Publications

At the state and national levels, there is a growing recognition that improving college access in isolation is not sufficient. The focus on ensuring that students have the support they need to succeed has shifted the focus to persistence and completion. In research conducted with the New Jersey State Policy Lab and the Newark City […]

Community colleges play a vital role in expanding access to higher education, especially for students from historically underserved communities. Understanding how students navigate the transfer pathway from two-year to four-year institutions is essential for improving educational outcomes. This blog highlights findings from the National Student Clearinghouse’s Tracking Transfer report, comparing New Jersey’s community college students […]

Over the past 10 years, many U.S. states have implemented mandatory paid family leave policies to help address the lack of such policy on the national level. In this post, we examine how paid family leave enrollment among parents in the U.S. has changed. We use data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation […]

The United States, with its growing elderly population, is experiencing a significant demographic shift. This trend is evident in New Jersey, which faces rapid population aging and increasing healthcare expenditures. This in turn highlights the critical need to ensure high-quality long-term care, with nursing homes playing a central role. New Jersey relies on nursing homes […]

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) provides access to the largest source of financial aid to pay for a 2- or 4- year college or vocational school. Students who complete it are more likely to enroll in and persist through college (Debaun, 2019; McKinney & Novak, 2013; Novak & McKinney, 2011). However, financial […]

As part of our ongoing evaluation of the certificate program developed by Rutgers University’s Center for Research on Ending Violence in partnership with the New Jersey Department of Children and Families (DCF), we are excited to share recent progress. Over the past several weeks, our research team has conducted a series of in-depth interviews with […]

Traffic safety is a critical concern in New Jersey where annual traffic crashes typically exceed 200,000, according to the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), with many of them resulting in non-fatal injuries that have lifelong impacts on victims. Currently, this data is not easily accessible. Researchers, advocates, and the public have an interest in […]

Over our next five blog posts, we will highlight selected preliminary findings from our work surveying members of the New Jersey public on their support across different areas of sentencing reform in the state. The first area concerns the public’s support for the creation of a new mitigating sentencing factor for defendants who are survivors […]

On Wednesday, September 1, 2021, heavy rain from Tropical Storm Ida caused the Elizabeth River in New Jersey to overflow its banks. Elizabeth’s largest source of low-income housing, the Oakwood Plaza Apartment complex, adjacent to the river, was flooded with up to ten feet of water, trapping many residents in their ground-floor apartments. Four people […]

In the face of escalating climate instability, eroding soil, and economic precarity, the integration of regenerative practices into agricultural systems is emerging as a vital model for ensuring agriculture’s continued viability. Thanks to financial support from the New Jersey State Policy Lab and a collaboration with the Organic and Regenerative Farming Board of New Jersey, […]

Paid family leave is an essential social policy that provides families with economic security while bonding with a new child. The United States has no federal policy on paid leave, providing only certain eligible employees up to 12 weeks unpaid, job-protected leave for family and medical reasons. For many workers, unpaid leave is a financially untenable […]

From 2016 through 2022, all teacher education candidates in New Jersey were required by statute to complete a specific performance assessment, the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA), in order to gain certification. edTPA is a complex performance assessment that requires candidates to share lesson plans, a video from the classroom they teach, and the assessments […]