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The Book of the States 2012

July 30, 2012 Comments off

The Book of the States 2012

Source: Council of State Governments

State revenue collections in the 2011 fiscal year grew by 6.4 percent and state general fund spending increased by 4 percent following two straight years of decline. The 2011 tax revenues are just $26.6 billion under the peak reached in 2008 and are just shy of the 2007 collections. Meanwhile, the challenges facing states in many programs continue to grow. State spending on Medicaid programs, for instance, is expected to increase nearly 50 percent from 2010 to 2012. Those are just a few examples of information and data found in the 2012 edition of The Book of the States, The Council of State Governments’ annual almanac of information about the states.

Categories: business and economics, Council of State Governments, government and politics, Medicare and Medicaid, taxation

Facilitating Medicaid Enrollment for People with Serious Mental Illnesses Leaving Jail or Prison: Key Questions for Policymakers Committed to Improving Health and Policy Safety

April 29, 2012 Comments off
Source:  Council of State Governments Justice Center
This brief provides guidance for elected officials and corrections and mental health directors to understand what percentage of the corrections population is eligible for Medicaid and SSI/SSDI, how to identify eligible individuals at intake to the facility, and when to begin the application process for benefits program.
Categories: Council of State Governments, health and health care, Medicare and Medicaid, prisons and prisoners

Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement

August 17, 2011 Comments off

Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement (PDF)
Source: Council of State Governments Justice Center

This report describes the results of an extraordinary analysis of millions of school and juvenile justice records in Texas. It was conducted to improve policymakers’ understanding of who is suspended and expelled from public secondary schools, and the impact of those removals on students’ academic performance and juvenile justice system involvement.

Like other states, school suspensions—and, to a lesser degree, expulsions—have become relatively common in Texas. For this reason and because Texas has the second largest public school system in the nation (where nonwhite children make up nearly two-thirds of the student population), this study’s findings have significance for — and relevance to — states across the country.

Several aspects of the study make it groundbreaking. First, the research team did not rely on a sample of students, but instead examined individual school records and school campus data pertaining to all seventh-grade public school students in Texas in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Second, the analysis of each grade’s student records covered at least a six-year period, creating a statewide longitudinal study. Third, access to the state juvenile justice database allowed the researchers to learn about the school disciplinary history of youth who had juvenile records. Fourth, the study group size and rich datasets from the education and juvenile justice systems made it possible to conduct multivariate analyses. Using this approach, the researchers could control for more than 80 variables, effectively isolating the impact that independent factors had on the likelihood of a student’s being suspended and expelled, and on the relationship between these disciplinary actions and a student’s academic performance or juvenile justice involvement.

Categories: Council of State Governments, education, juvenile offenders, K-12, legal and law enforcement
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