PHILADELPHIA — In the second year of J. Jondhi Harrell’s 20-year sentence, he began to contemplate what would alter a person’s life for good. Financial literacy, employment, mentorship and community support were essential, he recalled thinking. “If you can’t feed yourself, if you can’t manage your money, you can’t build a solid foundation for the […]
Posted inWho Counts?
How a Jim Crow-era strategy blocked 4.6 million people from voting in 2022
A type of law first created after the end of slavery to prohibit Black men from voting prevented more than 4.6 million Americans from participating in the 2022 midterm elections. Forty-eight states strip voting rights from people convicted of felonies, no small decision in the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. A […]
Posted inEducation
When the punishment is the same as the crime: Suspended for missing class
PHOENIX — Guadalupe Hernandez’s attendance problems started in kindergarten. The boy, who has two attention disorders and oppositional defiant disorder, often refused to sit still for circle time. He also experienced separation anxiety while away from his grandmother, Frances Yduarte, who raised him. He’d spend his days distracted from lessons, wishing he was home with […]
Posted inUnhoused and Undercounted
Public Integrity student homelessness project breaks ground
The Center for Public Integrity is the only national investigative newsroom solely focusing on the causes and effects of inequality. Telling these stories well takes time, resources and expertise. Investigating inequality often requires employing the tools of social scientists to do original analyses. These techniques have been used by newsrooms to show disparities in home […]
Posted inLive Events
Join us for a live discussion: How four decades of tax cuts fueled inequality
Wealth inequality in the U.S. has widened to historic levels, exacerbating a range of societal problems. A new investigation by the Center for Public Integrity points to one of the main culprits: Our nation’s tax code. Over the last 40 years, Congress has cut the income tax rate five times for the wealthiest people. Corporations […]
Posted inUnhoused and Undercounted
Schools can get funds to help homeless students. Why do so many miss out?
Towanda Chew has gone to extraordinary lengths to prioritize her children’s education. Like many parents navigating homelessness, keeping this promise remains a harrowing challenge. It requires that she first keep them safe and sheltered. “I wish I could have walked on the stage,” said Chew, who didn’t graduate from high school, but got her GED. […]
Posted inUnhoused and Undercounted
This school district helped homeless students graduate. Here’s what it took.
LACEY, Wash. — In April of his senior year at Timberline High School, after years of conflict at home, Mikel Jake “MJ” Dizon became homeless. He was a few months from graduation, but considered dropping out of school to focus on his job as a Starbucks barista to make money for rent. This decision could […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
I set out to tell his story. Then he found out he was ill.
As the second winter of the COVID-19 pandemic approached, I journeyed to Blue Gap, Arizona, to at last meet the man whose steady, calm voice on the other end of the phone line had been a constant for me since the start of the global health crisis. I first connected with Earl Tulley in early […]
Posted inUnhoused and Undercounted
Making visible the hidden toll of student homelessness around the country
What happens to students experiencing homelessness? Federal law requires that public schools assist to help break what could become an inescapable cycle of hardship. But many of the students who need that aid fall through the cracks. Read our investigation Thousands of schools are failing to identify and help homeless students, despite a federal mandate […]
Posted inEnvironment
Nuclear buildup sickened his community. Then it caught up with him.
Blue Gap-Tachee Community — Growing up in this corner of the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona, Earl Tulley experienced all the bounties that the high desert community of sage-covered hills, valleys and plateaus had to offer. He knew that uranium had been pulled from the depths of the mesas here during his Cold War childhood. […]
Posted inUnequal Burden
How four decades of tax cuts fueled inequality
A dense fog rolling in off the Pacific enveloped President Ronald Reagan’s majestic 688-acre ranch, high in the hills above Santa Barbara, California. Visibility was limited, but a crowd of cameramen, photographers and reporters were gathered on that day in 1981 to record the president signing a major piece of legislation. Wearing jeans, a faded […]
Posted inWho Counts?
Cities want noncitizens to vote on local matters. GOP sees a target
WASHINGTON – Abel Amene was born in Ethiopia and came to the U.S. when he was 13 years old. Amene, who is a green card holder, has lived in the D.C.-area for the past 23 years, where he helps seniors sign up for vaccine appointments and volunteers in political campaigns. In 2021, he wrote a […]
Posted inDemocracy
What voter turnout shows, and hides, about elections
The voter turnout in 2020 was a stunning 67%, according to one source. Another had it at 94%. A third fixed 2020 voter turnout at 63%. All three are correct — because they do the math differently. They’re comparing actual voters with the number of eligible voters, registered voters and Americans of voting age, respectively. […]
Posted inUnhoused and Undercounted
Hidden toll: Thousands of schools fail to count homeless students
For months, Beth Petersen paid acquaintances to take her son to school — money she sorely needed. They’d lost their apartment, her son bouncing between relatives and friends while she hotel-hopped. As hard as she tried to keep the 13-year-old at his school, they finally had to switch districts. Under federal law, Petersen’s son had […]
Posted inUnhoused and Undercounted
The graduation gap hurting homeless students
Nationwide, homeless students graduate from high school at lower rates than average, blunting their opportunities for stable jobs and increasing the risk of continued housing insecurity in adulthood. The gap is often stark: In 18 states, graduation rates for students who experienced homelessness lagged more than 20 percentage points behind the overall rate in both […]
Posted inUnhoused and Undercounted
Facts and figures: The grim numbers on homeless students
A Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal education data suggests roughly 300,000 students entitled to essential rights reserved for homeless students have slipped through the cracks, unidentified by the school districts mandated to help them. Some 2,400 districts did not report having even one homeless student despite levels of financial need that make those […]
Posted inUnhoused and Undercounted
Schools must help homeless students. Here’s what you should know.
