Proposition 47 funding, administered by the California Board of State and Community Corrections, aims to invest in programs that reduce recidivism among individuals with substance use disorders and/or mental health needs. Proposition 47 grant funding was used to launch Los Angeles Diversion, Outreach, and Opportunities for Recovery (LA DOOR), a voluntary, health-focused program designed to serve adults in Los Angeles who are currently or formerly justice-involved and have a history of substance use disorder and/or mental health concerns. This report presents findings from the process and outcome evaluation of LA DOOR Cohort 3, covering services delivered to program participants from September 2022 through December 2025. Key findings include that LA DOOR enrolled 805 highly vulnerable, justice-involved individuals during the study period, 59% of whom remained active in services for at least two months, meeting the program’s completion threshold. Although overall data showed reductions in homelessness and some gains in stable housing, many individuals continued to experience unstable and non-linear housing journeys. In addition, recidivism rates were relatively low, with 15% of participants being convicted of a crime within 2 years of completion. Those who did not complete at least two months of engagement had the highest rates of conviction.

This study evaluates the deterrent effect of enhanced street lighting on crime in the City of Newark, New Jersey. The authors utilized rollout of a program to replace high-pressure sodium lights (HPS) with light-emitting diodes (LED) fixtures across the city between 2019 and 2021 to study the program’s impact on violent and property crime. Findings include a significant short-term reduction in nighttime and outdoor violent crime (46%) in the first two quarters after replacement, a change that was mainly driven by a decrease in aggravated assaults and robberies. However, the initial decrease in crime was followed by a crime surge 21 months later, resulting in an overall null effect two years after replacement. The authors conclude that enhanced street lighting can be an effective strategy for reducing nighttime violent crime in urban areas, but motivated offenders are able to adapt to it.

This brief describes the federal tax scholarship program, which allows individuals to claim a federal income tax credit for qualified donations to public charities that grant scholarships for K-12 educational expenses. State governors may opt in to the program, which is scheduled to begin January 1, 2027, with the deadline for states to submit their eligible scholarship granting organization (SGO) list to the U.S. Department of Treasury by February 2027. Individual taxpayers will be eligible to receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 for their contributions to approved SGOs. Students from families earning less than 300% of the average median gross income where they live are eligible for scholarships, with the department estimating that 96% of children between the ages of 5-17 in covered states will be eligible for the program. For states that have opted into the program, including Florida, policymakers may be considering implementation processes regarding state oversight, data collection, and overall program awareness. EdCounsel has developed a guide for state leaders regarding practical considerations, decision points, and strategies to consider while planning how to implement the program.

Jobs that offer strong wages and opportunities for career advancement increasingly require education and training beyond high school, yet in the past decade college enrollment rates among high school graduates have declined. This report examines how community colleges and K-12 partners are addressing the challenge through career-connected dual enrollment—the intentional integration of college coursework into existing career-focused high school programs. The report begins by detailing the need for college and career acceleration, especially among underserved students. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 135 dual enrollment and career and technical education (CTE) practitioners at colleges and high schools at 12 sites across the country, the report goes on to describe three core structural strategies to scale career-connected dual enrollment that are built around traditional high school CTE pathways, high school career academies, and college-based CTE programs. The report highlights promising practices undertaken by sites to guide and support students, which are mapped to the Dual Enrollment Equity Pathways (DEEP) framework. Miami Dade College is highlighted as using the strategy of building dual enrollment courses into career-field academies. The authors conclude with lessons offered by postsecondary and K-12 leaders and practitioners on how to sustain, fund, and expand high-opportunity career pathways.

School choice can weaken the link between residential neighborhood and educational opportunity only if students can reach the schools available to them. The authors studied school choice in Chicago, where high schoolers can choose among schools throughout the city but generally rely on public transit to get there, making the transit network a key determinant of opportunity. Using student-level rankings and public transit travel times, the authors found that Black students are less likely to rank top-rated schools first and face longer public transit times to such schools. Findings also include that high schools vary substantially in how they are valued and that there is a high degree of agreement across racial groups in their relative ranking. However, transit times vary significantly across neighborhoods, generating racial differences in demand for top-rated schools. The authors estimate that giving Black students the travel times of White students would increase demand for top-rated schools by 23 percentage points. They also identify underserved neighborhoods where public transit access constrains demand and quantify how targeted bus service would increase demand for high-quality schools.

Understanding how small businesses implement and benefit from artificial intelligence (AI) is important because small businesses employ roughly half of U.S. workers. Using data from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey (SBCS), this study explores small business AI adoption, task-specific usage, and performance impacts in the Federal Reserve’s Third District states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Key findings include that AI adoption among Third District firms lags the national rate by nearly 10 percentage points at 37%. Of Third District AI adopters, the majority described their level of AI adoption as “experimenting with the technology” (57%), and few had fully integrated AI into their business operations (3%). Almost half of Third District firms reported not using AI, with no plans for adoption, considerably higher than the one-third of businesses reporting the same nationwide. The most common uses of AI in Third District firms are writing and marketing (79%), individual productivity tasks (e.g., notetaking) (56%), and planning or analysis (e.g., research) (51%). Over 70% of firms reported no change in core business operations, including labor costs, spending on outside services, production quality, and sales due to AI, although 71% reported increases in productivity.

