Publications

Although policymakers and institutions have increasingly disaggregated college completion data by race and gender to create targeted forms of support, the complex and intersecting challenges that Black women face in college often remain overlooked. This brief highlights opportunities to address the challenges Black women face in postsecondary education.

The TANF Data Innovation (TDI) project was created to expand the use of administrative data by state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) agencies to improve program performance. This brief describes a TDI test of an approach to building staff capabilities through applied data analytics, intensive training, and technical assistance.

This report describes how the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic affected the economic circumstances and emotional well-being of a small sample of families with younger children and low incomes. It adds meaningful context to the nationally reported aggregate statistics about the pandemic and its effects on families and children.

When high school students can enroll in college courses, they are more likely to enroll in and persist in college; however, access to such opportunities is distributed inequitably. This brief offers recommendations for increasing access to and equity in such courses for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds.

Head Start, a federal early childhood program, uses data-driven insights to enhance the quality and responsiveness of its services. The National Head Start Association’s Victoria L. Jones and MDRC’s Samuel Maves spoke with Mary Lockhart-Findling, a Head Start program director, to discuss the ins and outs of pre-K assessments.

Informed self-placement (ISP) helps college students determine whether they are ready for entry-level college courses or need remedial education first. This brief explores the potential of ISP to improve students’ access to college-level courses and gives colleges an opportunity to consider placement-method changes that may boost student success.

Per Scholas, a sector-based training and career advancement program, has had success expanding access and increasing enrollment by leveraging the expertise of outside research firms. This brief focuses on the organization’s participation in MDRC’s “Expanding the Impact” study, which was designed to help Per Scholas further deepen its impact.

The Paycheck Plus Demonstration in New York and Atlanta offered an expanded after-tax bonus to low-income workers without dependent children, a population that benefits little from the current Earned Income Tax Credit. This brief presents impacts on employment, earnings, and income based on the pooled sample from both cities.

Leaning on a robust body of evidence, this brief offers suggestions to policymakers, college administrators, and researchers for forecasting the financial impact of new interventions in postsecondary education, based on the interventions’ costs and their ability to keep more students enrolled, generate tuition revenue and state funding, and improve outcomes.

What works to help community college students progress academically? This brief synthesizes 20 years of rigorous research by MDRC, presenting new evidence about key attributes of community college interventions that are positively related to larger impacts on students’ academic progress.

Many colleges are exploring alternative assessment models, such as informed self-placement (ISP), to increase student enrollment and success in entry-level college courses and to identify students who would benefit from developmental (remedial) instruction. This literature review provides a discussion of the methods used to implement ISP and justifications for its use.

Many college students have difficulty meeting their basic needs for food, housing, childcare, and health care, which can interfere with their ability to concentrate on their studies, remain enrolled, and eventually graduate. This brief explores the interventions that can help students meet their basic needs and the emerging evidence behind these interventions.

College students who enroll full time directly after high school are often considered “traditional.” But their experience is not the norm—a large proportion of undergraduate students are older than 24, work full time, or have children. This brief shares recommendations for helping these “posttraditional” learners succeed. 

Multiple testing procedures reduce the likelihood of false positive findings, but can also reduce the probability of detecting true effects. This post introduces two open-source software tools from the Power Under Multiplicity Project that can help researchers plan analyses for randomized controlled trials using multiple testing procedures.

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) project integrated procedural justice (the idea of fairness in processes) into enforcement at six child support agencies. This report compares the service and enforcement experiences of parents randomly assigned to receive PJAC services with those of parents assigned to business as usual.

Homeboy Industries’ (HBI) experience implementing a new data system was described in an earlier InPractice post. This post examines the complexities and challenges that must be addressed before successful implementation can take place, and how HBI managed that change process.

State higher education funding is strongly linked with college completion. However, states often distribute funding inequitably, providing fewer resources to institutions that predominantly serve students of color and those with low incomes. This brief explores “state finance equity audits,” which states can use to assess and correct inequities in funding.

In this commentary originally published in Route Fifty, JoAnn Hsueh, Cynthia Miller, and Michelle Maier discuss how states are supplementing the wages of childcare workers to retain them during widespread staffing shortages. Ensuring eligible workers enroll to receive the benefit can be challenging, but research suggests three strategies to help.

Home visiting programs aim to support the healthy development of infants and toddlers in families with low incomes. This report presents the findings from a study that estimated the cost of providing home visiting services.

Poverty in childhood can affect health, social and behavioral functioning, and cognitive, academic, and educational outcomes. Yet little is known about how children view their experiences of poverty. This brief summarizes findings from interviews with children and adolescents about their perceptions of wealth, economic inequality, and their own poverty experiences.