to provide technical assistance is to
present a business case for
supportive supervisory practices. Supervisors often
dictate what frontline workers experience at work,
including whether workers feel
safe, supported, and included. Not having appropriate
supports in place can contribute to employee turnover
and issues with workplace
culture. Workforce practitioners have a keen understanding
of ways to effectively support and communicate with
young adults and can
leverage this experience in their work with employers.
Technical assistance could include providing training
to supervisors in areas
related to communication and supporting teamwork and
problem-solving skills.
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Source: Aspen Institute
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Over the last 12 months, unemployment rates have steadily
declined from historic highs reached after the start
of the pandemic.
However, recovery toward pre-pandemic levels of
unemployment has been less steady for youth than
adults. In the winter,
youth—especially female youth ages 16 to 19—experienced an
uptick in unemployment rates after which unemployment
rates continued to
trend downward into the spring. Consistent with the
unsteady path to recovery, male youth ages 20 to 24
and female youth ages 16 to 19
experienced a slight increase in unemployment rates in the
spring. Overall, between June 2020 and May 2021,
unemployment rates among
youth ages 16 to 24 fell from 19.9% to 10.7% among males
and fell from 21.0% to 9.1% among females.
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Source: Mathematica
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This report provides a summary of the 2019 release of the
U.S. Census Bureau’s Small Area Health Insurance
Estimates program. This
program is the only source of data for single-year
estimates of health insurance coverage status for all
counties in the United States.
The report describes demographic and economic differences
in health insurance status across states and counties,
as well as trends in
health insurance coverage. Highlights from the report
include that from 2018 to 2019, for the population
under the age of 65, 90.7% of
(or 2,850) counties did not have a statistically
significant change in their uninsured rate. Among
counties that experienced changes in
their uninsured rates, more saw an increase (237 counties)
than a decrease (54 counties). Among the population
under the age of 65, the
estimated county uninsured rate in 2019 ranged from 2.4%
to 35.8%. The median county uninsured rate was 11.0%.
In 2019, 33.6% of (or
1,054) counties had an estimated uninsured rate below
10.0% for the population under the age of 65.
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Source: U.S. Census Bureau
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The authors examine how much of the overall decline in
employment between the beginning of 2020 and 2021 can
be explained by excess job
loss among parents of young children, and mothers
specifically. Using data from the federal Current
Population Survey, the authors
confirm that, in general, mothers with young children have
experienced a larger decline in employment, as
compared (unconditionally)
with other adults, including fathers. This excess job loss
is driven by mothers without a four-year college
(bachelor’s) degree. The
main point of the paper is to build off this observation
and examine how much of the aggregate employment
deficit in early 2021 can be
explained by parent-specific issues, such as childcare
struggles. The analysis yields robust evidence that
differential job loss among
mothers of young children accounts for a negligible share
of the ongoing aggregate employment deficit. The
practical implication of
these findings is that nearly all of the aggregate ongoing
employment deficit is explained by factors that affect
workers more broadly,
as opposed to challenges specific to working parents.
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Source: National Bureau of Economic Research
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In this paper the authors examine alternative policies
that would expand eligibility for marketplace tax
credits to people below 100%
of the federal poverty level. The authors use three
different subsidy schedules: the Affordable Care Act
subsidy schedule, enhanced
premium subsidies, and finally enhanced premium as well as
cost sharing subsidies. The results show that between
3 and 5 million people
would gain coverage. The least generous subsidy option
would cost $181 billion over 10 years while the most
generous option would cost
$335 billion over 10 years. Increasing the federal
matching rate for Medicaid expansion enrollees to 100%
to preserve equity among
states would add $145 billion over 10 years.
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Source: Urban Institute
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Direct primary care is an innovative health care delivery
model in which doctors contract directly with patients
for their care on a
subscription basis—regardless of how or where the care is
provided. The direct primary care model is improving
patient access, driving
higher quality and lower cost, as well as strengthening
the doctor–patient relationship. However, there remain
legislative and
regulatory obstacles at the state and federal levels that
continue to slow broader uptake of the direct primary
care model. This report
provides an overview of the direct primary care model and
select case studies of direct primary care in practice
as well as
recommendations for next steps.
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Source: Heritage Foundation
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Government Program Summaries (GPS) is a free resource for legislators and the public
that provides descriptive information on over 200 state government programs. To provide
fiscal data, GPS links to Transparency Florida, the Legislature's website that includes
continually updated information on the state's operating budget and daily expenditures
by state agencies.
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A publication of the Florida Legislature's Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability
PolicyNotes, published every Friday, features reports, articles, and websites with timely information of interest to policymakers and researchers. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations
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