Press Releases

Strongly held but conflicting values have shaped the U.S. social safety net and the policy debates since its expansion in the 1960s. A new Urban Institute Press book disentangles these beliefs and shows how they have led to the patchwork of mostly uncoordinated programs the safety net is today.

As Congress again tries to draft comprehensive immigration reform legislation, lawmakers should balance the protection of children and the integrity of their families with immigration law enforcement objectives, according to a new Urban Institute study. "Facing Our Future: Children in the Aftermath of Immigration Enforcement" takes a hard look at current immigration policies' impacts on children of unauthorized immigrants, a part of the immigration picture that has so far been left out of focus. The report chronicles the experiences of more than 100 children affected by six worksite raids or targeted arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Anthony A. Williams, the District of Columbia's two-term mayor from 1999 to 2006, has become a member of the Urban Institute's Board of Trustees.

An unmistakable sense of urgency runs throughout Creating a New Teaching Profession, with the top scholars and practitioners who coauthor the book underscoring that current systems for training, hiring, retaining, and rewarding teachers not only are imperfect, but are detrimental to building the best teacher workforce possible. Contributors to the book propose such major reforms as remaking longstanding teacher training systems and using private-sector approaches to modernize recruitment and compensation.

Eighteen education policy experts put the past decade's surge in high-school reform efforts to the test in Saving America's High Schools from the Urban Institute Press. Led by coeditors Becky Smerdon and Kathryn Borman, the team of authors size up national reform trends and draw on at least five years of research in Baltimore, New York City, Chicago, Ohio, and North Carolina.

Latinos, California's largest minority population, are the most underrepresented group of color in the state's nonprofit sector, according to the first systematic study of racial and ethnic diversity in California's nonprofits.

The number and share of children with at least one immigrant parent, the percentage of children of immigrants who are U.S. citizens, and the share of children of immigrants vs. children with native parents who are poor are just some of the data this snapshot (in English and Spanish) provides.

Eugene Steuerle, one of the nation's most respected public policy experts, whose portfolio ranges from taxes and federal spending on children to entitlements and the vitality of nonprofits, has rejoined the Urban Institute as an Institute fellow and the Richard B. Fisher

The metropolitan Washington housing market, just beginning to stabilize at midyear, will have to deal soon with tens of thousands of additional foreclosed homes thrown onto the market, an Urban Institute study forecasts.

Low enrollment, not low retention, undercuts the number of women graduating with engineering bachelor’s degrees, according to an Urban Institute study highlighted in PRISM magazine, the flagship publication of the American Society for Engineering Education.