This report provides an analysis of serious juvenile offenses that are not processed through Florida’s court system to disposition. It examines referrals, which are similar to an arrest in the adult criminal justice system, that included at least one felony, violent felony, or firearm felony to determine whether all charges on the referral were non-filed (no charges were formally filed) or nolle prosequi (after the filing, the State Attorney’s Office decided to no longer pursue the case). Not all cases are suitable for prosecution, as there may be problems obtaining evidence or witness statements. Additionally, for minor offenses, prosecutors may elect to devote court resources to more serious cases that present a danger to public safety. Some referrals are for a single charge, though it is common for referrals to include multiple charges. If all charges associated with a referral are non-filed or receive a nolle prosequi, then the youth does not receive any consequences or treatment resulting from that referral. There is considerable variation between circuits with regard to the percentage of referrals that contain serious charges that result in non-files or nolle prosequi. Statewide, 22% of referrals involving at least one felony charge resulted in non-files or nolle prosequi; judicial Circuits 1 and 10 had the smallest percentage at 6% and Circuit 9 had the highest percentage at 42%. Statewide, 18% of referrals that involved a firearm charge resulted in non-files or nolle prosequi; again, Circuits 1 (2%) and 10 (3%) had the lowest percentage and Circuit 9 (29%) had the highest percentage. Statewide, 21% of referrals that involved a violent felony resulted in non-files or nolle prosequi; Circuits 2 (2%) and 10 (5%) had the lowest percentage of referrals dropped and Circuit 9 (41%) had the highest percentage dropped.

This report presents the results of a rigorous evaluation of Restoring Promise, an initiative that creates prison housing units grounded in human dignity for young adults, ages 18 to 25, that operate with re-trained staff, trained mentors who are older adults serving long- or life-sentences, and developmentally appropriate activities, workshops, and opportunities for young adults. The evaluation reflects two studies: the first is a study of Restoring Promise in partnership with the South Carolina Department of Corrections and the second is a study of Restoring Promise across five housing units in partnership with three corrections agencies. The first study utilizes a randomized controlled trial to understand whether and by how much Restoring Promise reduces young adults’ incidences of violence and misconduct, comparing outcomes for two groups of young adults who applied to live on a Restoring Promise housing unit. The second study of Restoring Promise across the five housing units compares responses to the Restoring Promise Prison Culture Survey from young adults incarcerated in three different corrections agencies, living across five Restoring Process housing units in Connecticut, South Carolina, and Massachusetts. Findings showed that the results of the randomized controlled trial are potentially applicable to all young adults; the approach that Restoring Promise uses has several fundamental components that are consistent across locations; and young adults and staff report similarly positive experiences, regardless of location, due to prison culture changes. The finding that changing the prison culture led to a reduction in violence fills a gap in the field and provides evidence to support a new, replicable model for improving safety in correctional settings.

The Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative (SCP), launched by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015, provides need-based Pell Grants to people in state and federal prisons. Federal Pell Grants for educational expenses are awarded to undergraduate students who display exceptional financial need and have not earned a bachelor's, graduate, or professional degree. This initiative examines whether expanding access to financial aid increases incarcerated adults’ participation in postsecondary educational opportunities. This program gives invited colleges the opportunity to provide credentialed college education programs within state and federal prisons using federal aid for incarcerated students who qualify. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education invited 67 colleges in 28 states, and in 2020, it expanded SCP to include a total of 130 colleges from 42 states and Washington, DC. In 2022, SCP expanded again to include a total of 200 colleges in 48 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. The authors found that nearly 41,000 students participated in postsecondary education funded through Second Chance Pell between 2016 and 2022. Programs in Texas (6,333), Ohio (4,383), and Arkansas (3,264) have enrolled the highest number of students; Florida falls in the middle with 494 students enrolled. Students in prison earned 11,966 credentials: bachelor’s degrees (6%), associate’s degrees (48%), and certificates or postsecondary diplomas (46%). Racial and gender disparities persist in both enrollments and completions, with the most pronounced disparities existing among Hispanic/Latino students. More than one-third of colleges (36%) included people who were legally, economically, or familially affected in a negative way by the criminal justice system in their faculty, staff, or administration. The authors noted that access to educational opportunities in prison has significant and meaningful benefits for incarcerated people, their communities, and the public at large, including personal and community development, job training, racial equity, public safety, safety inside prisons, and government savings.

