Research Reports

The study investigated the stress effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ mental health. This research collected primary and secondary data to compute a mental health stress index of youth mental stress levels and to examine the im­pact of the pandemic on youth behaviors.

This study investigated the financial impact of cyber charters in Pennsylvania, parents’ decision-making about cyber enrollment, and traditional rural school district and cyber leader responses to changing cyber enrollments to inform Commonwealth cyber charter policy. The data suggest that cyber enrollments and costs to rural districts have dramatically increased over time and cyber charter achievement data lag behind both brick-and-mortar charters and traditional public schools.

Using a mixed methods approach that combined state-level institutional data, local interviews with school administrators, and school district data, this research examined how COVID-19 has (re)shaped rural school districts’ ongoing efforts to identify and address equity concerns along geographic, fiscal, instructional, and racial/ethnic lines across Pennsylvania.

This research provides information about Pennsylvania coroner/medical examiners (C/MEs) and their offices. It examined office caseloads, funding, facilities, forensic capacity, vehicles and equipment, and staffing and training resources. It also assessed how the opioid epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic affected county C/ME offices.

The COVID-19 pandemic and extended period of business closures made many Americans re-examine their living and working conditions. Such re-examinations may affect housing markets in Pennsylvania, which have seen an increase in rural home purchases and a decrease in urban home purchases in 2020.