Data collected by the National Center for State Courts in February 2025 from state court websites show slight increases in the number of female judges sitting on courts of last resort (COLR). From 2024 to 2025: 43% of COLR judges are women, up from 41% one year ago. The number of states with over 40% female COLR justices increased from 35 to 36. States with over 50% female COLR justices increased from 15 to 20 in 2025. The state which continues to hold the highest percentage of female justices in a state court of last resort is Wisconsin at 86%. Alaska has 80%. Illinois, Michigan, and Nevada have 71%. These increases follow the upward trend of female representation in courts of last resort shown in prior years. There were 21 states that had female chief justices in 2024. In 2025, 26 states have female chief justices.

The bipartisan Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) was created by Congress in 2010 to enhance public safety through targeted work with states and criminal justice agencies. These initiatives include agency-spanning data analysis; development and implementation of data-driven, tailored solutions to address complicated criminal justice challenges; and coordination with states and criminal justice agencies to maximize resources to achieve stronger and safer communities. JRI provides small grants to help states implement evidence-based policies, invest in what works, and allocate resources effectively— with the goal of reducing crime, addressing behavioral health needs, and enhancing public safety. States that have used JRI saw, on average, a 38% drop-in crime rates between 2008 and 2023 and a 10% decrease in recidivism between 2008 and 2019. For example, in Kentucky, 43% of crimes against people involve domestic violence (DV). Using JRI, state leaders analyzed data to identify gaps and challenges in how DV is reported and addressed. With this information, lawmakers can focus on enhancing victim services, improving responses to people who commit DV, and reducing violent crime and recidivism. In New Hampshire, JRI analysis showed that people who frequently cycle through jails, characterized by their significant behavioral health needs and their high rates of homelessness lower-level offenses, and supervision violations, contributed to a 3-year incarceration cost of $123 million. Policymakers can now target behavioral health and reentry responses and improve data collection to strengthen public safety statewide.

Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) have a legitimate public safety interest in identifying individuals for numerous reasons. Video and photographic evidence obtained from surveillance footage, bystanders, social media, and other sources may provide crucial evidence about who may be a suspect, victim, witness, or community member in distress. Facial recognition technologies can allow LEAs to identify these individuals with greater frequency, speed, and accuracy. Therein lies both the potential and the risk of facial recognition technology. While some communities and civil rights organizations oppose all use of facial recognition technologies by law enforcement, public opinion is mixed, with 46% believing that widespread use of facial recognition technology by police would be a good idea (compared to 27% who say it would be a bad idea). The framework provided below creates the structure for legal requirements and best practices that should steer the responsible use of facial recognition technologies. Four basic findings provide the backdrop for the framework. facial recognition technologies, when used appropriately, has the potential to improve the quality of law enforcement’s efforts, including both its criminal investigations and its community caretaking functions. At the same time, unconstrained use of facial recognition technologies poses a serious risk to civil rights and civil liberties, including but not limited to accuracy and bias concerns, risks to free expression, and privacy invasions. Current law does not adequately direct or constrain law enforcement facial recognition technologies use to ensure that law enforcement is capturing the benefits of the technology while also guarding against its risks. Accordingly, if policing agencies are going to continue to use — or start using — facial recognition technologies technology, they should do so subject to carefully-considered guardrails.

This paper evaluates the Jumpstart Program (JSP) in the Alief Independent School District, a parenting intervention implemented in the Houston, Texas area to enhance school readiness among economically disadvantaged three-year-old children. Unlike many early childhood programs typically tested in controlled research settings, JSP leverages existing school district resources for scalability and practical application. The research team conducted a three-year randomized controlled trial to measure the program’s impact on child cognitive outcomes, parental engagement, and mechanisms of change. The results indicate improvements in children’s performance on curriculum-aligned assessments and modest gains in general cognitive readiness as measured by the Bracken School Readiness Assessment. Furthermore, treatment group parents demonstrated increased reading frequency with their children, underscoring enhanced parental involvement as a crucial mechanism behind the program’s success. The research team employed a structural model to analyze both the direct effects of JSP and its indirect effects through changes in the marginal productivity of investments or preferences via habit formation. The research team analysis concludes that 75% of the program’s impact is attributed to direct effects, while 25% is mediated through changes in habit formation in parental investments. The research team underscores the potential of scalable, real-world interventions to bridge socio-economic gaps in early childhood development and inform the design of effective educational policies.

