When a youth who commits an offense comes to the attention of the juvenile justice system (e.g., law enforcement, the courts, or other decision-makers), decision-makers can respond in several ways. In juvenile court, responses can include legal or mandated options, such as secure detention, secure confinement, transfer to the adult system, probation supervision, community-based programs, or nonsecure residential programs. The court also has the option to provide the youth with interventions that are not formally mandated. Generally, the purposes of secure detention are to ensure that a youth appears for all court hearings and to protect the community from future offending while the youth awaits court decisions and dispositional placement. Researchers have identified several negative outcomes for youths held in secure detention or confinement, such as negatively affecting youth outcomes. Many studies have shown that once youths are detained—even when controlling for their current offenses, offending histories, and other variables—they are more likely than non-detained youth to end up going deeper into the juvenile justice system. The purpose of this literature review is to examine interventions that have been developed or used to replace secure detention or confinement.

Safe and stable housing is essential for successful reentry, yet there are holes in programming. Louisiana and Tennessee have developed innovative models to address gaps in housing, with the goal of helping people succeed as they exit the justice system—reducing recidivism and improving public safety. Louisiana’s Emergency Transitional Housing began as a pilot program in 2019. With support from the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, community housing providers are given funding for temporary housing for formerly incarcerated individuals and individuals under community supervision. This program is funded through the portion of Justice Reinvestment Initiative funds directed to the department. As of April 2024, there were 33 total providers, 16 parishes served, 1,667 residents served to date, and 154 current participants. The Tennessee Department of Correction partners with the Tennessee Housing Development Agency to provide temporary transitional housing to at-risk individuals recently released from incarceration. This programming fills an existing gap by expanding eligibility for reentry housing to include individuals released following sentence expiration. Previously, only those released on probation or parole were eligible for transitional housing. Improving successful reentry for additional individuals by expanding eligibility for reentry housing is embedded in the principles of Tennessee’s Reentry Success Act of 2021 and will contribute to the sustainability of this legislation. As of 2024, the department’s database of transitional housing included 253 locations, 4,058 beds, and 120 providers.

This report presents data on public elementary and secondary education revenues and expenditures at the local education agency or school district level for fiscal year 2022. In fiscal year 2022, current expenditures per pupil in the 100 largest public school districts by enrollment ranged from a low of $7,800 in state-sponsored charter schools in Nevada to a high of $35,914 in New York City. The national median of total revenues per pupil across all local education agencies was $17,301 in fiscal year 2022, which represents an increase of 0.6% from fiscal year 2021, after adjusting for inflation. The national median of current expenditures per pupil among all local education agencies was $14,655 in fiscal year 2022, an increase of 2.2% from fiscal year 2021. On a national basis, in the absence of any geographic cost adjustment, in fiscal year 2022 median current expenditures per pupil were $14,865 for local education agencies with schools in cities, $16,129 for local education agencies with schools in the suburbs, $13,295 for local education agencies with schools in towns, and $14,689 for local education agencies with schools in rural areas.

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is critical for student success in online postsecondary education. Many technology-based interventions have been studied to improve SRL skills, but few were situated in broad-access institutions that disproportionately serve systemically marginalized student populations in STEM fields. This study presents preliminary findings from a rapid-cycle evaluation that tests two technology-supported instructional strategies (videos and prompts) designed to improve SRL in online learning. Using fine-grained clickstream data from 141 students across 10 sections of five courses taught at a minority-serving community college, the authors generate measures of SRL behavior and correlate the measures with students’ exposure to tested strategies. The results indicate modestly positive relationships between both videos and prompts and SRL behavior. In addition, prompts are more strongly correlated with SRL behavior for first-generation and female students than for their peers. These initial findings reveal the promise and complexity of implementing effective and equitable technology-supported interventions to develop SRL skills and mindsets among diverse student populations in online STEM education.

A recent critique of using teachers’ test score value-added (TVA) is that teacher quality is multifaceted; some teachers are effective in raising test scores and others are effective in improving long-term outcomes. This paper uses an institutional setting where high school teachers are randomly assigned to classes to compute multiple long-run TVA measures based on university schooling outcomes and high school behavior. The researchers find substantial correlations between test scores and long-run TVA but zero correlations between these two TVA measures and behavior TVA. The research team found that short-term test-score TVA and long-run TVA are highly correlated and equally good predictors of long-term outcomes.

Experts believe AI may soon become like GPS: a technology so integrated into daily life that its shocking people navigated without it. Generative AI tools can help create more equity in education. For example, the Washington Student Achievement Council has developed a chatbot, OtterBot, designed to give students timely advice, guidance, and motivation through the college application process. Gen AI can also help reduce the burden on government officials as they review voluminous comments from the public regarding proposed regulations. One new tool for categorizing and summarizing such comments is already deployed in the field, saving people hundreds of work hours. This article is a guide on ways a government administrator or service provider should integrate AI into agency programs. In the end, AI really is like GPS: In most circumstances, it will help agencies reach their destination sooner, with less anxiety.