Most Americans see freedom of the press as important to society, but their support for press freedom is not absolute according to survey data from two nationally representative samples of U.S. adults and follow-up focus groups. Key findings include that while respondents think about press freedom in different ways, many describe it through practical concerns about accuracy or truth, government or corporate influence, censorship, or broader access to information. While there is widespread support for press freedom as an ideal, specifics matter as people weigh press freedom against other factors. For instance, six-in-ten respondents say the federal government should be able to require a news organization to take down a news story if it poses a risk to national security, and about half (51%) say the same for stories containing false information. Republicans and GOP-leaning independents are more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say the government should have this power in cases of national security (72% vs. 50%) and false information (59% vs. 45%). In comparison, respondents are far less likely to say the government should be able to restrict a story because it favors a political side (14%) or criticizes the government (10%).

The Controlled Cannabis Supply Chain Experiment in the Netherlands entered its experimental phase on April 7, 2025. In the study’s ten intervention municipalities, coffeeshops are required to sell only cannabis products supplied by licensed growers participating in the experiment. The authors aim to assess whether a closed and regulated cannabis supply chain can be established and whether any effects can be observed in areas such as product quality, public health, safety, and criminality. Key findings from the initial phase of the experiment (from launch to first quarter 2026) include that stakeholders generally report positive experiences with the closed cannabis supply chain, including improved transparency regarding where cannabis is produced and under what conditions. The diversity of cannabis products offered in intervention municipalities increased substantially during the experiment, with shops offering a wider variety of weed, hash and joints, and the availability of edibles, concentrates, and vapes markedly increasing. According to the authors, there were no significant changes in the number of coffeeshop visitors or the frequency of visits, perceptions of public order and quality of life near coffeeshops, and no clear evidence that the experiment affected the size, pricing, or functioning of the illegal cannabis market.

This report presents highlights from final 2025 birth data on key demographic, medical, and healthcare indicators. The number of births, general fertility rate, age-specific fertility rates, first trimester prenatal care rate by age of mother, and cesarean delivery rate by age of mother are included. These indicators provide information on recent patterns and trends in childbearing and maternal healthcare utilization in the U.S. Key findings include that in 2025, there were 3,612,012 births, a decrease of less than 1% from 2024. The general fertility rate was 53.2 births per 1,000 females ages 15–44 in 2025, a 1% decrease from 2024. From 2024 to 2025, birth rates decreased for females ages 10–29, increased for women ages 30–44, and were unchanged for women ages 45–49. In 2025, the percentage of mothers beginning prenatal care in the first trimester increased to 76.3%, with increases for all mothers younger than 40. The cesarean delivery rate did not change from 2024 to 2025 (32.4%), but the rate decreased for mothers ages 20–29.

The serious and prevalent crime of Medicare fraud has significant consequences for people enrolled in the program. Fraud can block access to life-saving care, create erroneous out-of-pocket costs, and cause stress from having to solve billing and enrollment problems. While most entities bill legitimately, Medicare fraud perpetrators generally include health care providers, suppliers, and other entities with authority to bill and receive payment from Medicare. This report discusses how Medicare fraud hurts beneficiaries and provides recommendations for both remedying and preventing such harm. Key takeaways include 1) false claims, stolen Medicare IDs, and fabricated medical records can block or delay access to needed medical care for beneficiaries; 2) the financial impact of Medicare fraud extends to all Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers, with increased costs fueling higher premiums, deductibles, and taxpayer expenses; and 3) as federal agencies continue to ramp up efforts to prevent fraud, such efforts should include a focus on the beneficiary, such as by streamlining recovery for fraud victims, expanding fraud education, and ensuring that anti-fraud measures do not create new barriers to care for enrollees.

Medicare Advantage (MA) supplemental benefits have become an increasingly important component of the Medicare program, accounting for an estimated $80 billion in plan payments in 2025. However, little is known about how MA benefits are used, partly because they have not been consistently identifiable in encounter data. In 2024, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) updated the encounter data reporting system and issued guidance intended to make supplemental benefit claims easier for MA organizations. Key findings from this analysis include that CMS has established a new supplemental-benefit reporting framework, including Supplemental Benefit Service Category (SBSC) codes intended to identify supplemental benefits in encounter data. However, some encounter data files do not contain the SBSC indicator field from the new framework, and searches within procedure code data fields found no evidence of SBSC codes in some encounter records. The authors identified approximately 2 million encounter records that appear consistent with CMS’ instructions for supplemental-benefit reporting, but the absence of SBSC identifiers make it impossible to determine which supplemental benefits were provided. They conclude that reporting requirements alone may be insufficient to improve MA benefits reporting without mechanisms to monitor compliance and validate reporting quality, among other things