Publications

“Soft skills” are the capabilities and habits that affect communication, social interactions, and problem-solving. Credentials in soft skills aim to show employers that job applicants are proficient in these skills. MDRC interviewed employers to gauge how they perceive these credentials and to learn what could increase their utility and credibility.

The Center for Data Insights at MDRC has partnered with many organizations to develop and execute a variety of data projects. Important lessons have emerged from this collaborative work about the three ingredients essential to successful data projects. This brief discusses those ingredients.

This infographic uses before-and-after examples to demonstrate how fatherhood programs can use lessons from behavioral science, which studies how people process information and make decisions, to improve the effectiveness of their communications to fathers.

The New World of Work (NWoW), a program that promoted teaching soft skills—the capabilities and habits that affect communication, social interactions, and problem-solving—operated briefly in over 75 community colleges in California. This brief describes statistical analyses of assessments NWoW used to grant credentials in those soft skills.

To increase postsecondary and economic opportunity in the United States, policymakers must put the practice and philosophy of equity—the distribution of resources to students and institutions most in need—at the center of program design. This brief discusses three actions state policymakers can take to achieve that goal.

Academic language skills are critical for reading and understanding content for all students, and particularly for English learners and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. This study investigated WordGen Elementary, a program designed to improve fourth- and fifth-grade students’ ability to understand and communicate academic language and their general reading skill.

The Variations in Implementation of Quality Interventions project is a large-scale, rigorous study that aims to build substantial new evidence to inform policies and practices in Head Start and community-based child care centers. This brief describes the project, its key research questions, and the conceptual framework underlying it.

In this commentary originally published by the Fordham Institute, Meghan McCormick explains why it is critical to strengthen existing early education assessments in order to build better evidence on the impacts of preschool on children.

This brief reports findings from an analysis of patterns of data use by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) agencies. The findings highlight the importance of collaboration and communication, both internally and externally, and should be of interest to TANF administrators who want to make their agencies more data-driven.

A learning agenda is an outline of a state’s research priorities. This brief discusses how a state can use a learning agenda to direct investments toward proven interventions and foster equitable student success.

This report documents the experiences of five programs that integrate employment services into treatment and recovery programs for people with substance use disorder. It draws on interviews with managers and direct service staff members to describe the experiences of programs in relation to critical aspects of program design and implementation.

Today’s early education assessment tools fail to capture the complexity of skills in children who are dual language learners (DLLs). In this blog post originally published by New America, Emily Hanno describes three principles that researchers and practitioners believe are important when developing accurate, actionable, and equitable assessment tools for DLLs.

Rachel Rosen, codirector of MDRC’s Center of Effective Career and Technical Education (CTE), describes how recent evaluation findings about the P-TECH 9-14 Schools model advance the field’s understanding of ways to better serve students. A version of the interview originally appeared in the Advance CTE blog Learning That Works!

Increasingly, companies are favoring skill-based requirements—such as communication and writing—in job postings. In response, postsecondary educators are looking for ways to teach these “soft skills” explicitly. This brief outlines practical considerations and recommendations for developing and implementing soft-skills instruction in a postsecondary setting.

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) project integrates procedural justice (the idea of fairness in processes) into enforcement at six child support agencies. This brief draws on interviews conducted with noncustodial and custodial parents in the study and describes parents’ perspectives on and experiences with the child support program.

This San Diego–based program provided employment services to jobseekers with low incomes and a range of disabilities and health conditions using the IPS model, originally designed for and used successfully with people with serious mental illness. This practitioner brief presents lessons learned from testing the model with a different group.

In this blog post originally published by New America, a diverse group of pre-K parents from around the country share their experiences with early learning assessments in childcare, pre-K, and Head Start settings.

The TANF Data Innovation (TDI) project was created to expand the use of administrative data by state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) agencies to improve program performance. This brief describes a TDI test of an approach to building staff capabilities through applied data analytics, intensive training, and technical assistance.

Although policymakers and institutions have increasingly disaggregated college completion data by race and gender to create targeted forms of support, the complex and intersecting challenges that Black women face in college often remain overlooked. This brief highlights opportunities to address the challenges Black women face in postsecondary education.

When high school students can enroll in college courses, they are more likely to enroll in and persist in college; however, access to such opportunities is distributed inequitably. This brief offers recommendations for increasing access to and equity in such courses for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds.