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.
Policy Engagement and Systems Change in the New Communities Program
This report describes the efforts of four local agencies in a comprehensive community initiative (CCI) in Chicago, exploring their engagement with policy issues to improve their neighborhoods. It considers this CCI’s potential for working more actively to change the larger systems that shape neighborhoods, with implications for CCIs nationwide.
Using an alternative to classical statistics, this paper reanalyzes results from three published studies of interventions to increase employment and reduce welfare dependency. The analysis formally incorporates prior beliefs about the interventions, characterizing the results in terms of the distribution of possible effects, and generally confirms the earlier published findings.
An Analysis of the Interaction among Quality-of-Life Indicators from the New Communities Program Evaluation
This paper explores analytic methods that assess the rate at which changes in neighborhood quality of life occur. It looks at correlations among quality indicators over time and the effect of both neighborhood context and conditions beyond the neighborhood, like the Great Recession, identifying which indicators are predictors of others.
An Impact Study of Eight Developmental Summer Bridge Programs in Texas
Eight developmental summer bridge programs offered accelerated and focused learning opportunities for entering college students with low skills in Texas. An evaluation shows positive impacts on introductory college-level course completion in math and writing, which faded by the end of two years. The programs had no impact on persistence or the average number of credits students attempted or earned.
Launched in 2005 by the Departments of Labor and Justice, the Reintegration of Ex-Offenders initiative provides funding to 24 grantees to strengthen urban communities affected by high numbers of reentering prisoners. This report provides findings from an implementation study; an impact study is expected in 2014.
Final Results from the Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration
Transitional jobs programs in four Midwestern cities substantially increased short-term employment by providing jobs to many ex-prisoners who would not otherwise have worked. However, the gains faded as men left the transitional jobs, and the programs did not increase unsubsidized employment nor did they reduce recidivism.
An Exploratory Study of College Readiness Partnership Programs in Texas
College readiness partnership programs bring together colleges and K-12 institutions to reduce the number of students who need remedial courses when they get to college. This report examines 37 partnerships in Texas to identify key characteristics of the programs, as well as benefits and challenges associated with their implementation and sustainability.
Lessons from the Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) Project
Many recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other low-income individuals find or keep jobs for a while, but far fewer remain steadily employed and advance in the labor market. This report describes results and draws lessons from rigorous evaluations of 12 programs seeking to improve employment retention and advancement among low-wage workers.
An Impact Study of a Student Success Course at Guilford Technical Community College
A random assignment study of a student success course for developmental students finds positive effects on students’ self-management, self-awareness, and engagement in college. The program had few overall effects on students’ academic achievement, although there were some positive impacts for the first group of students to enter the study.
A Preview of the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation
This brief covers one of the largest and most rigorous evaluations of services for youth who are aging out of the foster care and juvenile justice systems. It explains the scope of the problem, summarizes the policy context, describes the program and study sample, and offers preliminary observations from the evaluation.
Helping Low-Income and First-Generation Students Make Good College Choices
Too many low-income, college-ready students are “undermatching” — enrolling in colleges for which they are academically overqualified or not going to college at all. Early results from the College Match Program in three Chicago high schools suggest that it’s possible to help students navigate the complicated college application process and make more informed decisions.
This policy brief, developed by the Urban Institute for the federal Administration for Children and Families, summarizes research on strategies that can increase TANF recipients’ and other low-income adults’ engagement and persistence in postsecondary education and training and boost their earnings.
This policy brief, developed by the Urban Institute for the federal Administration for Children and Families, describes how strategies have helped welfare recipients enter employment and increase their earnings. However, more remains to be learned about how best to substantially increase their self-sufficiency and financial well-being.
An Introduction to the Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration in California
One of six sites in MDRC’s national demonstration, California’s program, run in partnership with Cash for College, is testing performance-based scholarships of differing amounts and durations that supplement existing aid and that students can use at any accredited postsecondary institution.
In testimony before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources, MDRC President Gordon Berlin proposes a simple, cost-effective fix to current law that would make federally funded program evaluations more efficient.
This report, which presents 12-month impact results from a demonstration designed to strengthen marriages among low-income married couples with children, shows that the program produced a consistent pattern of small, positive effects on multiple aspects of couples’ relationships, including measures of relationship quality, psychological and physical abuse, and adult individual psychological distress.
Improving Classroom Practices in Head Start Settings
This report offers lessons about using coaches to help teachers carry out a program for improving pre-kindergarteners’ social and emotional readiness for school. It addresses selection of the coaching model; coach hiring, training, support, and supervision; coaching processes; and program management, data, and quality assurance.
42-Month Impacts from the Kansas and Missouri Sites of the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project
Two Early Head Start programs were enhanced with formalized services to proactively address parents’ employment, educational, and self-sufficiency needs. A random assignment evaluation finds limited impacts for the full sample but some positive effects on employment and earnings for families who had an infant or who were expecting a child at the outset of the study.