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.
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.
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.
In this commentary originally published by WorkShift, Deondre’ Jones describes how the WorkAdvance initiative helped reduce racial employment disparities for Black and Latino adults. He also explains important components that program providers may want to include to better support participants of color.
Leveraging Naturally Occurring Lotteries to Examine a District-Wide Rollout of Instructional Alignment Across Pre-K and Kindergarten
This study investigates whether naturally occurring lotteries, which approximate random assignment, can be used to evaluate the long-term effects of instructional alignment—standards, curricula, and assessments that build on one another from pre-K to elementary school—on children in Boston Public Schools. It concludes that they can.
Participating in a College Support Program During the Pandemic and Beyond
This issue focus shares early implementation lessons from an evaluation of MDRC’s Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the program model. It offers lessons that could be relevant to similar programs operating in online, in-person, and hybrid environments.
Holistic advising (which offers students personalized, seamless, and timely support) is critical for increasing college persistence. However, adopting holistic advising means committing to collaborative, data-informed, and student-centered decision-making—which requires resources. This brief offers recommendations for how states and colleges can make these targeted investments to serve students more effectively.
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.
In this commentary originally published by The Crime Report, Melanie Skemer and Sarah Picard discuss how recent mediacoverage about the relationship between New York State’s bail reform and an uptick in crime has been misleading, particularly in using newly released data to conflate bail reform with a program called supervised release.