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Each year, tens of thousands of American students are still paddled, spanked or otherwise struck by school faculty as corporal punishment, finds a new report by the Brooking Institute . Federal data shows 166,807 students received corporal punishment in the 2011-2012 school year, the most recent year for which data is available. Of those, 28,569 were in Texas. The Brookings Institute report, released Thursday, also finds a dramatic racial disparity in the application of corporal punishment,...

In 2014, almost one in seven Americans received nutritional benefits, popularly known as "food stamps," through the Supplemental Nutrition Access Program. The program, which lifted 4.7 million people out of poverty in 2014, is one of the only federal assistance programs available to healthy adults without dependents, and the evidence increasingly indicates that it was a crucial stabilizer during the Great Recession, when many states actually dropped needy families from the welfare rolls. But...

Consider the following scenario. A policeman is on patrol, maybe he's quite new to working in the field. He sees a suspicious young man and decides to follow him. He turns the corner and sees that the man has drawn a gun from his pocket. In a snap second – almost too fast to think twice – he takes out his own gun and shoots the man dead. Only the man didn't have a gun at all, it was a mobile phone. Sadly, it's a familiar story. An incident exactly like it occurred only last week ...

Five-year-old Batoul has large cheeks and saucer-sized eyes that dart from side to side while she and the other Syrian children perform songs in Arabic and English. She's learning from caregivers while living in an orphanage known as Bayti ("home" in Arabic) in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, where the Syrian refugee population has topped tens of thousands in the past few years. The classrooms on the first floor are colorfully decorated and the dormitories upstairs are neat. From the...

In an effort to help the area's more than 4,000 homeless residents, the Harris County Sheriff's Office has started a new outreach program. The Homeless Outreach Team provides transportation to transitional housing or doctor's appointments and offers food, water, clothing, bedding and hygiene kits. The team's primary goal is to help the homeless find housing. "Typically, our day revolves around helping people who cannot help themselves," sheriff's Lt. Robert Henry said. "We help people in...

The thump of the blades cut the humid July air. EMTs heaved me from the helicopter to the gurney and the wind whipped my hair in knots. The hospital doors slammed shut behind us. Ceiling lights whizzed by and I decided to wrap my legs around the bed rails as tight as I could. I was hoping that would keep the baby from being born -- nothing the doctors tried had worked so far. I did not want to meet my baby yet because I did not want to watch it die. [For more of this story, written by Andrea...

“I heard a gong for the first time 15 or 16 years ago,” says Jamie Ford. She’d heard a gong strike before, obviously—“I’d seen the Gong Show”—but this gong, in a 2000 kundalini yoga class, was the first one she’d ever heard. “I heard it and I was just—I went to another place,” Ford tells Quartz. “I was calm. I could travel. Everything just expanded.” At the time, Ford was a biologist studying the desert...

Workers in the United States accumulate the vast majority of their retirement savings through employer-based plans, but large gaps in coverage exist. Pew’s analysis shows that more than 30 million workers report they do not have access to an employer-based retirement plan. The data, drawn from federal sources, show significant differences in access and participation across the states. For example, the share of workers in Wisconsin participating in employer-based plans, such as pensions...

Things to know about Stephen Ritz, one of NPR's 50 Great Teachers: He and his students made bow ties out of Scrabble tiles. His Bronx classroom, a refurbished school library, has more plants than desks. He calls the room his National Health, Wellness and Learning Center. It's got tower gardens, gleaming cabinets and counters, an industrial sink and a new, mobile cooking station. [For more of this story, by Cory Turner and Elissa Nadworny, go...

Two of the panelists at last year’s Straight Talk events, sponsored by The Depot teen center and the Darien Police Department, were mental health therapists Robert DiRoma, Jr and Roody Joseph. The pair opened a practice in Darien, the Counseling Center for Discovery and Change, last May. The practice is a response to a need they both saw for services in the community. They don’t keep conventional office hours and are instead evenings Tuesday through Thursday and on Saturdays.

Overview Over the past three decades, imprisonment has become the dominant sanction in the federal criminal justice system. Nine in 10 federal offenders received prison sentences in 2014, up from less than half in 1980, as the use of probation declined steadily. 1 (See Figure 1.) Federal courts sentenced 2,300 fewer offenders to probation in 2014 than in 1980, even though their caseload nearly tripled during that span. 2 Changes in the kinds of offenses and offenders prosecuted in federal...

IISC has long believed that this image, illustrating the difference between equality and equity, is worth a thousand words. As a gift to the world of equity practitioners, IISC engaged artist Angus Maguire  to draw a new version of an old favorite (since we could only find pixilated versions of the original). Please feel free to download the high-resolution image and use in your presentations. [Download at http://interactioninstitute.org/illustrating-equality-vs-equity/]