Community responder programs, which employ health professionals and staff trained in crisis response as first responders, have emerged as a way to address crises, provide timely support, and reduce the burden on police and hospitals. But to be most effective, these programs need access to shared system data and clear, consistent policies on cross-system collaboration. State leaders looking to support these efforts can start by better understanding what’s working locally and then by investing in data collection enhancements and implementing policies on data sharing. Community responder programs rely on data for a variety of purposes, from tracking utilization and guiding programmatic and partnership improvements to supporting expansion and securing funding. Collecting and sharing data across agencies and with the public can be essential for building community trust, motivating program staff, and advocating for enhanced services for people in need. However, effective data collection and sharing can be hindered by a variety of systematic barriers, such as privacy regulations, fragmented interagency protocols, limited staffing, or software capacity. Experts recommend creating standard data metric definitions and streamline data collection requirements, funding the infrastructure and partnerships needed for effective data collection and evaluation, reducing data-sharing barriers and set standards for cross-agency collaboration.

The juvenile justice and criminal justice systems have different goals. While both are concerned with community safety and accountability, the juvenile system has a focus on rehabilitation where the criminal system is oriented toward punishment. Through their statutory framework of creating a juvenile justice system, all states have established a general preference to handle youth who commit crimes in a system that is specifically designed for youth. However, with the mechanism of transfer, states have long made adult system processes and sanctions available as responses to some offenses committed by youth. Research indicates that youth transfer to criminal court does not improve community safety. It has not led to reduced juvenile crime and rarely reduces recidivism. Rather, the bulk of evidence indicates that transfer has no effect or even negative effects on these desired outcomes. There is also evidence that transfer is disproportionately used as a sanction against racial and ethnic minorities, worsening pre-existing disparities in the justice system. Finally, transfer appears to have serious deleterious effects on youthful offenders. Therefore, juvenile and criminal justice scholars and stakeholders are effectively unanimous in their conclusion that youth should be transferred to adult court only in very rare circumstances or, ideally, not at all.

This report includes the several types of school district finance data, including revenue current expenditures per pupil; and revenues and expenditures from COVID-19 federal assistance funds. The national median of current expenditures per pupil among all school districts was $15,684 in Fiscal Year 2023, an increase of 0.7% from Fiscal Year 2022. On a national basis, in the absence of any geographic cost adjustment, in Fiscal Year 2023 median current expenditures per pupil were $16,181 for districts with schools in cities, $17,476 for districts with schools in the suburbs, $14,085 for districts with schools in towns, and $15,554 for districts with schools in rural areas. In Fiscal Year 2023, current expenditures per pupil in the 100 largest public school districts by enrollment ranged from a low of $7,980 in state-sponsored charter schools in Nevada to a high of $33,387 in New York City School District, New York. The district with the highest per pupil current expenditure in each region out of the two largest enrollment school districts within each state were Boston City Schools, Massachusetts ($36,906); Christina School District, Delaware ($33,954); Indianapolis Public Schools, Indiana ($23,197); and Los Angeles Unified School District, California ($22,606). The national median of total revenues per pupil across all school districts was $18,715 in Fiscal Year 2023, which represents an increase of 1.8% from Fiscal Year 2022, after adjusting for inflation.

This report presents findings from a survey to 207 school districts, which was fielded to a nationally representative sample of school districts in March 2025 through May 2025. To learn how districts invest in their principal pipelines—both for assistant principals and sitting principals—school districts were asked about six types of professional development, ranging from less-resource-intensive offerings (paid time for conferences, professional learning communities, and trainings workshops) to more-resource-intensive offerings (principal supervisors, principal mentors, and professional coaching). Key findings include that as of the 2024–2025 school year, urban and large school districts (those serving more than 10,000 students) hired most of their school principals from within the district, while small districts (serving fewer than 3,000 students) were more likely to hire principals from outside the district. Large school districts were more likely than small school districts to offer most of the six types of school principal professional development addressed in the survey. Larger school districts offered lower-cost professional development to sitting principals and assistant principals alike but concentrated their high-cost professional development on sitting principals only. Small districts offered less professional development overall. When they did offer professional development, small districts favored sitting principals over assistant principals. Principals and assistant principals in small school districts were more likely to choose their own professional development than those in medium (serving 3,000 to 10,000 students) and large school districts. Small districts favored less-resource-intensive professional development forms for principals.

