Publications

In this blog post originally published by New America, a diverse group of pre-K parents from around the country share their experiences with early learning assessments in childcare, pre-K, and Head Start settings.

Academic language skills are critical for reading and understanding content for all students, and particularly for English learners and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. This study investigated WordGen Elementary, a program designed to improve fourth- and fifth-grade students’ ability to understand and communicate academic language and their general reading skill.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.