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2014-12-15
Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE);
A growing number of cities now provide a range of public school options for families to choose from. Choosing a school can be one of the most stressful decisions parents make on behalf of their child. Getting access to the right public school will determine their child's future success. How are parents faring in cities where choice is widely available? This report answers this question by examining how parents' experiences with school choice vary across eight "high-choice" cities: Baltimore, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Our findings suggest parents are taking advantage of the chance to choose a non-neighborhood-based public school option for their child, but there's more work to be done to ensure choice works for all families.
2013-09-19
National League of Cities;
Mobile food vending generates approximately $650 million in revenue annually. The industry is projected to account for approximately $2.7 billion in food revenue over the next five years, but unfortunately, most cities are legally ill-equipped to harness this expansion. Many city ordinances were written decades ago, with a different type of mobile food supplier in mind, like ice cream trucks, hot dog carts, sidewalk peddlers, and similar operators. Modern mobile vending is a substantial departure from the vending typically assumed in outdated local regulations. Vendors utilize large vehicles packed with high-tech cooking equipment and sanitation devices to provide sophisticated, safe food usually prepared to order.
Increasingly, city leaders are recognizing that food trucks are here to stay. They also recognize that there is no "one size fits all" prescription for how to most effectively incorporate food trucks into the fabric of a community. With the intent of helping city leaders with this task, this guide examines the following questions: What policy options do local governments have to regulate food trucks? What is the best way to incorporate food trucks into the fabric of a city, taking into account the preferences of all stakeholders?
Thirteen cities of varying size and geographic location were analyzed for this study. Information on vending regulations within each of these cities was collected and analyzed, and supplemented with semi-structured interviews with city staff and food truck vendors.
2013-04-26
Annie E. Casey Foundation;
"Making Connections" was the Annie E. Casey Foundation's signature place-based, community-change initiative of the 2000s. It sought to build on previous work and launch an effort focused firmly on the framework of family strengthening. The Foundation started "Making Connections" in 22 places, focusing eventually on first 10, then seven sites, eventually investing in the initiative for more than 10 years and spending more than $500 million.
This effort led to a range of innovations in the field and both started and strengthened many local initiatives. Making Connections' positive outcomes are still influencing Casey and the broader field. In many notable cases, the programs and partnerships created during the initiative continue to thrive.
Assessments of "Making Connections" have already produced a variety of lessons on program development, implementation, evaluation and other topics, with valuable implications for practitioners, public policymakers, funders and others involved in community development. This report takes a step back and outlines key findings from the initiative that can provide guidance to those involved with community-change efforts in the future.
These principles can serve as guideposts at an exciting time in the community-change field. Many smart and promising initiatives are underway, fueled by foundations, nonprofits and others in the private sector. The federal government is also making important investments at the neighborhood and community levels. And learning communities of local leaders and state and local officials are actively sharing information and hard-won insights. The principles and strategies in this report can help inform and sustain these efforts and those to come in a field with so much to contribute to the strengthening and success of families living in disinvested communities.
2011-12-22
Center for American Progress;
Profiles the goals, activities, implementation, and challenges of the twelve states that won Race to the Top federal funds to improve teacher quality and preparation program accountability; analyzes their strategies; and makes policy recommendations.
2011-05-01
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies;
We study the effects of urban environment on childhood obesity by concentrating on the effects of walking trails and crime close to children's homes on their BMI and obesity status. We use a unique dataset, which combines information on recreational trails in Indianapolis with data on violent crimes and anthropomorphic and diagnostic data from children's clinic visits between 1996 and 2005. We find that having a trail near a home reduces children's weight. However, the effect depends on the amount of nearby violent crimes. Significant reductions occur only in low crime areas and trails could have opposite effects on weight in high crime areas. These effects are primarily among boys, older children, and children who live in higher income neighborhoods. Evaluated at the mean length of trails this effect for older children in no crime areas would be a reduction of two pounds of the body weight. Falsification tests using planned trails instead of existing trails, show that trails are more likely to be located in areas with heavier children, suggesting that our results on effects of trails represent a lower bound.
2010-08-27
Urban Institute;
Analyzes demographic, social, and poverty data and 2000-10 changes in the economies and housing markets of fourteen metropolitan areas to inform Casey's strategies for reinvesting in initiatives including rehabilitation and minimizing vacancies.
2010-02-01
Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest);
This report presents information on the clients and agencies served by The Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, Inc. The information is drawn from a national study, Hunger in America 2010, conducted in 2009 for Feeding America (FA) (formerly America's Second Harvest), the nation's largest organization of emergency food providers. The national study is based on completed inperson interviews with more than 62,000 clients served by the FA national network, as well as on completed questionnaires from more than 37,000 FA agencies. The study summarized below focuses on emergency food providers and their clients who are supplied with food by food banks in the FA network.
Key Findings:
The FA system served by The Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, Inc provides emergency food for an estimated 160,900 different people annually.43% of the members of households served by The Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, Inc are children under 18 years old (Table 5.3.2).35% of households include at least one employed adult (Table 5.7.1).Among households with children, 84% are food insecure and 33% are food insecure with very low food security (Table 6.1.1.1).45% of clients served by The Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, Inc report having to choose between paying for food and paying for utilities or heating fuel (Table 6.5.1).33% had to choose between paying for food and paying for medicine or medical care (Table 6.5.1).32% of households served by The Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, Inc report having at least one household member in poor health (Table 8.1.1)The Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, Inc included approximately 331 agencies at the administration of this survey, of which 249 have responded to the agency survey. Of the responding agencies, 194 had at least one food pantry, soup kitchen, or shelter.73% of pantries, 68% of kitchens, and 39% of shelters are run by faith-based agencies affiliated with churches, mosques, synagogues, and other religious organizations (Table 10.6.1).Among programs that existed in 2006, 87% of pantries, 77% of kitchens, and 50% of shelters of The Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, Inc reported that there had been an increase since 2006 in the number of clients who come to their emergency food program sites (Table 10.8.1).Food banks are by far the single most important source of food for agencies with emergency food providers, accounting for 61% of the food distributed by pantries, 41% of the food distributed by kitchens, and 33% of the food distributed by shelters (Table 13.1.1).As many as 91% of pantries, 82% of kitchens, and 74% of shelters in The Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, Inc use volunteers (Table 13.2.1).
2009-07-30
Center for Studying Health System Change;
Examines trends in the number of suburban poor, their access to health care, and efforts to improve safety-net services in the suburbs of five cities. Explores causes of limited safety net capacity, community strategies, and policy implications.
2009-07-09
Urban Institute;
Analyzes indicators of metropolitan conditions and trends critical to transforming isolated low-income neighborhoods at ten sites: the economy and labor market, demographic change, income and poverty, social conditions, and housing and mortgage market.
2009-04-30
Center for Studying Health System Change;
Examines whether specialty hospitals draw well-insured patients away from general and safety-net hospitals, reducing their ability to cross-subsidize less profitable services and uncompensated care, in three cities. Notes challenges and implications.
2008-04-16
Center for Studying Health System Change;
Examines from a community-based perspective the scope of the shortages in the public health workforce; contributing factors such as inadequate funding, salaries, and benefits; and strategies for training, recruiting, and retaining public health workers.
2008-01-01
Annie E. Casey Foundation;
Outlines Casey's early investment in the Indianapolis mayor's charter initiative as part of an effort to support innovative but as yet unproven programs, seed results, and attract co-investment. Describes the impact of program-related investments.
