report provides an analysis of the compassionate release motions filed with the federal courts and decided during the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2024. Compassionate release allows prisoners to qualify for early release under certain criteria such as prisoners with a terminal illnesses or who are extremely advanced in age. In the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2024, the courts granted a motion for compassionate release in 119 cases and denied the motion for compassionate release in 484 cases. Of the cases granted compassionate release, 37.3% had original sentences of 20 years or more, 28.8% had original sentences of 10 years to less than 20 years. Of the individuals granted compassionate release, 46.2% were Black, 33.6% were White, and 16.8% were Hispanic.

On any given day, nearly 450,000 people in the United States are detained in jail while awaiting the resolution of their criminal charges. Jurisdictions across the United States are reforming their pretrial systems to reduce the number of people who are held in pretrial detention by supervising them after their release from jail. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, many pretrial supervision programs shifted in-person meeting requirements to remote check-ins to protect the health of both clients and staff members. For many jurisdictions, this shift highlighted some of the benefits of remote supervision, which include time savings for clients balancing work, school, caregiving, or other responsibilities, and less resource-intensive administration for supervision providers, potentially generating cost savings. This report presents new evidence on the effects of remote supervision compared with hybrid supervision, based on the results of a randomized controlled trial conducted in the Queens borough of New York City. The trial found that: (1) remote supervision can be used in place of hybrid supervision while achieving the same levels of court appearance and avoidance of new felony charges; (2) remote supervision may allow a range of supervision clients to meet the conditions of their release with less disruption to their daily lives and improved ability to handle job, childcare, and other responsibilities during the pretrial period. Given the study’s eligibility criteria, however, it is not known whether these benefits extend to the highest-need and -risk clients, many of whom were not included in the study sample. And (3) staff members and clients acknowledged that both modes of supervision have strengths and challenges, though the clients interviewed for this study felt more positively about remote supervision. There was general agreement that the appropriate supervision mode may vary based on the client’s needs and preferences.

This research examines the effect of postsecondary carceral education credentials on employer perceptions of hireability. Using data from a survey of employers nationwide, results indicated employers were significantly more willing to interview applicants with postsecondary education credentials relative to applicants with only a General Educational Development (GED) diploma. Although Black applicants who had earned a sub-baccalaureate certificate saw improvements in hireability relative to GED holders, Black applicants who had earned a bachelor's degree did not. In contrast, White applicants benefited both from sub-baccalaureate certificates and bachelor's degrees. Results from a mediation analysis suggest that these credentials signal important information to employers about applicant attributes and that improved perceptions of applicant ability and likelihood to reoffend drive the overall effect.

The State of Preschool Yearbook series examines state-funded preschool education programs that are funded, controlled, and directed by the state, but are distinct from the state’s system for subsidized childcare and for which the primary focus is early childhood education. This report examines trends in state preschool programs for the 2022-2023 school year. The report found that enrollment in preschool increased in 2022-2023 and the percent of 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool reached all-time highs. In the 2022-2023 school year, 1,631,968 children attended state-funded preschool, an increase of 110,209 children, up 7%, from the 2021-2022 school year. Enrollment of 3-year-olds increased (by 11%) to 7% of 3-year-olds and enrollment of 4-year-olds increased (by 6%) to 35% of 4-year-olds. However, the number of children enrolled in state-funded preschool is still lower than it was prior to the pandemic, and six states are still without programs (Idaho, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Wyoming). Five states (Alabama, Hawaii, Michigan, Mississippi, and Rhode Island) met all ten quality standards benchmarks, but eight states met fewer than half, including the three states that serve the most children - California, Florida, and Texas. The report also includes profiles for each state plus the District of Columbia.

Dual enrollment, in which high school students take college courses, has great potential to help make the high-school-to-college transition more effective and equitable—and to do so on a large scale. Dual enrollment is distinguished from other approaches to earning college credit in high school, such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate, because it requires a partnership between a high school and a postsecondary institution that awards the college credit. Nationally, 82% of high school students attend a school that offers dual enrollment courses. About one third of high school students have taken at least one dual enrollment course by graduation. More than 1.5 million students annually enroll in dual enrollment courses, more than a million of them at community colleges. From 2011 to 2021, the number of students taking dual enrollment nearly doubled, and it continues to grow. About 70% of dual enrollment courses are offered through community colleges and high school students account for one in five community college enrollments. White students participate in dual enrollment coursework at twice the rate of their Black and Hispanic classmates. English learners and students with disabilities are also severely underrepresented in dual enrollment coursework. Access to dual enrollment is highly variable within states and even among high schools in the same school district. One in five districts report nearly equal or higher rates of participation in dual enrollment among Black and Hispanic students.