Fiscal year 2023 was among the hardest years in recent memory for military recruiting since the inception of the all-volunteer force. To help improve recruiting outcomes in this challenging environment, the RAND Project was directed to consider various factors that influence recruiter productivity. The report presents the results of three analyses: (1) determining which individual characteristics of recruiters are most strongly linked to recruiter productivity, (2) identifying where the Department of the Air Force could add recruiter billets, and (3) examining how the factors affecting recruiter productivity are different in two types of markets. Researchers found that there were no statistically significant differences in productivity by pay grade when a recruiter's term started. Still, recruiters who are promoted during their recruiting term tend to be more productive. Additionally, an analysis of recruiters using personality assessment scores indicates that both results- and people-oriented recruiters are more productive than recruiters with other personality types. Lastly, higher levels of the qualified military available population, recruiting goals, local unemployment rate, and the percentage of the population who are Black, Hispanic, or veteran are associated with higher levels of productivity. The report provides recommendations for improving Air Force Recruiting Service administrative data to support recruiter management and analyses within the department.

The marketplace of goods and services after the initial sale of a vehicle—including replacement parts, maintenance services, and repair services—is known as the aftermarket. Some industry participants and consumers contend that the growing prevalence of software and sensors within motor vehicles has enabled motor vehicle manufacturers—original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)—to limit competition in the aftermarket. Right to repair is a term used by various advocacy groups supporting fewer restrictions on consumers’ ability to repair products they have purchased through legislative changes and other means. In the context of the aftermarket, it refers to consumers’ ability to select who repairs and/or maintains their motor vehicles. Motor vehicles’ software supports many functions, including (1) controlling the vehicle’s safety and comfort features and (2) assisting drivers via a set of in-vehicle technologies (also known as advanced driver assisted systems). In addition, the software enables telematics, that is, the wireless transmission of data to and from vehicles and data centers hosted by the vehicle manufacturers. Access to motor vehicles’ telematics data has become a focal point of the motor vehicle right-to-repair policy debate. In addition to consumers and workshops (i.e., entities that offer repair and maintenance goods and services), several other participants have a financial stake in the flow of goods and services in the aftermarket supply chain. Groups advocating for federal or state legislation to guarantee consumers’ right to repair advocate that OEMs should allow workshops and consumers to access motor vehicle telematics data. OEMs and dealership representatives contend that such laws are unnecessary and could compromise consumer safety.

Interactive Summary Health Statistics for Children provide annual estimates of selected health topics for children under age 18 based on final data from the National Health Interview Survey. Estimates can be grouped by characteristics such as age, race, or sex by clicking on the "Group by" dropdown menu. Topics include (1) children who have ever had asthma; (2) health care use by children in the past 12 months; (3) health care insurance coverage for children; (4) cost-related problems accessing health care for children in the past 12 months; and (5) other health care (such as receiving special education services for mental health problems). In 2023, the percentage of children ever having asthma was 10.3%, up from 9.9% in 2022. The percentage of children having a doctor visit for any reason was 95.0% in 2023, up from 93.9% in 2022. The percentage of children who were uninsured at the time of the interview was 3.8% in 2023, down from 4.2% in 2022. And the percentage of children who delayed health care due to cost in the past 12 months was 1.0% in 2023, down from 1.1% in 2022.

A Whole Family Approach to Jobs: Helping Parents Work and Children Thrive is an initiative led by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration in collaboration with the American Public Human Services Association. Launched in 2017, the initiative brought together public and private-sector leaders from six New England states to work toward improving family well-being and economic mobility in their states. The initiative connects federal and state leaders, including parents, in various ways: (1) an annual convening of state teams, usually held in person, (2) intermittent meetings with six states on emerging areas of interest related to economic mobility, and (3) topical learning communities on subjects of interest to the states, including parent engagement and leadership, racial equity and access, the child tax credit, and the benefits cliff effect. This report describes the activities of the initiative’s regional learning community from December 2021 through December 2023. Key findings include that nearly all 24 survey respondents (96%) reported that attending learning community meetings deepened their understanding of policy options, best practices, and innovations for engaging parents, including ways to initiate, build, and sustain parent engagement. One-quarter of survey respondents said that they received technical assistance, available by request, from the leadership team to help change practices, programs, or policies. Almost two-thirds of survey respondents reported that they made, are in the process of making, or plan to make practice, program, or policy changes related to engaging parents. Examples include developing a family advocacy council, providing parent stipends, and passing the child tax credit.

Access to integrated care for those with co-occurring mental health and substance use issues has been limited because of Medicaid reimbursement limitations for substance abuse treatment for individuals in institutions for mental illness. Starting in 2015, the federal government encouraged states to pursue waivers of this limitation, and by the end of 2020, 28 states had done so. It is unclear what impact these waivers have had on the availability of care for co-occurring issues and the characteristics of any facilities that expanded care because of them. The adoption of Medicaid institutions for mental disease exclusion waivers increases the likelihood of substance abuse treatment facilities offering mental health and substance abuse treatment for co-occurring issues, especially in residential facilities. There are differential responses to mental health disorder waivers based on facility ownership. For example, for-profit substance abuse treatment facilities are responsive to the adoption of mental health disorder and substance use disorder waivers, whereas private not-for-profit and public entities are not. The response of for-profit facilities suggests that integration of substance abuse and mental health treatment for individuals in residential facilities may be cost-effective.