The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization Act of 2022 reauthorizes programs and activities under VAWA that aim to prevent and respond to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. The National Institute of Justice, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons provide a report on the status of women in federal incarceration, which includes demographic data; extent of exposure to sexual and domestic violence; pregnant/parenting status; and the crimes for which the women are incarcerated and information on any connection between those crimes and their experience of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking. Between March 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022, 10,865 women were admitted into 122 federally-operated facilities. The majority of women were White (77%), while 17% were Black. The mean age was 40 years. Upon admission, 109 women were pregnant. Offense types and corresponding mean, minimum, and maximum sentence lengths in months varied widely, with most women incarcerated for drug offenses (63%), followed by fraud, bribery, or extortion offenses (13%); mean sentence length was approximately 8 years though several women had sentences of over 100 years and 67 women had life sentences. The minimum sentence was two months. The report also provides information regarding the federal facilities, such as best practices in women’s incarceration and transition, availability of trauma treatment at each facility, rates of serious mental illness, list of residential programs available by site; and the available vocational programs at each facility.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) requires the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics to carry out a comprehensive statistical review and analysis of the incidence and effects of prison rape each calendar year. The review must include a random sample of at least 10% of all federal, state, and county prisons, as well as a representative sample of municipal prisons. To implement this requirement, the Bureau of Justice Statistics utilizes several surveys to collect data. The Survey of Sexual Victimization, conducted annually by the Bureau of Justice Statistics since 2004, is an administrative data collection based on official records kept by adult correctional and juvenile justice facilities in the United States. The National Inmate Survey gathers data on sexual victimization in adult prison and local jail facilities as reported by state prisoners and local jail inmates. The Bureau of Justice Statistics uses these data to generate statistics on the incidence of prison rape, identify facilities with high and low incidence rates, and identify common characteristics of victims, perpetrators, and facilities. The National Survey of Youth in Custody provides facility-level estimates of youth reporting sexual victimization in juvenile facilities.

This study uses an admissions lottery to estimate the effect of a non-means tested preschool program on students’ long-run earnings, employment, family income, household formation, and geographic mobility. They observe long-run outcomes by linking both admitted and non-admitted individuals to confidential administrative data including tax records. Funding for this preschool program comes from an Indigenous organization, which grants Indigenous students admissions preference and free tuition. The study finds that treated children have between 5% to 6% higher earnings as young adults. The results are quite large for young women, especially those from the lower half of the initial parental household income distribution. There is also some evidence that children, regardless of gender, from households with below median parental incomes realize the largest average increases in earnings in adulthood. Finally, they find that increased earnings start at ages 21 and older for the treated students. Likely mechanisms include high-quality teachers and curriculum.

Evidence shows that children’s early years are a crucial time for their development. Well-designed early childhood education experiences can foster meaningful gains in school readiness, as well as long-term benefits such as lower rates of special education placement and higher graduation rates. The quality of early education is highly dependent on sufficient preparation and support for early educators to meet the needs of diverse young learners. Research has identified high-quality coaching as an effective professional learning practice for supporting educators in the implementation of evidence-based practices. According to the research, effective coaching relies on a strong partnership between coaches and educators; reflection and individualized feedback; focused observations; intentional coaching plans to guide sessions; and job-embedded learning opportunities for active learning. This report examines five early childhood coaching systems—two state systems (Alabama and Washington) and three California county systems (El Dorado, Fresno, and San Diego)—that have developed systemic coaching approaches. The author studied these coaching systems to understand the different ways that comprehensive coaching systems can be implemented at scale, the types of coaching approaches used, and the supports offered. Although there is no singular strategy to scale effective coaching, this research provides insights for policymakers and program administrators seeking to incorporate coaching into their efforts to improve the quality of early childhood education.