Recent empirical research shows that air pollution harms student test scores and attendance and increases office discipline referrals. However, the mechanism by which air pollution operates within schools to negatively affect student and teacher outcomes remains largely opaque. The existing literature has primarily focused on the effects of prolonged exposure to pollution on end-of-year test scores or total absence counts. The research team examine how ambient air pollution influences student-by-day and teacher-by-day outcomes, including absences and office discipline referrals, using daily administrative data from a large urban school district in California between 2003 and 2020. Using wind direction as an instrument for daily pollution exposure, the research team found that a 10 μg/m3 increase in daily PM2.5 causes a 5.7% increase in full-day student absences and a 28% increase in office referrals in a three-day window. Importantly, the effects are driven by low-income, Black, Hispanic, and younger students. In addition, over three days, a 10 μg/m3 increase in daily PM2.5 causes a 13.1% increase in teacher absences due to illness. The research team indicates that decreasing air pollution in urban areas could enhance both student and teacher attendance and minimize disruptive behavior in educational settings.

Claremont Graduate University (Claremont), a nonprofit, private institution in southern California, offers a flexible Teacher Education Program that is a 12- to 18-month, 100% online residency program. Claremont’s residency model was launched as a pilot in 2020 with 5 residents and grew to include 34 fulltime residents in the 2022–23 academic year, when this study was conducted. Candidates earn a Master of Arts in Education in addition to a preliminary Multiple Subject (elementary), Single Subject (secondary), or Education Specialist (special education) credential. Within the program, there are several timing, placement, and funding options for residents, of which the Claremont Fellows option was the most used from 2020 through 2023. The case study presented in this report was guided by the overarching question of how successful residencies do their work and is part of a larger multiple-case study of five California teacher residency programs across four different institutions of higher education, conducted with the goal of documenting the details of program infrastructure; program design; recruitment strategies; resident, mentor teacher, and graduate supports; partnerships; and financial sustainability. Even as a completely online program, the Claremont Fellows residency has been highly rated by graduates, with an average overall resident perception rating of 4.7 out of 5.0 on the 2021 California Commission on Teacher Credentialing statewide completer survey. After program completion, 96% of residents have been hired into the partner local education agencies (LEAs) where they completed their clinical placements or at other under resourced schools, and 100% of these teachers remained in the same school 2 years later. Claremont Fellows are a diverse group, with 75% identifying as people of color as of 2023. In addition, the Claremont Fellows have diverse academic and socioeconomic backgrounds and include a high proportion of first-generation college graduates.

Improper payments—those that shouldn't have been made or were made in the incorrect amount—have been a government-wide issue for more than 20 years. In Fiscal Year 2024, 16 federal agencies reported a total estimate of about $162 billion in improper payments across 68 programs. Of these, approximately 84% were a result of overpayments. Federal improper payments since Fiscal Year 2003 are estimated at about $2.8 trillion. About $121 billion (approximately 75%) was concentrated in five program areas. Eighteen federal programs reported improper payment rate estimates of at least 10%, including six programs whose rates ranged from over 25% to about 45%. However, the improper payment estimates do not represent the full extent of government-wide improper payments. For instance, the $162 billion total represents a small subset of all federal programs and does not include certain programs that agencies have determined are susceptible to significant improper payments. These include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Public and Indian Housing’s Tenant-Based Rental Assistance, and the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program.

The purpose of the study was to envision a new future that increases the impact and relevance of architectural education and the architecture profession by exploring the intersection and integration between architectural education and practice of architecture, with a focus on readiness for the future. The present study takes place amidst a sea of social and technological change. The profession is undergoing profound changes to demand, expectations to incorporate new technology, and little change to the diversity of the talent pipeline. Construction spending and architecture billing have been down for two consecutive years, yet the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects demand for architects will grow faster than average from 2023 to 2033. At the same time, architecture professionals are saddled with student debt burden that shapes their personal and professional decisions, informing which jobs individuals seek and accept and the timing of family formation and major personal purchases. While architects are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence in their workflow, there are mixed feelings among practicing professionals regarding this development. Architects are also navigating pressure to design and build in new ways to mitigate the impacts of climate change and promote human wellness while minimizing the cost of these innovations to clients. Changes to the education and training pipeline could help new architects navigate these social changes and demands and have potential to make the field more resilient in the long run.

