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.
Practices, Justifications, Outcomes, and Limitations
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.
Multiple testing procedures reduce the likelihood of false positive findings, but can also reduce the probability of detecting true effects. This post introduces two open-source software tools from the Power Under Multiplicity Project that can help researchers plan analyses for randomized controlled trials using multiple testing procedures.
Per Scholas, a sector-based training and career advancement program, has had success expanding access and increasing enrollment by leveraging the expertise of outside research firms. This brief focuses on the organization’s participation in MDRC’s “Expanding the Impact” study, which was designed to help Per Scholas further deepen its impact.
Results from the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation
Home visiting programs aim to support the healthy development of infants and toddlers in families with low incomes. This report presents the findings from a study that estimated the cost of providing home visiting services.
In this commentary originally published in Route Fifty, JoAnn Hsueh, Cynthia Miller, and Michelle Maier discuss how states are supplementing the wages of childcare workers to retain them during widespread staffing shortages. Ensuring eligible workers enroll to receive the benefit can be challenging, but research suggests three strategies to help.
Leaning on a robust body of evidence, this brief offers suggestions to policymakers, college administrators, and researchers for forecasting the financial impact of new interventions in postsecondary education, based on the interventions’ costs and their ability to keep more students enrolled, generate tuition revenue and state funding, and improve outcomes.
State higher education funding is strongly linked with college completion. However, states often distribute funding inequitably, providing fewer resources to institutions that predominantly serve students of color and those with low incomes. This brief explores “state finance equity audits,” which states can use to assess and correct inequities in funding.
College students who enroll full time directly after high school are often considered “traditional.” But their experience is not the norm—a large proportion of undergraduate students are older than 24, work full time, or have children. This brief shares recommendations for helping these “posttraditional” learners succeed.
Children’s and Adolescents’ Perceptions and Experiences of Poverty and Inequality
Poverty in childhood can affect health, social and behavioral functioning, and cognitive, academic, and educational outcomes. Yet little is known about how children view their experiences of poverty. This brief summarizes findings from interviews with children and adolescents about their perceptions of wealth, economic inequality, and their own poverty experiences.
Incorporating the perspectives of early childhood educators is key to strengthening pre-K assessment systems. In this piece originally published by New America, Meghan McCormick offers insights from pre-K teachers about how to make assessments more equitable, relevant, and useful.
In this commentary originally published in The Hechinger Report, Meghan McCormick and JoAnn Hsueh explain how the surprising findings from a study of the Tennessee state-run, voluntary pre-k program highlight the need to collect better data so we can understand what really works.
A large proportion of students in public colleges are assigned to developmental education, which is intended to prepare them for college-level courses. However, research suggests that colleges’ typical developmental education policies may hinder students’ academic progress. Here are three recommendations for reforming developmental education based on a decade of research.
This is the fifth in a series of briefs highlighting strategies to increase educational equity by addressing students’ social and emotional needs. It describes strategies that school systems are using to increase students’ sense of school belonging and connectedness.
Multiple measures assessment is a more reliable method than a single placement test to assess whether incoming students have the literacy and numeracy skills required for college-level courses. This brief summarizes the research on multiple measures assessment and offers recommendations for states interested in its implementation.
Three Steps for Assessing Benchmarks in All-Hands Meetings
How does your organization keep track of its progress toward meeting key performance benchmarks? In this edition of InPractice, we share a few tips on how to use staff meetings to make sure your team is staying on-target.
Research suggests that pretrial policy reforms supporting arrested individuals’ release pending trial—unless evidence shows they will not return to court or they pose a threat to public safety—have positive results. This post discusses several policies that were established to prevent the overuse of pretrial detention.
What We Know, Gaps in the Field, and Promising New Directions
Ensuring equitable access to high-quality pre-K requires being able to measure quality, particularly at a large scale. This brief describes existing, widely used measures of pre-K quality and their limitations, examines some of the newer measurement work being developed, and discusses future directions for the field.
Career pathways programs, which offer education and training in targeted industry sectors, have emerged as a strategy colleges can use to help people earn credentials and obtain jobs with family-sustaining wages. This brief offers recommendations drawn from rigorous research for how states and colleges can implement effective career pathways programs.
This brief presents results from a proof-of-concept exercise that examined the potential benefits of using predictive analytics to improve service delivery by Child First, a program that provides therapeutic support to families with young children. The information may be useful for other organizations interested in implementing these cutting-edge tools.
Dual Enrollment Impacts from the Evaluation of New York City’s P-TECH 9-14 Schools
The New York City P-TECH 9-14 model offers accelerated high school course work, early college, and work-based learning experiences. P-TECH students are 30 percentage points more likely to take college courses in high school than comparison group students. They also earn 6.4 more college credits by the end for their fourth year.