This study explores whether certain preparation experiences predicted teaching performance assessments (TPAs). Teaching performance assessments can be used to assess the readiness of potential teachers because they require candidates to provide evidence of their teaching knowledge and skills through classroom videos, lesson plans, student work, and analysis of teaching and learning. California, the focus of this study, was one of the first states to adopt a TPA as a licensure requirement for beginning teachers. The state has since adopted three TPA models: the California Teaching Performing Assessment (CalTPA), the educative Teaching Performance Assessment (edTPA), and the Fresno Assessment of Student Teachers (FAST). Across the 263 preparation programs included in this analysis, nearly two thirds (63%) had more than 90% of their tested candidates pass a TPA and 23% had all of their candidates pass a TPA. Single subject (i.e., secondary) and educational specialist (i.e., special education) programs had higher passing rates, on average, than multiple subject (i.e., elementary) programs. As of 2021–22, three quarters of California’s preparation program completers were from “traditional” preservice programs in which preparation and clinical practice (i.e., student teaching or residency) occurs before teaching candidates become a teacher of record. Over the past 2 years, 77% of the preservice candidates who took the CalTPA or edTPA passed on their first try, and 92% of these candidates passed across all of their TPA attempts.

Each year, extreme heat exposure results in numerous deaths and illnesses. As climate change intensifies, extreme heat events are becoming more frequent, more severe, and longer. Issuing alerts and health advisories before or during periods of extreme heat can save lives. These services are supported by weather and health agencies involved in emergency preparedness. Early warning systems and action plans have been shown to reduce risks of heat exposure. Guidance about how to prevent health problems from heat exposure should be built around local epidemiologic evidence, but such evidence is often not available. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Weather Service worked together to identify temperature thresholds and develop an alert service that issues heat forecasts using data and methods that are relevant from a public health perspective. This effort used death data for all 50 states from CDC’s National Vital Statistics System to identify a range of temperatures that are associated with deaths. Each year, hot weather results in an average of over 1,220 deaths for which heat is listed as the underlying or a contributing cause in the death certificate. However, these estimates might fail to capture the full spectrum of heat–related deaths, especially if excessive heat is not explicitly documented in death records. So, the developers used a nationally consistent study design and employed a modeling framework to link heat exposure with all-cause mortality data. This helped examine heat-attributable deaths across locations with diverse climatology. The methods for this effort are based on a peer-reviewed study that looked at factors such as temperature ranges, hospitalizations associated with heat, and the effectiveness of existing alert criteria. National Weather Service integrated health-based temperature thresholds that were provided by CDC with local temperature parameters to devise experimental HeatRisk — a numeric and a color-coded alert system. HeatRisk is the first multi-tiered framework that applies a consistent approach across different climate regions, incorporates high-resolution climatology and locally-relevant health evidence, and provides decision makers with a heat service that is easy to use and yet appropriate from a public health standpoint. This new alert system highlights the importance of collaborating with multiple stakeholders and across multiple disciplines. It can complement existing information systems that offer consistent prevention messages for heat through better coordination between weather and public health agencies at multiple geographic levels before, during, and after extreme heat events.

This fact sheet provides some updated statistics regarding employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) in manufacturing in total, and, separately, for ESOPs in publicly traded corporations and closely-held corporations. Manufacturing ESOPs represent 21% of all ESOP corporations, 23% of all active ESOP employees, 34% of all ESOP retired employees, and 42% of all ESOP assets in the United States. A retiree still receiving ESOP benefits is a person who is not actively working at the company, but who has an ESOP account. Often, this reflects a retired employee who has opted to keep their ESOP investment or whose ESOP account is being paid to them over several years. The United States has a total of 1,319 corporations in the manufacturing sector with an ESOP, including 168 in publicly traded companies and 1,151 in privately held companies. Over 80% of the publicly traded companies have more than 1,000 employees compared to a little more than 5% of closely held companies. A remarkable 2,507,023 employees in the manufacturing sector are active participants in an ESOP with 81% employed at a publicly traded company. Another 1,372,962 retired employees from manufacturing, including 1,132,950 from publicly traded companies, still receive ESOP benefits. The total value of ESOP assets in manufacturing is $885 billion including a $723 billion value in publicly traded companies and $161 billion in closely held companies.

