The Pew Center on the States conducts ground-breaking research in many areas of critical importance to state policy makers. Our research is tailored to help states make sound, data-driven policy choices.
Clean Energy Economy
The emerging clean energy economy is creating well-paying jobs in every state for people of all skill levels and educational backgrounds. This emerging sector is poised to expand significantly, driven by increasing consumer demand, venture capital infusions, and federal and state policy reforms.
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Corrections and Public Safety
State policy makers across the nation are asking whether soaring prison budgets are the best path to public safety. Increasingly, they are finding that the answer is “no.” Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project helps states advance fiscally sound, data-driven policies and practices in sentencing and corrections that protect public safety, hold offenders accountable and control corrections costs. The Project currently collaborates with the Pew Center on the States and five external partners to provide expert, non-partisan information and assistance to 13 states that want a better return on their public safety investments.
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Economic Competitiveness
The Pew Center on the States conducts research to identify the keys to state economic competitiveness—including recent reports examining innovative state research and development efforts, how states are struggling to pay $2.73 trillion in promised retirement benefits, and how state tax systems impede economic vitality.
In addition, the Center seeks to assess the economic impact of strategic investments in young children. In 2006, Pew joined with several philanthropists, foundations and corporations to create the Partnership for America’s Economic Success, which is guided by an advisory board that includes economists, business leaders, children’s advocates and policy experts.
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Election Reform
The Pew Center on the States (PCS) initiates and oversees programs that promote solutions to improve our election system. Election reform is an important component of our broader efforts to identify and advance effective policy approaches to critical issues facing states.
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Government Performance
For more than a decade, the Government Performance Project has been the nation’s premier source for comprehensive and independent information about state management. Its mission is to improve service to citizens by strengthening government policy and performance. The project systematically evaluates how well states manage their money, people, information and infrastructure—four areas critical to ensuring that states’ policy decisions and practices actually deliver their intended outcomes. This information in turn helps state policymakers understand the steps they can take and the policy changes they can make to strengthen government performance.
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K-12 Education
Since 1994, Pew has supported Quality Counts, an annual report card grading all 50 states on K-12 educational standards and accountability, as well as efforts to improve teacher quality, school climate, and resource equity. The report card, produced by Editorial Projects in Education, a non-profit news organization, is published in Education Week magazine. Since partnering with the Pew Center on the States in 2006, Quality Counts 2007 and Quality Counts 2008 continue this research with a new feature: a “Chance-for-Success Index,” which tracks state efforts to connect education from prekindergarten through postsecondary education and training.
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Medicaid
In January 2006, the Pew Center on the States released, Special Report on Medicaid: Bridging the Gap Between Care and Cost, which analyzed how state Medicaid programs are wrestling with rising costs and highlighted examples of which innovations are working, which are not, and why. The report was released as a special section in Governing magazine.
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Pre-K Education
Pew works to expand access to high-quality prekindergarten programs for all three- and four-year olds in the United States. While we work with a variety of groups, two major organizations operate at the core of our initiative: The National Institute for Early Education Research and Pre-K Now. Pew also managed a project to develop guidelines for states on creating fair and effective accountability systems for state pre-kindergarten programs.
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State News (Stateline.org)
Since 1999, The Pew Charitable Trusts has supported Stateline.org, an online news resource that covers state politics and policy through original reporting and by collecting news stories on issues of interest to states. Stateline.org arms both news-gatherers and state officials and researchers with up-to-date information and research material on state policy innovations and trends. Stateline.org also publishes an annual State of the States report, and sponsors professional development conferences and workshops for the news media.
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Subprime Mortgage Lending
Home ownership is part of the American dream. But a mix of risky mortgage products, loose underwriting standards and weakening home prices is producing a record volume of foreclosures. Pew's Center on the States is working with Pew's Health and Human Services program to highlight states' efforts to strengthen loan underwriting standards and help borrowers avoid foreclosure.
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