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 interactive guide and the accompanying, full toolkit are designed for school-based and community-based programs interested in implementing evidence-based early childhood curricula. The guide provides practical guidelines and tools for four stages of implementation.
Homeboy Industries (HBI), one of the largest gang rehabilitation and reentry organizations in the world, is transforming its data infrastructure and the way it uses technology to better support its client-centered program services. MDRC recently collaborated with HBI on a project to establish program logic models and to assess the organization’s data collection needs and practices. This post draws on what was learned from that collaboration.
To reach policymakers, practitioners, and other important decisionmakers, MDRC experts authored or coauthored more than a dozen commentaries on evidence-based solutions for a variety of venues in 2021. Here are a few of them.
MDRC hosts several blogs, including InPractice: Lessons for and from Practitioners, Ideas and Evidence 2021, the Implementation Research Incubator, and the Future of Career and Technical Education. Here are the top blog posts from 2021.
In this commentary originally published by New America, Meghan McCormick and Alyssa Ratledge explain that reliable child care is critical to the success of student-parents in community college. They offer three evidence-driven approaches states and colleges can take to better support student-parents.
This brief, produced with the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, offers promising strategies to address the barriers that state-level postsecondary leaders have observed inhibit evidence-based policy making in higher education.
In this commentary, which originally appeared in The Crime Report, Sam Schaeffer and Ivonne Garcia describe how temporary cash grants provided by the Center for Employment Opportunities helped more than 10,000 returning citizens transition from prison during the pandemic. They also share findings about the program from MDRC’s recent study.
Slingshot Memphis invited MDRC to assess its efforts to strengthen antipoverty organizations that work directly with Memphis families and individuals. This issue focus describes MDRC’s findings and presents suggestions it offered Slingshot to improve its processes, which may be useful to larger human services field.
Why It’s Critical to Improve Pre-K Assessments to Support Equitable Early Learning
Policymakers are considering historic investments in high-quality, universal pre-K. In this commentary originally published by New America, JoAnn Hsueh and Meghan McCormick explain why and how researchers, districts, and states should make prekindergarten assessments of children more equitable, useful, and actionable.
To learn more about how program designers, educators, and other stakeholders can learn from the past to build equitable career and technical education (CTE) programs today, MDRC’s Center for Effective CTE spoke with Dr. Eddie Fletcher, an associate professor in workforce development and education at The Ohio State University.
Solutions for Educational Equity Through Social and Emotional Well-Being
Schools and school districts are being asked to provide more and more services to students while being given few additional resources. This brief discusses how school districts can use partnerships with outside organizations and agencies to help provide those additional services.
Implications for Research and Evaluation to Inform Programs Serving Low-Income Populations
This paper discusses several ongoing trends in the labor market and their potential effects on the nature of work over the next 10 to 15 years for low-income populations. The trends are used to highlight potential questions to inform research and evaluation agendas on this topic.
In this essay, MDRC President Virginia Knox describes two recent projects that have benefited from inviting the expertise of front-line staff members and program participants to inform how MDRC designs, implements, and writes about its work.
The routine, large-scale collection of unbiased data about children’s skills, knowledge, behaviors, and classroom experiences is critical to the expansion of equitable pre-K programs nationwide. A new initiative aims to shift the data landscape and reimagine with an equity-centered lens the tools used to measure children’s early learning skills.
Reflections from Leaders at District of Columbia Public Schools
A previous brief from this series summarized the experiences and recommendations of leaders who are working to reexamine their districts’ systems, structures, and policies to ensure they support the well-being and learning of all students. This accompanying brief provides those leaders’ thoughts in their own words.
In this commentary, originally published by The Hechinger Report, MDRC’s Alex Mayer and Catherine Brown from The Institute for College Access & Success explain how research shows that investing in comprehensive student support programs can increase college graduation rates.
How Staff Members Experienced the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) Demonstration
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 describes the delivery of PJAC services from PJAC case managers’ perspectives.
An Evaluation of the Returning Citizens Stimulus Program
In April 2020, the Center for Employment Opportunities launched the Returning Citizens Stimulus (RCS), a cash transfer program that offered financial support to people released from prison or jail. The findings in this report suggest that RCS may provide a promising model for smoothing reentry from incarceration.
Findings from the B3 Study of a Cognitive Behavioral Program
This report presents findings from a random assignment evaluation of a program incorporating interactive cognitive-behavioral techniques with job-readiness services for fathers recently involved in the justice system. As implemented in this evaluation, the program did not produce impacts on employment, involvement in the criminal justice system, or parenting.
The Just Beginning intervention aims to improve the quality of interactions between fathers with low incomes and their young children. Fathers participated in up to five sessions with their young children. This paper uses growth curve models to estimate patterns of change across the five sessions.