Publications

Targeting “hard to employ” groups, transitional jobs programs use a range of approaches. Some place participants into fully subsidized, temporary jobs to gain work experience; others place recruits into permanent positions with a temporary wage subsidy; and others combine methods. This report introduces the evaluation of 13 distinct programs.

Youth development is a cornerstone of the YouthBuild program, which provides job skills training, academic support, counseling, and leadership opportunities to low-income, out-of-school young adults. Participants attested to the transformation that can occur in an early 1990s study; a 2014 survey of program directors largely reaffirms this.

This infographic describes MDRC’s results from the largest random assignment evaluation of a program serving youth people aging out of the foster care and juvenile justice systems. After one year, YVLifeSet, a program run by Youth Villages, boosts earnings, increases housing stability and economic well-being, and improves outcomes related to health and safety.

This study evaluated a program, called YVLifeSet, that offers individualized services to young people who are making the transition from foster care or juvenile justice custody to independent adulthood. After one year, the program increased earnings, reduced homelessness and material hardship, and improved outcomes related to health and safety.

Diplomas Now, a partnership of three national organizations, aims to increase graduation rates in high-risk schools, targeting support to students who need it most. This second report finds that Diplomas Now schools are differentiating themselves from comparable schools in their implementation of structural and instructional reforms.

In this two-page issue focus, five advisers from MDRC’s College Match project reflect on the range of issues facing the students they advised, and describe their efforts to provide informed advice and encouragement to students who may unknowingly underestimate their college options.

Research has shown that nationally, between 10 percent and 40 percent of high school graduates who intend to go to college don’t enroll the following fall. In this Issue Focus, former College Match advisers describe strategies they used to combat this “summer melt.”

Developmental math is too often an obstacle to community college students’ success. By shifting the emphasis from “algebra for all” to math skills with broader career relevance — such as quantitative literacy and statistics — and revising course structure and sequence, this Texas-wide education reform is off to a promising start.

This two-page issue focus summarizes the main findings from Head Start CARES, a test of three distinct classroom-based approaches to enhancing children’s social-emotional development: Incredible Years Teacher Training Program, Preschool PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies), and Tools of the Mind–Play.

This guide for counselors and advisers offers strategies for helping low-income high school students choose selective colleges that match their academic profiles, financial considerations, and personal needs. It tracks the many steps in the college search, application, and selection process, suggesting ways to incorporate a “match” focus at each stage.

Beyond measuring average program impacts, it is important to understand how impacts vary. This paper gives a broad overview of the conceptual and statistical issues involved in using multisite randomized trials to learn about and from variation in program effects across individuals, across subgroups of individuals, and across program sites.

This random assignment study examines the long-term impacts of a community college program offering financial aid that is contingent on academic performance. Focusing on low-income parents, mostly mothers, it finds that the program decreased the time it took students to earn a degree but did not increase employment or earnings.

This two-page issue focus describes two projects — one completed and the other just started — testing a career-focused GED curriculum model that aims to improve high school credentialing and college entry rates. It offers a contextualized, career-focused GED curriculum, while supporting students in their transition to college or training.

High school reform is increasingly focused on the role of career-technical education (CTE) in preparing all students for success in both college and career. Instead of stand-alone vocational courses, programs that merge CTE, rigorous academics, and career exploration are gaining momentum, but schools need resources and training to implement them.

Services to help students stay in school are often fragmented. In this program, school-based coordinators identify students at risk, work with them to assess their needs, connect them with school and community supports, and monitor their progress. Case-managed students received more services than others, but early impact findings are inconclusive.

This report examines the implementation and effects of an academic summer program for middle school students offered by Building Educated Leaders for Life (BELL). The findings suggest that BELL students did not outperform non-BELL students in reading, but that the program may have had a positive effect on students’ math achievement.

Using data from the Head Start Impact Study, this paper examines variation in Head Start effects across individual children, policy-relevant subgroups of children, and Head Start centers. It finds that past estimates of the average effect of Head Start programs mask a wide range of relative program effectiveness.

MDRC's evaluation of CUNY's ASAP, which showed that the program is doubling the graduation rate of students who start with developmental needs, has gained a lot of attention. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions we've received about ASAP and the study — as well as their answers.

One-on-one tutoring by volunteers improves the reading proficiency of struggling second- to fifth-graders, according to MDRC’s random assignment study. As a program staffed mostly by volunteers, Reading Partners is substantially less costly than other supplemental reading services typically offered to struggling readers.

Nonprofit organizations, which deliver many of the social services Americans receive, often face financial management challenges that affect the quality of their services. This report examines how 25 Chicago-based organizations responded over a four-year period to an initiative designed to improve their ability to address those financial challenges.