In the U.S. federal system, courts can grant early termination of supervision for people on federal probation or supervised release under certain circumstances. This report examined individuals whose supervision terms were successfully closed due to early or regular termination from Fiscal Year 2014 through 2023. The report found moderate correlations with risk profile. For example, individuals designated by the Post Conviction Risk Assessment in the lowest risk category at their final assessment were about three times more likely to receive early termination (26%) than people who were classified in the highest risk category (8%). Lastly, other factors such as supervision time imposed and district of case closure had the greatest bearing on early termination, and early termination did not threaten community safety demonstrating that supervisees granted early termination under current policies pose no greater risk to the community than those who serve a full term of supervision.

Youth probation, also known as juvenile probation, is court-ordered supervision requiring young people to follow specific rules and conditions for a set period of time, which can range from months to years. Traditional youth probation can increase recidivism rates and push youth deeper into the justice system. Counties are recognizing the financial and societal costs of these outcomes and implementing innovative, evidence-based practices that can improve the lives of youth and communities. This brief identifies promising county-level youth probation practices and spotlights real-world strategies from a case study from Wayne County, Michigan. Promising practices outlined in this brief include shifting the culture of probation from compliance-based supervision to community-centered support to build networks and strengthen connections; creating cross-system partnerships and implementing data-sharing agreements between service providers to promote informed decision making; partnering with youth and families to determine the terms of supervision and actively solicit, collect and implement their feedback throughout service delivery; and integrating mechanisms, such as assessments, to examine young people’s risks and needs. In addition, Michigan’s Wayne County is utilizing local authority to prioritize community-based interventions and reduce the involvement of young people in the youth justice system. This approach has enabled the county to significantly reduce probation caseloads and embrace more personalized care and collaboration with families and communities.

This inventory of local programs and services for youth ages 10-18 and their families in Oakland County, Michigan evaluates the availability and accessibility of these resources, highlights strengths and gaps, and shares insights from both stakeholders and youth. This report also offers best practices and actionable strategies to build a more effective and sustainable support system. The report found that while Oakland County has a robust network of community organizations supporting youth and families, most services, such as food, shelter, clothing, and other essential resources, are concentrated in urban areas, particularly the city of Pontiac, and few are specifically tailored to meet the unique needs of youth. Program staff working closely with youth emphasized that connecting youth and families to essential services goes beyond adding more programs. In addition, the scarcity of youth-specific programs, coupled with fragmented efforts and uneven distribution of resources, highlights the need for more coordinated service delivery. Community partners and system stakeholders acknowledge that operating in silos has limited their impact. To address these issues, Oakland County aims to create a centralized resource about available resources; establish initiatives that equip youth and families with the knowledge and skills necessary to access vital resources, minimize barriers, and foster self-sufficiency; and seek to enhance collaboration among youth-serving organizations by improving the coordination of resources and services.

Drawing on survey data from 170 public school districts and in-depth interviews with leaders from 18 systems, this report examines civic learning and found that that most surveyed districts reported offering civics, typically in history or social studies classes. While 74% of districts provide explicit civics instruction in high school, fewer do so in earlier grades, and just 36% offer it in elementary school. In most cases, civics is not taught as a standalone course.District leaders also report relying heavily on their state's standards and requirements—which provide structure and resources but can also limit flexibility; urban districts are more likely than suburban or rural peers to have civics standards, graduation requirements, assessments, and curricula. Districts report that time, funding, and capacity are the biggest barriers to expanding civic learning, with well-resourced districts having the ability to dedicate staff, funding, and infrastructure, while resource-constrained districts rely more heavily on individual educators. These findings point to a critical tension: most districts see civics as essential to preparing students for democratic life, but systemic constraints limit both access and depth. Strengthening civic learning will require more than states setting standards; it will demand intentional investment, professional learning, and protections that allow educators to engage students in the full range of civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Without this, civic readiness will remain inconsistent—and inequities in who gets robust civic learning will persist.

This toolkit features resources to support assessment developers in designing learning assessments for all young learners. These resources were initially developed as part of the Measures for Early Success Initiative, which aims to support the creation of novel assessment tools for use in public pre-K settings. The repository includes the Centering User Perspectives in Assessment Design, Pre-K Content Blueprint Series, and Pre-K Content Blueprint Series–Technical Manual. These resources describe the process for using federal and state early learning standards to summarize children’s skills and the developmental trajectories featured in the Pre-K Content Blueprint Series, offer guiding prompts in the areas of content development, implementation, and data use, and provide an overview of existing assessments in each domain and highlights some ways that they advance toward goals.

This report presents summary statistics from the 2023 data released by the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program of the U.S. Census Bureau in December 2024. Each year, the SAIPE program provides estimates of income and poverty for the administration of federal programs and the allocation of federal funds to local jurisdictions and school districts. It is the only source of single year, median household income and poverty statistics for the nation’s 3,143 counties and 13,137 school districts. In 2023, the median household income at the county level ranged from $28,579 to $173,655, with a median value of $62,851. Since 2022, 4.1% of all counties (129) had an increase in median household income, and 5.4% (170) had a decrease. The SAIPE data also include poverty estimates for all counties in the United States. In 2023, county poverty rates for all ages ranged from 3.3% to 49.6%, with a median value of 13.6%. Between 2022 and 2023, 2.6% of all counties (83) had an increase in the poverty rate, and 3.8 percent (118) had a decrease. The median school district poverty rate for school-age children was 13.4% in 2023. The largest districts—with a population of 20,000 or more—contained the majority of school-age children in poverty (82.9%).

