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.
Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) are well positioned to provide educational experiences aligned with Native American students’ goals. This brief highlights the important role TCUs play in Native American communities and offers policymakers recommendations for supporting TCUs in increasing college completion for Native American students.
In this commentary originally published by Route Fifty, Jonathan Bigelow highlights the national challenge of finding landlords who will accept Housing Choice Vouchers. However, evidence from the Creating Moves to Opportunity (CMTO) project in King County and Seattle offers lessons about what might help landlords say yes.
Attempting to Correct for Follow-Up Selection Bias
A companion post discussed a kind of selection bias that can typically lead meta-analyses to overestimate longer-term effects for a range of interventions under consideration. This post describes a way to use information on short-term outcomes to estimate how much the effects on long-term outcomes are overstated.
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.
A San Diego program used IPS to help people with a range of disabilities find employment. This report summarizes 15-month evaluation findings from an earlier report and presents new impact findings. Of note, the analysis found the program increased earnings by almost $4,000 over the two-year follow-up period.
An Analysis of Programs Serving Young People Not Connected to School or Work
This report, a companion to an online compendium, offers findings from a systematic analysis of programs supporting young people who experience disconnection from school and work during the transition to adulthood. It focuses on services to help them reconnect to education, obtain employment, and advance in the labor market.
This brief outlines how Head Start programs responded to the ever-evolving public health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic—shifting activities to virtual formats, adapting in-person activities to local restrictions, and maintaining connections with families and community providers.
The information technology (IT) sector has great potential to help workers with low incomes improve their prospects in the labor market. This review examines the IT training offered by an employment services provider in New York and the impact such training had on career advancement opportunities for program participants.
An Introduction to the Strengthening the Implementation of Responsible Fatherhood Programs (SIRF) Study
This report summarizes activities in the first two years of the Strengthening the Implementation of Responsible Fatherhood Programs (SIRF) study (2019 to 2021). SIRF aims to identify and test approaches to improving programs’ recruitment, engagement, and retention of fathers using rapid learning cycles.
Sectoral strategies train people for industries with strong local demand. This report summarizes the Year 7 findings of an evaluation of WorkAdvance, a sectoral training initiative launched in 2011. Overall, the results show that sector programs can increase earnings in the longer term and can lead to career advancement gains.
Lessons from an Implementation Study of the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt Demonstration
The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) project integrated procedural justice (the idea of fairness in processes) into enforcement at six child support agencies. This report presents the first systematic analysis of the implementation of the PJAC model.
This report, a companion to an online evidence gap map, presents findings from an analysis of 60 studies of programs to support young people who experience disconnection from school and work during their transition to adulthood. The evidence gap map provides insights into what evidence exists and where there are opportunities to build evidence.
This brief examines Park City Career Pathways, a program aimed at addressing gaps in support for young people who are making the transition from high school to college and the workplace in a possible “COVID recession.” It offers lessons for other communities that may be interested in launching similar efforts.
Final Impact Findings from the Paycheck Plus Demonstration in Atlanta
Paycheck Plus expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit for single workers with low incomes and without qualifying children in two cities, offering a tax credit of up to $2,000. This report presents three-year findings from the program in Atlanta.
In 2020, MDRC and its partners conducted a literature review and held a series of conversations on the subject of engaging fathers in fatherhood programs that included practitioners, fathers, researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders. This publication collects engagement approaches practitioners and other stakeholders have tried or are considering.