The School Pulse Panel is a study collecting information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic from a national sample of elementary, middle, high, and combined-grade public schools. Some survey questions are asked repeatedly to observe trends over time while others examine unique topics in a single month. This most recent data collection in April 2024, focused on transportation. Seventy-two percent (72%) of public schools have parents/guardians who reported barriers for their children walking, biking, or using other non-automotive means to commute to school. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of public schools reported they “moderately” or “strongly” agree that traffic patterns around their school pose a threat to their students' physical safety while commuting to school. Eighty-seven percent (87%) of public schools reported school buses are available as a mode of transportation for students to travel to and from school. Eleven percent (11%) of public schools reported they “moderately” or “strongly” agree that crime around their school poses a threat to their students' physical safety while commuting to school.

It is well established that effective educational leaders are important for student and teacher success. High-quality professional learning can support in-service leaders’ effectiveness by developing the skills, knowledge, and competencies necessary for addressing their full range of leadership responsibilities. However, recent data show that leaders’ access to professional learning varies across states and communities and that leaders in high-poverty schools are less likely than those in low-poverty schools to have high-quality learning opportunities. States can expand access to leadership development and make access more equitable by investing in ongoing statewide initiatives, such as leadership academies or institutes. Building the infrastructure for leadership-relevant professional learning can allow for long-term capacity building of a state’s leadership workforce and create opportunities for leaders to access a continuum of support over the course of their career. The purpose of this study was to understand the infrastructure that states have built for leadership-relevant professional learning by identifying the long-term leadership development initiatives supported by states and analyzing their purposes, target audiences, and scope. The research team conducted a scan between March and May of 2023 using search engines, state department of education websites, and other web-based documents. They found that at least 26 states support ongoing statewide leadership development initiatives to build the knowledge and skills of in-service leaders. In addition to generally enhancing leaders’ skills, many initiatives fulfill more specific leadership development functions.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) supports federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws through directives and training for agency EEO programs. The EEOC also monitors EEO programs through technical assistance reviews of executive branch agencies every three years. These reviews provide feedback and guidance to agencies on their progress toward attaining a model EEO program. The EEOC has reported actions to help address common EEO program deficiencies identified at a number of agencies. The study found that EEOC's oversight processes could be improved. Agencies must assess their own EEO programs, identify deficiencies, and develop plans to address them by completing an annual report that includes a checklist based on EEOC criteria for operating a model EEO program. However, this study found that EEOC's current system for tracking submission of these reports does not ensure timely submissions or facilitate the identification of deficiencies across agencies. This affects EEOC's ability to do analysis and compile government-wide information on compliance with EEO requirements. The authors also found that EEOC routinely identifies agency deficiencies during technical assistance reviews but does not require that EEOC staff use its standardized tool to record them. Also, this does not facilitate the identification of deficiencies across agencies. Use of a standardized tool would help ensure that staff are recording deficiencies consistently to support analysis. With regard to enforcement, EEOC has established procedures for public notification of when an agency has not responded timely or in good faith with a compliance plan to address deficiencies. However, EEOC does not outline criteria for when to invoke public notification, which could be used as an enforcement tool.

This study, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service, was carried out in response to a Congressional mandate in the 2018 Farm Bill to evaluate the optional state policy requiring families that receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to participate in their state’s child support program. If states opt in to this requirement, families receiving SNAP must cooperate with the state’s child support program as a condition of receiving SNAP benefits. Only nine states used the option at the time of publication of which five (Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, and Mississippi), participated in the study. Key topics examined include SNAP participants’ experiences with and reactions to the requirement within the context of their family dynamic and economic circumstances; administrative processes and practices used to carry out the requirement policy, including sanctions and exemptions; policy interaction and alignment across benefit programs with cooperation requirements; and outcomes that could be related to implementation of the cooperation requirement, including the share of SNAP households subject to the requirement, SNAP benefit amount, and the amount of child support received by households. The authors found that ongoing implementation of the child support cooperation requirements creates administrative complexity and costs, particularly for child support programs, and that implementation of the requirement did not result in increased child support payments to SNAP households, on average. The financial stability of parents sanctioned for non-cooperation with the requirement may worsen, and getting back into compliance can be challenging. In addition, states are not adequately implementing good cause exemptions, which are intended to protect parents from domestic violence.

