The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, along with the Miami Herald and Florida NPR, has found that "since the collapse of the economy in 2008, Florida’s student population has become poorer each year, with almost all school districts in the state experiencing spikes in the number of kids who qualify for subsidized meals."

"The Center also found that children have become homeless at an alarming rate as well, with an 84 percent increase since 2007."

"An investigation by the Orlando Sentinel found that police cars in Florida are crashing at the astonishing rate of 20 a day, resulting, over a five-year period, in thousands of injuries and more than 100 deaths. The findings led to a three-part series, “Collision With the Law,” which began Sunday, Feb. 12."

"Rene Stutzman and Scott Powers used Florida crash data to identify more than 37,000 police car crashes from 2006-2010. The data, crash reports, traffic homicide files and interviews helped reveal officers were at least partly at fault a quarter of the time, but rarely faced tickets or ...

In a three-part, eight-story series, The Post, found that underage drinkers on Ohio University's campus were safer drinking at the bars than they were at a house party. It also broke down a three-year Ohio Liquor Control Commission oversight; allowing a bar to remain open for three-years under an intended suspension. The series also looks at drinking in dorms, which are the location of the most underage drinking citations.

"Bloomberg BusniessWeek reports that almost 15,000 federal retirees, including former leaders of Congress, a university president and a banker, are receiving six-figure pensions from a system that faces a $674.2 billion shortfall.

Charles R. Babcock and Frank Bass obtained data that shows about one of every 125 retired federal civilian workers collects more than $100,000 in benefits annually."

"Tucson's housing market has fallen so hard so fast that more than one in three homes sold last year went for less than $100,000.

Nearly 6,400 homes in Pima County, Arizona were sold for five figures in 2011 - that's more than 35 percent of the 18,000 homes sold last year, an Arizona Daily Star analysis shows."

Included in the report is an interactive map showing the areas of town with the most sales under $100,000 and under $25,000.

"A review by The Salt Lake Tribune has found that perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars of Utah's beer tax money have been diverted to other causes or rolled into everyday city or county activities in.

In some cases, the recipients seemingly stretched the interpretation of the statute to justify how they spent the money. Other municipalities didn’t even try to explain how their purchases comply with the law."

"In the wake of two controversial officer-involved shooting deaths in the summer of 2010, the Las Vegas Review-Journal analyzed two decades of shootings by officers with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

The newspaper found an insular police department that is slow to weed out problem cops and slower still to adopt policies and procedures that protect both its own officers and the citizens they serve. It is an agency that celebrates a hard-charging police culture while often failing to learn from its mistakes."

"In nursing homes, where life is already so fragile, a single lapse can be life-threatening. Yet neglect is all too common, according to a Free Press analysis of Michigan inspection reports.

Three out of four homes were cited in the last three years for serious violations that harmed residents or put them in immediate jeopardy. In fact, state inspectors handed out serious citations nearly twice as often as the national average."

This story is one of a three part series the Free Press on the state of nursing homes in Michigan. Included in the project is an interactive map of ...

"Cozy political connections, favorable tax treatment and little public oversight has allowed Miami charter school chain Academica to exploit Florida's laws, build a successful chain of schools, and profit off taxpayer dollars, a Miami Herald investigation has found.

Charter schools have grown into a $400-million-a-year business in South Florida, receiving about $6,000 in taxpayer dollars for every student enrolled but even when charter schools have been caught violating state laws, school districts have few tools to demand compliance."

Click here for the multi-part series; Cashing In On Kids

"For the past eight years Washington has steered people with state-subsidized health care — Medicaid patients, injured workers and state employees — to methadone, a narcotic with two notable characteristics. The drug is cheap. The drug is unpredictable.

The state highlights the former and downplays the latter, cutting its costs while refusing to own up to the consequences, according to a multi-series Seattle Times investigation that includes computerized analysis of death certificates, hospitalization records and poverty data." To view a map that pinpoints methadone deaths around the state click here.