New Jersey continues to face teacher shortages in critical subjects, while overall workforce levels remain steady, according to a new report released by the Heldrich Center. The report, New Jersey’s Teacher Workforce: 2025 Legislative Report, offers a decade-long perspective on teacher supply, exits, and workforce challenges, drawing on data from the New Jersey Statewide Data System.
Topic
Research, Publications, and Reports
NJSPL Report: The Role of Quality Ratings in Long-Term Care
Researchers evaluated the quality of nursing homes in NJ relative to national trends and analyzed data from the CMS’ Nursing Home Compare five-star public reporting system to track changes in nursing home quality and performance. The report found that while state nursing homes generally outperform the national average, their overall ratings have declined significantly since 2020.
Kumar, Andrews: Energy Efficiency Policies in Transition
Using a multi-disciplinary lens, we explore the underlying paradigms, dynamics, synergies, and trade-offs between different actors, institutions, and situational contexts influencing complex energy efficiency policy processes.
Heldrich Report: Voices of the Family Child Care Workforce in NJ
In 2024, the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development launched a statewide survey of registered family child care (FCC) providers in New Jersey as part of the Rutgers Child Care Research Collaborative, an initiative focused on child care in the state. The survey asked individuals who provide child care in their homes to share their voices and experiences — from what inspires them to enter and stay in the field, to the challenges they face in their daily work, and their ideas for making child care a more sustainable and rewarding profession.
Assessing Pedestrian Stress with Biometrics & Surveys
We investigate the association between pedestrians’ sensor-measured stress and survey-reported stress, as well as the temporal sensitivity of sensor metrics across varying time intervals.
Dr. Ignaccolo New Book: Small-Town Renaissance
Whether you’re a policymaker, urban planner, designer, tech innovator, or heritage advocate, this book offers fresh insights, actionable strategies, and a compelling vision for the future of rural development in the digital age.
Wolff studies the DASS-21 with Incarcerated Men
Factor loadings indicated a dominant general distress component, with some specificity for individual subscales. These findings support the DASS-21 as a valid and robust measure of psychological distress in prison populations, highlighting its utility for mental health screening in correctional settings.
Heldrich Report: Defining the Care Economy in New Jersey
A new report for the New Jersey Statewide Data System, written by Ann Obadan, Ph.D., Research Project Manager at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, and Amarachi Chuka-Maduji, former Research Project Assistant at the Heldrich Center and currently at the Delaware Department of Labor, provides an overview of how states and scholars conceptualize the care economy.
Dean Shapiro: Simplifying Research Regulations & Policies
Dean Stuart Shapiro served on a committee for a report titled “Simplifying Research Regulations and Policies” for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Edwards: Work from Home and Job Satisfaction
A new paper co-authored by Renée Edwards, Ph.D., Assistant Director at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development and Managing Director of the Employer Disability Practices Center, analyzes how different measures of job satisfaction vary between people with and without disabilities, and the extent to which working from home moderates the relationship between disability and job satisfaction