Amid the national affordable housing crisis, individuals and families with the lowest incomes are bearing the brunt of rental shortages and experiencing severe rent burden. Public housing, the oldest rental housing assistance program in the United States, is a crucial source of permanent affordable housing for 1.6 million individuals, most of whom are families with children and older adults with very low or extremely low incomes. In 2023, approximately 3,000 public housing authorities (PHAs) were providing public housing to about 800,000 households, with nearly 900,000 units available. PHAs are grappling with pressing challenges, with many existing public housing developments deteriorating and in acute need of rehabilitation. At the same time, PHAs can have decades-long waitlists for their public housing and housing choice voucher programs and insufficient units available to meet the increased need for deeply subsidized housing in their communities. Over the last 15 years, in response to inadequate funding to support rehabilitation and redevelopment that would address dire property conditions, some PHAs have refinanced and converted their public housing to project-based Section 8. This approach has provided some additional funding flexibility but has not addressed the underlying problem: the need to increase the amount of assistance available to meet the growing demand for affordable housing. This report presents findings from interviews with eight housing authority representatives from across the U.S. and one housing authority expert regarding capital needs, funding gaps, and approaches to financing rehabilitation and redevelopment. Most of the PHA leaders interviewed said their agencies had significant capital needs but noted that federal allocations fall far short of the funding needed for maintenance, upgrades, or redevelopment. Many agencies take a patchwork approach to financing deals in an increasingly expensive and high-interest environment, leveraging and combining sources including federal allocations and grants, local and state supports, low-income housing tax credits, and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) financing mechanisms. Even as PHAs take advantage of additional funding flexibility of mechanisms like HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration and use innovative approaches to bring in additional equity, for most, major funding gaps remain. Ultimately, this funding shortage underscores the need to increase the amount of assistance available to meet the growing demand for affordable housing.

This report presents estimates of diagnosed dementia in the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population age 65 and older by selected sociodemographic characteristics. Data from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey were used to estimate the percentage of non-institutionalized older adults with a dementia diagnosis. Information was self-reported unless a knowledgeable proxy responded to questions when the respondent was physically or mentally unable to answer. Prevalence of diagnosed dementia among older adults is presented by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, veteran status, education, family income as a percentage of the federal poverty level, urbanization, and region. Estimates of dementia reporting by proxy respondent status and interview mode also are presented. In 2022, 4.0% of adults age 65 and older reported ever having received a dementia diagnosis. The percentage of adults with a dementia diagnosis was similar for men (3.8%) and women (4.2%). The percentage of adults with a dementia diagnosis increased with age, from 1.7% in those ages 65–74 to 13.1% in those age 85 and older, and decreased with rising education level, from 7.9% in adults age 65 and older with less than a high school diploma to 2.2% in those with a college degree or higher.

Complications of opioid use disorder in pregnancy are a growing public health challenge, yet few quality indicators exist to evaluate the care hospitals deliver to opioid-exposed infants. This study elicited consensus from 32 expert panelists on quality indicators for hospital-based care of opioid-exposed infants, with potential for use in national benchmarking, intervention studies, or hospital performance measurement. Expert panelists included health care providers, parents in recovery, quality experts, and public health experts. Experts had strong consensus on the importance of quality indicators to assess universal screening of pregnant people for substance use disorder, hospital staff training, standardized assessment for neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome, non-pharmacologic interventions, and transitions of care. For indicators focused on processes and outcomes, experts saw feasibility as dependent on the information routinely documented in electronic medical records or billing records. To present a more complete picture of hospital quality, experts suggested development of composite measures that summarize quality across multiple indicators.