About 10% of the nation’s 133.2 million households reported being uncomfortably hot for 24 hours or more at least once in the previous year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 American Housing Survey. The survey asks respondents if they experienced uncomfortably hot conditions for a day or more at least once in the 12 months prior and 13.2 million households said they did. Renters (13.6%) were more likely than homeowners (8.0%) to experience hot conditions in their homes. The share of housing units affected by extreme heat was higher in urban areas (10.6%) than in rural ones (7.3%). Over nine million or 6.9% of all occupied housing units across the country did not have any form of air conditioning in 2023. Households in 1.6 million (17.1%) of these units surveyed said they were uncomfortably hot for 24 hours or more. Even air conditioning wasn’t always enough — 11.6 million (9.4%) respondents in the 124 million occupied housing units with some form of air conditioning reported being uncomfortably hot. The major culprit: a breakdown of the main cooling equipment, according to respondents in 4.9 million (42.1%) of these housing units. Nearly 3 million households reported one main cooling equipment breakdown that lasted for six hours or more; 1.8 million reported multiple extended breakdowns, including half a million that suffered eight or more.

In August 2025, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that tribes continue to experience barriers to accessing loan guarantees and direct loans from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Tribal Energy Financing Program (TEFP). These barriers include aspects of TEFP’s design that have restrictions that can discourage tribal participation, and complex and unclear agency processes that can derail applications. This testimony summarizes several of these barriers. This report provides information on DOE’s tribal energy financing and summarizes several of the identified barriers related to TEFP design and agency processes. The GAO found that DOE provided limited assistance to help tribes develop projects and due diligence fees were high and unpredictable. For example, tribal applicants are required to cover the costs of the outside lawyers and technical experts that DOE hires to review projects. The GAO also found that the application process is long and complex, and guidance is unclear. DOE also has a few program staff with tribal experience to review applications, which can lengthen reviews and create additional costs for tribes. In addition to discussing barriers, the GAO also provided information on the status of applications to TEFP. Specifically, since its first solicitation in 2018, TEFP has received 20 applications for loans and loan guarantees for various project types and amounts. Requests ranged from $23.7 million for a solar project to $8.7 billion for an ammonia production facility for low-carbon fuel.

This brief examines the landscape of multifamily housing development across 10 U.S. cities, including Miami, from 2019 to 2023, focusing on who is building or rehabilitating large multifamily projects. It addresses the critical issue of housing supply by analyzing the roles of different types of developers, distinguished by profit status, geographic footprint, owner race/ethnicity and gender, number of units produced or rehabilitated, and the estimated value of those units. Policymakers, housing advocates, and developers can use these insights to design policies that support more developer participation and help address the housing supply crisis. Multifamily housing development is dominated by for-profit firms (89%), which produce 94% of units. Nearly half of developers are local, with Boston having the most and Phoenix the fewest developers with a local footprint. Latino and Black developers are significantly underrepresented compared with their population shares, especially in Dallas, Nashville, and San Antonio. Women lead only 13% of development entities, mostly in nonprofits.To improve housing affordability, policies should support more developer participation by addressing barriers that disproportionately affect small or emerging developers, particularly in for-profit sectors, through targeted funding and regulatory reforms.

The 2020–2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends seafood consumption as a source of essential nutrients like protein, omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, and vitamin D. For the general population, the guidelines recommend consuming 8ounce equivalents, or two servings, of seafood weekly. This report presents the percentage of U.S. youth and adults consuming seafood at least twice per week, and the most common types of seafood consumed based on data from the August 2021–August 2023 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Key findings include that during August 2021–August 2023, 7.7% of youth ages 2–19 years and 24.3% of adults aged 20 and older consumed seafood at least twice per week. The percentage of adults who consumed seafood at least twice per week increased with increasing family income. The percentage of adults consuming seafood at least twice per week increased between 2013–2014 and August 2021–August 2023. Among both youth and adults, shrimp, salmon, tuna, and other fish were the most commonly consumed types of seafood.

This report presents national estimates of difficulties in functioning for children ages 2–17 using 2021–2023 National Health Interview Survey data. The module’s questions ask about difficulties in the following functional domains: seeing, hearing, walking, communication, behavior, and learning (for all children ages 2–17); fine motor and playing (for children ages 2–4); and self-care, remembering, concentrating, coping with change, relationships, and affect (anxiety and depression) (for children ages 5–17). Prevalence estimates were calculated for different levels of difficulty (a lot of difficulty, some difficulty, or no difficulty). In 2021–2023, about one-quarter (24.9%) of children ages 2–4 experienced difficulties in functioning (4.1% experienced a lot of difficulty in one or more domains and 20.8% experienced some difficulty). Among children ages 5–17, just over one-half (50.8%) experienced functioning difficulties (13.0% experienced a lot of difficulty and 37.8% experienced some difficulty). The prevalence of functioning difficulties varied by sex, with boys being more likely than girls to experience a lot of difficulty in at least one domain, but differences across other characteristics varied. Functioning difficulties were most prevalent in the domains of communication, learning, behavior, and playing among children ages 2–4. For those ages 5–17, the most prevalent domains were anxiety, accepting change, behavior, depression, and making friends. Among children who experienced functioning difficulties, most had difficulty in only one functional domain.