Students and educators have returned to the classroom for the fall of 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted in-person learning in schools across the country. Yet, this does not mean the pandemic's effects on education and students are behind everyone, and the pandemic continues to linger across America. The current understanding of the…

Since the mid 1970s the national rate at which incoming 9th graders have completed high school has fallen slowly but steadily; this is also true in 41 states. In 2002, about three in every four students who might have completed high school actually did so; in some states this figure is substantially lower. In this paper I review state-level…

For most of this century, Florida's economy has been one of the "boom or bust" variety; however, since the 1960s, the economy has diversified, bringing in a variety of "high tech" manufacturing and high-end service businesses to the state. Still, wages in agriculture and tourism are so low that the state suffers in terms of per…