In the face of enrollment declines and competing education and workforce priorities, the need has never been greater for clarity in our training and workforce systems and alignment in education to employment pathways. Recently, state leaders have begun aligning skills and competencies in credential programs with workforce and economic needs, which supports a growing emphasis on skills-based hiring. There are almost 1 million credentials in the United States, but there is little consistency in how information about those credentials is collected and communicated. State leaders continue to have questions about quality, education and industry partnerships, and barriers in training and workforce pathways. Policymakers have several levers available to address these challenges and advance credential transparency (which is defined as essential information about credentials — including associated skills and competencies — that is public, easily accessible, and actionable) through legislation, regulatory changes, executive orders, system policy or other task forces and commissions. This report includes state examples for three priority areas: 1. Data capacity; 2. Governance; and 3. Funding. Florida is highlighted in the area of data capacity, specifically for providing clear legislative direction for the collection of informative workforce and credential data. The state’s Reimagining Education and Career Help Act includes components related to data collection and sharing that facilitate state credential efforts. The act requires facilitation and collection of data on non-degree and degree credentials of value, identified by a Credentials Review Committee, and to verify the validity of data collected for federal and state compliance.

This report examines the relative effectiveness of two teacher support models—a mixed-mode professional development delivery model that aims to reduce costs through a combination of in-person and virtual teacher coaching, and the tested, resource-intensive, face-to-face delivery model—in creating robust implementations of the Assessment-to-Instruction (A2i) Professional Support System and improvements in student literacy achievement. Fifty-nine schools in 20 school districts were randomly assigned either to a group of 30 schools that received the mixed-mode model or to a group of 29 schools that received the face-to-face model for three school years (2018–2019 to 2020–2021). Comparing student and teacher experiences in the two sets of schools measures the relative effectiveness of the two models. If both models are implemented adequately, a finding of no difference in the effects of the two models would indicate that they are equally effective approaches to implementing A2i. The authors noted that the two professional development models had been in place for less than two school years when the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020; in both models, teachers did not fully utilize the A2i technology and had difficulty differentiating instruction based on A2i-generated recommendations. During the second half of the implementation period, in-person coaching was not possible due to pandemic-related school disruptions. Teachers in both models reduced their use of A2i components and differentiated small-group instruction. Across all three study years, student achievement in reading was similar in mixed-mode and face-to-face schools, and about 50% of the third-graders in the study were reading at or above proficiency level as defined by state or district standards at the end of the evaluation. However, because A2i was not fully implemented over the study period, these results do not reflect the actual relative effectiveness of the two professional development models.

This brief describes the broad purposes of the federal Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) funds as indicated by Congress and the U.S. Department of Education, and it provides a first look at how much funding was awarded to and spent by the nation’s community colleges between March 2020 and February 28, 2023. Over $25 billion in HEER funding was awarded to community colleges during the COVID-19 pandemic. HEER funds were intended to serve two main purposes: (1) to provide emergency aid directly to students facing financial challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) to ensure that institutions of higher education could continue serving students in the midst of unforeseen disruptions. Funds were designated in three categories: student aid, institutional aid, and other aid. At the time of this analysis, most community colleges had spent the great majority of their HEER funds, including nearly all of their allotment for student aid. Of the total funding awarded, $22.4 billion (87%), or an average of $23 million per institution, has been spent. Nearly 74% of the $3.4 billion in unspent funds is remaining institutional aid. Where there are unspent funds, they are usually designated for institutional and other aid. Student aid, which was provided directly to students in the form of emergency financial aid, totaled $10.1 billion and ranged from $124,240 to $637 million per institution. Student aid comprised 39% of total aid awarded and was the most quickly spent. As of February 2023, 97% of student aid, averaging $10 million per institution, has been spent.

an understanding that hiring and retention have been challenging for many industries, including the transit industry, many agencies have recently made changes to attempt to attract and retain more talented and diverse individuals. In an effort to understand what is being done, what is working, and what still needs to be solved, the research team surveyed transit agencies throughout the state. This whitepaper also includes six case study sites from Florida transit agencies that were selected due to a variety of characteristics, including their cumulative representativeness of vacancies in every department and the various partnerships and implemented service changes that they mentioned in their survey responses. One additional non-Florida transit agency was interviewed as a case study due to their defined success in the use of online job advertisements to attract new applicants. Agencies responding to the survey reported providing various types of transit services such as paratransit, fixed route, in-house maintenance, Medicaid services, and more. Paratransit services are the most common type of service provided by survey respondents, followed by fixed route.