The increasing impacts of climate change and extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires present a real threat to American businesses. Data released late last year from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey (ABS) shows that nationally, 9.8% of businesses experienced monetary loss because of extreme weather in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available. (ABS data refers to employer businesses, those with at least one paid employee.) Though comprising less than 10% of total U.S. businesses, the firms that experienced monetary loss due to extreme weather represented over $9 trillion in total revenue, or 32% of all revenue generated by reporting businesses that year. In 2022, the U.S. experienced 18 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, costing an estimated $165 billion in physical damages to residential, commercial, and municipal buildings and public infrastructure. That’s likely an underestimate, as it doesn’t include the indirect costs of lost business revenue and work as well as disruption to supply chains. And 2022 wasn’t atypical for the U.S—in fact, it was only the third-most costly year for disaster impacts in recorded history. The damages will likely be dwarfed by future years, with average annual disaster costs trending upward since the 1980s when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began tracking impacts. Substantial impacts also occurred in major metro areas across the U.S. This included New York, where over 14,784 businesses (or 8.4%) reported impacts; Los Angeles (10,502 businesses, 7%); Dallas (10,116 businesses, 17.3%), Miami (9,458 businesses, 13.1%), and Houston (8,962 businesses, 19.4%). These major cities don’t just drive regional economic development—they’re also national drivers of economic growth. These five cities alone are estimated to have contributed 19.9% to total U.S. gross domestic product in 2022.

This report examines the role of age-specific trends in fertility rates in the decline in the number of births and of general fertility rates (GFRs), the number of live births per 1,000 women aged 15–44, and total fertility rates (TFRs), the average number of children that are born to women over their lifetime. Data are from the National Center for Health Statistics’ National Vital Statistics System birth data files from 1990 through 2023.. The actual number of U.S. births declined 14% from 1990 to 2023, the GFR declined 23%, and the TFR declined 22%. Due to declines in birth rates among females younger than age 30, holding their 1990 birth rates constant resulted in higher adjusted GFRs, TFRs, and number of births in 2023 than the actual rates and numbers. Due to increases in birth rates to women age 30 and older, holding their 1990 birth rates constant would have led to lower adjusted GFRs, TFRs, and number of births in 2023 than the actual rates and numbers. The magnitude of the decrease in birth rates among females younger than 30 was greater than the magnitude of the increase in rates among women 30 and older, resulting in declining overall fertility rates. These age-specific changes in birth rates resulted in changing maternal age distributions—in 1990, females younger than 30 accounted for 7 in 10 births (69.8%), while in 2023, they accounted for less than 1 in 2 (48.6%). The decline in fertility rates over the past few decades results from declining rates among females younger than 30 coupled with smaller increases in rates among older women.

This paper uses U.S. Toxic Release Inventory data on air lead emissions to provide estimates of the effects of air lead concentration on infant mortality. The causal effect of lead on infant mortality is identified by annual variation in air fugitive lead emissions interacted with wind speed near reporting plants, which together determine local ambient lead concentration. Unlike stack emissions, which occur routinely and may prompt avoidance behavior, fugitive emissions are intermittent and influenced by both historical and current factors, such as wind speed variation, making them difficult to avoid. The paper has two main findings. First, higher air lead concentration causes higher infant mortality in the first month and in the first year, suggesting that both in utero and environmental exposures matter. Second, higher lead concentration increases deaths from low birthweight, sudden unexplained infant death, and respiratory and nervous system causes, which is consistent with findings from animal studies, even when accounting for behavioral responses. Back of the envelope calculations indicate that declines in fugitive lead emissions prevented 34-59 infant deaths per year, generating benefits of $380-$670 million annually in 2023 dollars.

Use of complementary and integrative health care (CIH) varies across racial and ethnic groups in the United States. This study aimed to (1) document racial and ethnic representation in licensed CIH professions (chiropractic, acupuncture, traditional East Asian medicine, naturopathic medicine, direct-entry midwifery, and massage therapy), non-licensed CIH professions, and conventional health care; (2) compare diversity in these professions with the U.S. population; and (3) examine changes in CIH diversity in recent years. The research team conducted a repeated cross-sectional study design with the 2011–2022 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to examine race and ethnicity among graduates in licensed CIH professions, compared with non-licensed CIH professions and conventional health care. The research team sample included 53,393 programs representing 3,524,494 individuals. The research team examined the proportion of graduates from each racial and ethnic group, compared results with the U.S. population, and graphically explored changes between 2011 and 2022. Inclusion or exclusion of massage therapy influenced interpretations across all questions. With massage therapy, licensed CIH professions appeared more diverse, with a higher proportion of Latino and Black graduates. Without massage therapy, diversity in licensed CIH professions was similar or slightly reduced compared with non-licensed CIH professions and conventional health care. Notable differences emerged among licensed CIH professions: acupuncture and East Asian medicine had larger proportions of Asian graduates than other CIH programs and the U.S. population. Racial and ethnic diversity in CIH increased modestly between 2011 and 2022. While professions such as massage therapy, acupuncture, and traditional East Asian medicine have greater diversity, a disparity persists between the racial and ethnic composition of licensed CIH professions and the diversity of the overall U.S. population.