Publications

MDRC launched the In Practice blog in April 2019, to reflect lessons learned from program managers and staff in various partnerships. Posts in 2020 include Designing Programs Around Real People’s Real Needs, How to Use Data to Improve Programs, Making Evidence-Based Practices a Priority, and Improving Programs by Improving Training.

More than 300 College Promise Programs nationwide are transforming perceptions about college affordability and access while increasing rates of enrollment and completion. Participants in MDRC’s College Promise Success Initiative (CPSI) share their insights on effectively designing College Promise programs that make equity a central principle in serving students.

This is the eighth in a series of Q&As with past participants in MDRC’s Gueron Scholars Program in which they reflect on their experiences at MDRC and discuss what they’re up to today.

This brief, a collaboration with Results for America, identifies the major categories of career and technical education within the nation’s secondary and postsecondary education systems and describes the existing research on whether these programs are achieving desired outcomes for students.

This report evaluates an early education program aimed at providing high-quality language and literacy instruction to children in underserved communities. The report examines how services delivered by senior volunteers enhanced preschoolers’ experiences in the classroom and whether this program model shows promise for improving children’s literacy and social-emotional development.

Diverse, complex training needs in many programs makes staff training an ongoing challenge. Managers may be responsible for orienting new staff, implementing new proce­dures, or facilitating steps toward long-term improvement, and one-time training is often inadequate. MDRC works with programs to establish a “Learn-Do-Reflect” model of collaboration, explored in this post.

This brief presents an early analysis of a program incorporating interactive cognitive-behavioral techniques with job-readiness services for fathers recently involved in the justice system. Implementation succeeded, but about 30 percent of fathers did not engage in the program or in existing fatherhood services, suggesting similar participation challenges in both.

This brief describes an early analysis of Just Beginning (JB), a five-session, one-on-one program that uses videos and father-child play activities to build parenting skills. While JB was implemented successfully, only 55 percent of fathers completed at least one JB session, though those fathers typically completed most of the curriculum.

Bridging Access to Benefits and Care — a collaboration among three nonprofit organizations — was designed to improve connections to public benefits and health care services for people dependent on opioids and intravenous drugs in the Bronx. This brief presents findings from an MDRC study of the pilot program’s implementation.

In 2019, MDRC’s Evidence First podcast featured experts — program administrators, policymakers, and researchers — talking about the best evidence available on education and social programs that serve low-income people.

MDRC posted nearly 100 publications to its website in 2019 – reports, briefs, commentaries, blog posts, infographics, and more – on a wide range of topics, from microfinance to homevisiting, from behavioral science interventions to rent reform, from growth mindset interventions to small high schools.

This is the seventh in a series of Q&As with past participants in MDRC’s Gueron Scholars Program in which they reflect on their experiences at MDRC and discuss what they’re up to today.

This report examines colleges’ use of multiple measures to determine whether students take college-level or developmental education courses, a more accurate method than standardized placement exams. Using additional placement tests, high school transcripts, and student motivation evaluations places more students into credit-bearing courses, improving academic results and college completion rates.

In 2019, MDRC and its partners produced six videos highlighting some of the most exciting work in MDRC’s portfolio — including criminal justice reform, big data in welfare programs, a GED “bridge” program in Wisconsin, and research-practice partnerships with nonprofits.

This study analyzes the per person cost of a subsidized employment program for enrollees in Minnesota’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families who could not otherwise find employment, and the costs of other services that all sample members may have received. The program’s primary goal was to move participants into unsubsidized employment.

This report, based on a national survey of two- and four-year colleges, examines the current state of practices in developmental education assessment, placement, instruction, and support services offered to students. Reform efforts have accelerated, but new practices still reach less than half of students.

An earlier post in this series discussed considerations for reporting and interpreting cross-site impact variation and for designing studies to investigate such cross-site variation. This post discusses how those ideas were applied to address two broad questions in the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation.

One type of intervention to help students navigate the tricky transition to ninth grade communicates to them that their brains can grow “stronger.” This evaluation of one such intervention finds that it changed students’ beliefs and attitudes and produced impacts on their average academic performance.

This instructional reform diversifies math course content so that it better aligns with students’ career interests. After three semesters, the reform increased developmental math students’ rates of taking and passing college-level math and accumulating math credits. Few effects have yet emerged on overall credit accumulation, degree receipt, or transfer to a four-year college.

This study examined a “Boot Camp” program designed to reinforce basic mathematics functions for college students with limited math, reading, and writing skills, to prepare them for developmental-level courses. Three features made the program unique: computer-assisted, self-paced learning; a focus on individual learner progress; and in-class help from College-Readiness Advisors.