In this brief, the research team explore patterns of enrollment in subsidized child care in the District of Columbia (DC) and whether children experience continuity in their subsidized care. Child care subsidies are intended to improve families’ access to child care. To benefit from subsidies—and child care more generally—families must be able to maintain their subsidy and care arrangement. Continuity in child care supports children’s developmental progress and helps families maintain their employment. Disruptions in subsidy use and child care arrangement can reflect changes to family circumstances, which may be influenced by subsidy policies and practices. As such, understanding continuity in subsidized child care access can help policymakers design subsidy policies that support families in the subsidy program. A majority of children were in DC’s subsidy program for at least one year. Just under half of children in the subsidy program experienced continuity of care; specifically, they did not experience a gap in their coverage or a change in their care arrangement. Children who experienced a change in their subsidized care provider were more likely to experience this change during a spell of enrollment than during a gap in coverage. More children entered the subsidy program at a younger age, and younger children experienced a longer duration in the program. For this study, the research team analyzed monthly administrative child care subsidy payment records from 2015 to 2024, obtained through a data sharing agreement with the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education.

Disaster losses are rising, and the stakes are high for reducing risk. Artificial intelligence (AI) promises new ways to spot danger sooner, coordinate relief more quickly, and save lives and property. But AI doesn't just drop neatly into a command center. To matter in practice, it must be shaped to the messy realities of emergency management—and wrestle with the thorny questions that haunt every new technology. The federal government has said it will ask states and localities to share more of the burden of managing disasters, even as state and local governments are under fiscal pressure. Emergency managers are the people charged with preparing for and responding to disasters and they are being asked to assist with a range of new missions, including preparing for infrastructure failures, disease outbreaks, terrorism, and even attack from abroad. The hope is that AI can help manage their increasing workload. Reviewing the uses of AI in wildfire management, and in emergency management more broadly, researchers found that organizations that adopted and deployed AI and other emerging technologies took some of these approaches to mitigate the potential negative effects: use of pilot testing, red teaming, or stress testing AI systems to identify points of failure, regular monitoring of AI performance, providing specific guidance to the AI for specific problems so that it executes narrow tasks well, and iterating to improve performance. Additional strategies included the use of ethical guidelines so that certain decisions are off the table for AI and comparing AI performance to human performance for specific tasks and weighing of the advantages and disadvantages of each to decide where to use AI and where to use humans.

Vasectomy is the only form of permanent contraception available to men. It is the fifth most commonly used contraceptive method, as reported by women ages 15–49 in 2017–2019. Contraceptive use information obtained directly from men can provide more complete estimates of the use of male methods, including vasectomy. In 2002, when the National Survey of Family Growth first collected data from men, 6.2% of men ages 15–44 had ever had a vasectomy compared with 4.0% of men ages 18–44 in 2015–2017. This report provides estimates of the percentages of men ages 18–49 in 2022–2023 who have ever had a vasectomy, by selected demographic and socioeconomic characteristics using the most recently available survey data for males. Among men ages 18–49 in 2022–2023, 6.8% had ever had a vasectomy. The percentage of men with a vasectomy increased with age, from 0.2% of men ages 18–24 to 14.5% of men ages 45–49. A higher percentage of White non-Hispanic men had ever had a vasectomy (10.1%) than Hispanic (3.3%) and Black non-Hispanic (2.8%) men. The percentage of men with a vasectomy increased with the number of biological children fathered, from 2.0% of men without biological children to 18.1% of men with two or more children. The percentage of men with a vasectomy increased with higher levels of education, from 1.3% among men without a high school diploma or GED to 11.2% among those with a bachelor’s degree or higher. The percentage of men with a vasectomy increased with family income, from 3.8% for men with family incomes below 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL) to 9.5% for those with family incomes at 300% FPL or more. Men with private health insurance or Medigap had the highest percentage of vasectomy (9.1%).

Employing peer coaches to provide weight management counseling in primary care could address patient- and clinician-level barriers to obesity care, improve outcomes, and boost engagement in weight management programs. In this cluster randomized clinical trial involving 20 primary care physicians and 281 of their patients, there was no difference in weight loss between groups at 12 months; however, patients in the peer coaching group lost a higher percentage of weight at 12 months and were more likely to join a weight loss program at 6 months. The primary outcome was mean change in weight (in kilograms) at 12 months. Secondary outcomes included mean weight change in percentage, proportion of patients achieving 5% or higher weight loss, and change in waist circumference in inches. The findings suggest that peer coaching can produce weight loss in primary care and promote enrollment in a weight management program. In this randomized clinical trial, a low- to moderate-intensity peer-coaching intervention did not result in greater weight loss at 12 months, but it improved attendance at weight management programs.