When is a student considered homeless? The definition of homelessness among K-12 students is laid out in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law that details the help public schools must give unstably housed children. That includes students living in the following conditions: More than 75% of children identified as homeless under the McKinney-Vento […]
Posted inUnhoused and Undercounted
What housing instability looks like for parents, students
Public schools are required by federal law to take steps that will help homeless students get an equal education. But what homelessness looks like is broader than families and even some schools realize. The federal definition, for instance, includes children doubling up with extended family out of economic need or living in transitional housing paid […]
Posted inInequality
Programs to end homelessness fall short for Black veterans
SAN DIEGO — William Keith has experienced homelessness on and off here for the last 20 years. His latest struggle came at the start of the pandemic. Keith had a federal housing voucher that guaranteed his rent to landlords. But as a Black man, the 66-year-old veteran said, it felt much harder to find housing […]
Posted inLabor
End of slavery exception in state constitutions could reform prison labor
In the days when the COVID-19 virus was new, less understood and more deadly, officials in Louisiana turned to state prison inmates to produce essential but scarce products to slow the rapid spread of the virus. There were occupational hazards and health concerns for the imprisoned people mixing chemicals to create hard-to-find hand sanitizer. For […]
Posted inWho Counts?
Thousands of votes won’t count this year over minor absentee ballot errors
Thousands of Americans will lose their right to vote in this year’s midterm elections over mistakes like forgetting a signature or putting down the wrong date on paperwork for mail voting. Most states don’t offer voters an opportunity to correct — or “cure” — absentee ballots after submission. And a surge in mail voting in […]
Posted inElections
Anti-immigrant rhetoric spiked in this election. Here’s why it’s dangerous.
It was 100 years ago that Alexander Terrell, a former Confederate officer and Texas representative, claimed that “Mexicans are induced on election day to swim across the Rio Grande and are voted before their hair is dry.” The Terrell Election Law of 1903, fueled by false claims that non-citizens from Mexico were voting in Texas […]
Posted inWho Counts?
It’s already too late for thousands of would-be voters: Why that matters
In more than half the country, if you’re not already registered to vote, it’s already too late to cast a ballot in midterm elections that will decide control of Congress, state legislatures and numerous state and local offices on Nov. 8. Included in a slew of new restrictions on voting rights in 26 states controlled […]
Posted inWho Counts?
Costs to vote considered modern “poll taxes”
Under a new law, thousands of Missouri voters could have to pay $15 to acquire the documents needed to get an ID to vote. Wyoming voters also face their state’s new ID law, passed last year, which requires a government or student identification card to cast a ballot. Voters without one must present certain proof […]
Posted inWho Counts?
‘Chaos and confusion’: The campaign to stamp out ballot drop boxes
This story also appeared in South Florida Sun Sentinel and Stateline In 2020, ballot drop boxes were a sturdy, metallic symbol of increased voter access amid a pandemic. Absentee and mail voting surged across the country, and voters used drop boxes to return 41% of those ballots. Two years later, they’ve become a symbol of […]
Posted inNatural Resources
Drilling down on water access as drought becomes the ‘new normal’
Crystal Tulley-Cordova’s job is addressing one of the most pressing needs of the Navajo Nation: access to clean water. Water is a calling that Tulley-Cordova, 39 and an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, was drawn to from an early age. She and her family experienced the struggles of accessing safe drinking water, traveling long […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Public Integrity honors founder Charles Lewis with renaming of fellowship
At a ceremony honoring the career of Center for Public Integrity founder Charles “Chuck” Lewis earlier this month, CEO Paul Cheung announced that Public Integrity was renaming its graduate fellowship to the Charles Lewis American University Fellowship at the Center for Public Integrity. The joint fellowship with American University, currently held by graduate student Ileana […]
Posted inLive Events
Join us: Building a diverse future for investigative news
Update: The recording of the discussion has been posted above. Join the Center for Public Integrity Nov. 2, 2022, at 6:30 pm EDT for a virtual fireside chat featuring Public Integrity Editor Mc Nelly Torres. Nicole Dungca, a Washington Post investigative reporter and incoming president of Asian American Journalists Association, will moderate the chat. Dungca and […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Janelle O’Dea joins Public Integrity as data reporter for local collaborations
Janelle O’Dea is joining the Center for Public Integrity in a newly created data reporter position focused on local news collaborations and capacity-building. Strengthening the data capabilities of local news organizations, especially in underserved and underrepresented communities is a core tenet to Public Integrity’s mission to confront inequality in the U.S. She joins Public Integrity […]
Posted inLabor
Can you tackle systemic racism without confronting race?
It’s not a question of simple semantics. Words exercise power and consequences. In the governmental jargon that can turn rhetoric into reality, two words — “disadvantaged” and “underserved” — help to explain why one act of Congress failed to provide long sought financial assistance to Black farmers, but another may succeed. The American Rescue Plan […]