United States households have struggled to pay for food as prices for groceries and other essential household bills have increased, and temporary expansions of the safety net have expired. Though inflation moderated in 2023, food prices remain well above their levels from a few years ago, and additional nutrition supports for households have lapsed. In this brief, the authors examine trends in food insecurity and the receipt of charitable food using December 2023 data from the Urban Institute’s Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey, a nationally representative annual survey of more than 7,500 adults ages 18 to 64. They estimate the shares of adults reporting household food insecurity and charitable food receipt in 2023 and compare those to 2019–22 estimates. The decline in food insecurity between 2019 and 2021 in the wake of the robust government and private response to the COVID-19 pandemic was followed by a sharp increase in food insecurity between 2021 and 2022, coinciding with expiring aid and rising inflation. Food hardship continued to rise in 2023, with more than one in four adults (27.0%) reporting food insecurity, up from 24.9% in 2022. The 2023 rate exceeds the pre-pandemic level of food insecurity (22.5% in 2019). Over one in three Black adults (35.1%) and nearly two in five Hispanic/Latin-x adults (38.7%) reported food insecurity in 2023. Food insecurity continued increasing for Black and Hispanic/Latin-x adults between 2022 and 2023, even as the rate of food insecurity for other racial and ethnic groups examined in the survey stabilized.

The percentage of adults age 65 and older covered by both private health insurance and Medicare decreased from 47.9% in 2017 to 39.6% in 2022, reflecting older adults’ increased reliance on Medicare coverage alone. Much of the increase in the share of older adults relying solely on Medicare was driven by a drop in the share of those also receiving private coverage. In 2017, the percentage of adults age 65 or older who only had Medicare coverage was 10.3 percentage points lower than the percentage of those with both private and Medicare coverage. By 2022, the percentage with Medicare coverage alone was 5.2 percentage points higher than the percentage with dual coverage as fewer older adults reported supplementing their Medicare coverage. The percentage of older adults who only had private coverage is small and has remained stable over time (4.9% in 2017 to 5.3% in 2022). For adults aged 65 to 69, dual coverage decreased 8.0 percentage points and Medicare alone increased by 6.3 percentage points — the only older adults age group that did not experience higher rates of Medicare alone coverage than dual private and Medicare coverage. For adults aged 70 to 79, dual coverage decreased 9.2 percentage points to 40.4% and Medicare alone increased 7.9 percentage points to 46.9%. For adults 80 years old and older, dual coverage decreased 7.9 percentage points to 37.8% and Medicare alone increased 7.6 percentage points to 50.8%. Even for adults over 65 who worked full time, dual coverage dropped 8.9 percentage points to 40.0% and Medicare alone increased 4.0 percentage points to 24.0%. These workers also saw an increase in private coverage alone from 25.2% to 29.0%, and full-time workers were the only group to have higher rates of private coverage alone than Medicare alone in 2022.

Head Start is a federal comprehensive services program that provides support for low-income children ages birth to 5 and their families. The Office of Head Start (OHS) administers funds to local recipients to operate head start programs and provides training and technical assistance (TTA) to its grant recipients through National TTA Centers, Regional TTA Specialists, and their online Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center (ECLKC). This report identifies the combination of funding sources Head Start grant recipients received in order to understand how those combinations relate to grant recipients’ use of TTA. The report found that over 80% of Head Start grant recipients received other sources of funding for child and family services in addition to Head Start funding. Most grant recipients (65%) reported receiving funds from state governments in addition to OHS funding. The next most common source of funding was non-governmental community organizations and grants, reported by 32% of grant recipients. Most grant recipients used a wide variety of TTA sources. More than 90% of grant recipients reported receiving TTA from conferences and workshops (99%), the ECLKC (97%), consultants/on-site trainers (97%), and OHS regional TTA specialists (91%). However, the sources of funding that grant recipients received were not associated with the types of TTA they used.

In communities heavily affected by trauma, trauma-informed approaches (TIAs) are essential to minimize unintended consequences and harm associated with receiving clinical, social, and other support services. A program, organization, or system that is trauma-informed realizes the widespread impact of trauma and understands potential paths for recovery; recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved with the system; and responds by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices, and seeks to actively resist re-traumatization. The visibility of traumatic events (e.g. mass shootings) continues to increase. In turn, public health teams must build capacity and integrate TIAs into public health research and practice, particularly for communities managing multiple health inequities. Community-engaged approaches have become increasingly common in public health to address health inequity. Community-engaged research (CEnR) is a TIA that public health researchers use to serve traumatized individuals and communities meaningfully and respectfully. CEnR is often intended to address health disparities and inequities, and public health program developers can use similar engagement strategies. Community-engaged public health teams usually include partners from community, research, and other professions, and they often work in minoritized and vulnerable communities. In CEnR and program design, the team can use the principles of TIAs to guide the development and decision-making processes; they can also use feedback during the process to enhance the community benefit of the research and programs being offered. The team can benefit from training to understand and use TIAs to support their work. Additionally, community-engaged public health teams can enhance CEnR by building upon the scientific literature about TIAs to extract strategies and practices to extend their impacts on the people they serve and their own organizations.