This report offers a comprehensive look at state and national trends in pedestrian deaths in 2022. It presents pedestrian fatality projections for all of 2022 based on preliminary data provided by the states, an in-depth analysis of recently released 2021 pedestrian fatality data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System and a review of strategies to reduce pedestrian crashes, injuries and deaths. The report projects that drivers struck and killed at least 7,508 people walking in 2022 – the highest number since 1981 and an average of 20 deaths every day. Furthermore, pedestrian deaths rose 77% between 2010 and 2021, compared to a 25% rise in all other traffic fatalities. The report also includes examples of state- and community-level efforts to better understand the factors that contribute to pedestrian crashes and fatalities and how to prevent them from happening in the future.

This study uses comprehensive longitudinal data on total household spending from a survey that is representative of the older U.S. population to estimate the trajectories of spending after age 65. Based on data spanning the period 2005-2019, real spending declined for both single and coupled households after age 65 at annual rates of about 1.7% and 2.4%, respectively. Stratification by wealth holdings observed at or closely following age 65 showed sizeable variation in spending levels by wealth quartile, but little variation in rates of change in spending. The fact that spending declines broadly, including among those in the highest wealth quartile, suggests that the decline may not be related to economic position. This view is supported by an analysis of budget shares which show increases with age in the budget share for gifts and donations which suggests that economic position on average does not deteriorate with age, even as spending declines.

Deaths due to suicide and homicide, often referred to collectively as violent deaths, have been a leading cause of premature death to people aged 10–24 in the United States. A previous version of this report with data through 2017 showed that suicide and homicide rates for people aged 10–24 were trending upward. This report updates the previous report using the most recent data from the National Vital Statistics System and presents trends from 2001 through 2021 in suicide and homicide rates for people aged 10–24 and for age groups 10–14, 15–19, and 20–24. Key findings include that suicide rates for people aged 10–24 increased from 2007 through 2021 (from 6.8 deaths per 100,000 to 11.0), while homicide rates declined from 2006 through 2014, and then increased through 2021. For people aged 10–14, the suicide rate tripled from 2007 through 2018 (from 0.9 to 2.9), and then did not change significantly through 2021, while the homicide rate doubled from 2016 through 2021. For people aged 15–19, the suicide rate increased from 2009 through 2017, and the homicide rate decreased from 2006 through 2013 but then increased through 2021, surpassing the suicide rate in 2020. For people aged 20–24, the suicide rate increased over the entire period, while the homicide rate increased from 2014 through 2020 and remained unchanged in 2021.

Where people live may impact their ability to access health care services and for those with disabilities or who require specialized care that entails more frequent attention and medical visits, location can play an even more significant role.. Examining disability rates across geography reveals notable differences between urban and rural areas, and regions. In 2021, nearly 42.5 million people (13%) among the civilian non-institutionalized population in the United States had a disability, according to the American Community Survey 1-year estimates. Rural residents — less than 20% of the U.S. population — were more likely (14.7%) than their urban counterparts to experience disability. Rural communities may be more geographically isolated and typically have more limited transportation and access to clinics and hospitals than urban areas. As a result, coordination of care for those with disabilities may be more difficult for rural residents due to these geographic and transportation barriers. In 2021, the South had the nation’s highest rates of disability (13.8%), followed by the Midwest (13.1%), the Northeast (12.3%), and the West (12.1%). Regional disability rates may differ for a variety of reasons. For example, disability is often associated with age, so regions that contain states with a higher proportion of the population age 65 and over may be more likely to report higher rates of disability. Many states in the South are part of what is known as the Stroke Belt, defined by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute as a cluster of states (including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia) that have a higher incidence of stroke than the rest of the country. Although the South and the Midwest had the nation’s highest overall disability rates in 2021, the South had the largest differences in disability rates by urban/rural residence and the Midwest had the smallest urban/rural differences in disability rates.

In the 18 months between April 2021 and October 2022, direct care staffing declined across Florida’s more than 700 nursing homes. The number of nursing staff members providing direct care dropped from an average of more than 3.9 hours per resident per day to 3.6. Multiple factors play into this decline, including the workforce shortage that has plagued many sectors of the economy. Legislative changes that took effect in April 2022 made significant changes in minimum staffing requirements. Data from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reveal how staffing changed before and after the 2022 legislation. Overall, the data for October 2022 show that while nurse staffing declined in the 18-month study period, the late 2022 levels met Florida’s pre-April 2022 requirement to provide 3.6 hours of nursing care to each resident per day. It is worth noting, however, that the numbers represent a statewide average, suggesting that some nursing homes were above this minimum requirement, and some were below. Coordinated efforts are needed to attract more people into the long-term care workforce, from CNAs to social workers to therapists to RNs. Several recommendations are offered in the areas of policy development, research, workforce education, and funding opportunities.