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.
Findings from the Changing Attitudes and Motivation in Parolees Pilot Study
A training program for parole officers in Dallas, Denver, and Des Moines sought to address the persistently high recidivism rates among individuals leaving prison. This study’s results show that officers generally already knew many of the curriculum’s concepts, and changes to their practices were limited.
Challenges and Opportunities in Summer Programs for Rising Kindergarten Students
One focus of the Expanding Children’s Early Learning (ExCEL) Network is the potential value of programs to promote school readiness in the months preceding kindergarten. This brief summarizes lessons learned from a six-week pilot program and consultation with practitioners on three implementation issues — recruitment, attendance, and family involvement.
Many young scholars supported by the Gueron Fund Minority Scholars Program have enriched our organization by participating in fellowships and internships at MDRC over the last 10+ years. And they have gone on to do wonderful things in a variety of places (including coming back to work at MDRC!).
Four-Year Results from the National YouthBuild Evaluation
YouthBuild serves more than 10,000 young people each year at 250+ organizations nationwide. In a random assignment study, the effects observed after four years on education and work indicate that the program provides a good starting point for redirecting otherwise disconnected young people, but one that could also be improved upon.
Career pathways programs, which equip high school students with the academic, technical, and “soft” skills they need to succeed, can also help meet local employer demand for skilled workers. This issue focus introduces one such initiative that uses paid internships to help students gain a foothold in a high-wage industry.
Latinos are enrolling in California colleges in rising numbers, but their outcomes lag behind those of white students. The Latino Academic Transfer and Institutional Degree Opportunities project is examining the approaches taken by Hispanic-Serving Institutions in California to improve the rates at which they transfer to universities and complete college.
Too often, programs and policies do not consider the way people actually think and behave. Behavioral science demonstrates that even small hassles create barriers that prevent those in need of services from receiving them. This infographic provides a brief overview of how the Center for Applied Behavioral Science is improving social services by making use of behavioral insights.
Multisite randomized trials allow researchers to study both the average impact of an intervention and how the impact varies across settings, which can help guide decisions in policy, practice, and science. This Reflections on Methodology post distills some key considerations for research design and for reporting and interpreting such variation.
The Impacts of Making Pre-K Count and High 5s on Kindergarten Outcomes
This project tested whether high-quality, aligned math instruction, via an evidence-based curriculum in pre-K and innovative math clubs in kindergarten, could improve children’s outcomes. The effect of two years of enriched math translates into closing more than a quarter of the achievement gap between low-income children and their higher-income peers.
Social network analysis models the structure of relationships using “nodes” (such as organizations) and “edges” (or ties, such as contracts). This Reflections on Methodology post highlights what the method can analyze — strength and complexity of connections, an organization’s positional power — in the context of a community development study in Chicago.
This compendium of written materials comes from the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project. The collection illustrates how specific concepts from behavioral science were used in different settings and formats by practitioners and program designers in child care, child support, and work-support programs.
Small-group math clubs in kindergarten are an innovative way to align children’s elementary and pre-K math experiences. In a demonstration of the High 5s kindergarten supplement aligned with the principles of an evidence-based, developmentally appropriate pre-K curriculum, attendance and engagement were high, and children participated in hands-on, individualized activities.
The Implementation Research Incubator discusses an innovative approach to pre-K math, in which the researchers used qualitative methods to put the critical elements of a program’s theory of change under a microscope. Their insights may help future adopters of the model better understand these key components.
Implementation and Outcome Findings for the AVID Central Florida Collaborative Study
Implemented in eight secondary schools and a local college, this program was designed to build students’ college preparedness by training instructors in shared teaching strategies and best practices, strengthening academic rigor in the classroom, and promoting collaboration and consistency in teaching and study strategies across grades and schools.
Identifying and spreading effective policies and programs involves a cycle of implementation, adaptation, and evidence-building. Implementation research plays a central role in understanding and improving interventions at each stage of the cycle.
The proliferation of school choice systems offers researchers opportunities to study the effects of education reforms on a large scale, rigorously but relatively quickly. In the first of two posts on the subject, Reflections on Methodology discusses how to ensure that a school assignment process is truly random.
Most community college students enroll in fewer than 15 credits per semester, making it nearly impossible for them to graduate in two years. Many also struggle academically. This infographic describes how the Finish Line project will attempt to use behavioral science to address these issues and thereby improve graduation rates.
This feature explores comprehensiveness in community development partnerships in Chicago neighborhoods, and shows how comprehensiveness can help neighborhoods work together to build needed affordable housing and improve schools.
Behavioral Strategies to Increase Engagement in Child Support
An essential step in the child support process is delivering legal documents to the person named as a parent. This intervention in Georgia applied insights from behavioral science to get more parents to come in and accept documents voluntarily instead of using a sheriff or process server to deliver them.
Testimony Before the California State Assembly Higher Education Committee and the Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance
On February 6, Alex Mayer, MDRC’s Deputy Director of Postsecondary Education, explained to members of two California State Assembly committees that combining and integrating evidence-based strategies to address multiple factors can be highly effective in improving completion rates among low-income college students.