Founded in 1974, MDRC is committed to improving the lives of people with low incomes. We design promising new interventions, evaluate existing programs, and provide technical assistance to build better programs.
MDRC develops evidence about solutions to some of the nation’s most difficult problems. Explore our projects and variety of products, including publications, videos, podcast episodes, and resources for researchers and practitioners.
This report documents the experiences of five programs that integrate employment services into treatment and recovery programs for people with substance use disorder. It draws on interviews with managers and direct service staff members to describe the experiences of programs in relation to critical aspects of program design and implementation.
Today’s early education assessment tools fail to capture the complexity of skills in children who are dual language learners (DLLs). In this blog post originally published by New America, Emily Hanno describes three principles that researchers and practitioners believe are important when developing accurate, actionable, and equitable assessment tools for DLLs.
Rachel Rosen, codirector of MDRC’s Center of Effective Career and Technical Education (CTE), describes how recent evaluation findings about the P-TECH 9-14 Schools model advance the field’s understanding of ways to better serve students. A version of the interview originally appeared in the Advance CTE blog Learning That Works!
Increasingly, companies are favoring skill-based requirements—such as communication and writing—in job postings. In response, postsecondary educators are looking for ways to teach these “soft skills” explicitly. This brief outlines practical considerations and recommendations for developing and implementing soft-skills instruction in a postsecondary setting.
The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) project integrates procedural justice (the idea of fairness in processes) into enforcement at six child support agencies. This brief draws on interviews conducted with noncustodial and custodial parents in the study and describes parents’ perspectives on and experiences with the child support program.
This San Diego–based program provided employment services to jobseekers with low incomes and a range of disabilities and health conditions using the IPS model, originally designed for and used successfully with people with serious mental illness. This practitioner brief presents lessons learned from testing the model with a different group.
Customer Journey Mapping as a Tool to Identify Barriers to Program Participation
To identify ways to bolster participation in fatherhood programs, the Strengthening the Implementation of Responsible Fatherhood Programs project used “customer journey mapping,” a process that focuses on the needs and goals of participants. This document describes and illustrates each of five steps in the mapping process.
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.
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.
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.
Families’ Stories from the Early Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic
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.
In this blog post originally published by New America, seven pre-K leaders—including center directors and principals—share their perspectives about how to make early education assessments more useful, equitable, and effective.
Disruptive behaviors in school can hinder students’ learning and long-term success. This study evaluated a “multi-tiered systems of support for behavior” program, which reinforces good behavior and provides supplemental support to students in need. Overall student outcomes did not improve but students who struggled the most saw some short-term benefits.
This blog post looks at how community colleges participating in MDRC’s Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) project use data-driven program management to keep tabs on key performance measures in real time and then act when those measures aren’t moving in the right direction.
Results of a Qualitative Study Exploring the Perspectives of Children and Their Parents
Some 10.5 million children in this country live in poverty, yet little is known about how they and their families view their daily experiences of poverty. In this report, children, adolescents, and their parents who participate in social safety net programs discuss their perceptions of poverty, wealth, and economic inequality.
Lessons from Employers and Schools in NYC's Original P-TECH Grades 9-14 Schools
New York City P-TECH Grades 9-14 schools partner directly with employers to provide work-based learning experiences for students, including internships, mentoring, and job shadowing, that align with the career and technical education curricula the schools offer. This brief describes four important strategies for forming and maintaining productive partnerships.
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.
Postsecondary institutions across the country are adopting corequisite remediation—which enrolls students directly into college-level courses and provides them with aligned and concurrent support—as an alternative to stand-alone developmental (remedial) courses. This brief summarizes insights from the latest research.
Homeboy Industries Managed Its Organization-Wide Transition to a New Data System by Following Five Key Principles
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.
An Exploratory Study of Student Outcomes and Placement Practices
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.