Publications

The Building Bridges and Bonds (B3) study used text messages to administer short surveys, collecting information rapidly and directly from participants in the study about their experiences with fatherhood programs. This infographic offers lessons the B3 team learned about text messaging and offers tips for other programs.

In 2020, MDRC launched the world’s first comprehensive cloud platform for social policy research: SPROUT (Social Policy Research and Operations Unified Technology). MDRC is making SPROUT available at near cost to social and educational policy researchers, agencies, and nonprofit organizations, regardless of their affiliation with MDRC.

In this commentary, originally published in Community College Daily, MDRC’s Alyssa Ratledge draws on years of research to make the case for the importance of adding robust support services to free tuition programs at community colleges.

Home visiting provides information, resources, and support to expectant parents with low incomes and families with young children and low incomes. This report presents the proposed design for long-term follow-ups with families in a recent large study of home visiting, continuing through the time their children are in high school.

The InPractice blog is MDRC’s place for sharing resources and tips developed by practitioners, for practitioners. This review of the past year’s posts shows how our program partners adjusted to difficult, uncertain conditions and continued to deliver services during the worst of the pandemic.

In this commentary originally published by New America, Meghan McCormick and Amena Sengal argue that states and districts should allocate some pandemic relief dollars to strengthening summer learning for pre-k and kindergarten students.

The Families Forward Demonstration examined strategies to help parents with low and middle incomes make reliable child support payments by increasing employment and earnings. The model, which emphasized free occupational training activities, shows promise for helping parents qualify for jobs in their chosen fields and for improving child support compliance.

In this essay, MDRC President Virginia Knox reflects on two important priorities for MDRC this year and beyond: building on our long-standing technical assistance efforts with private and public partners and making sure our work addresses racial equity.

This program combines a tuition-free scholarship with additional forms of support, such as a campus coach and personalized communications, to keep students on track to graduate. A three-year evaluation shows that the program helped students stay enrolled in school and earn more credits, but had no impact on degrees earned.

For over 20 years, MDRC has designed and evaluated strategies that use the housing subsidy system to support economic self-sufficiency. This memo reviews what is known about these strategies, how people respond to them, and what elements should be considered when designing economic mobility programs for families receiving housing assistance.

In this commentary originally published by New America, Meghan McCormick and Christina Weiland argue that states should make investing in high-quality early childhood and kindergarten programs a priority in their pandemic recovery efforts.

The pandemic required service providers to make abrupt, often improvised adjustments to keep working with clients, and some of those changes may become permanent. One Ohio-based social service agency is figuring out which changes it will retain as more normal operations resume.

Many families with young children experienced severe strains during the pandemic—unemployment, increasing poverty, and increased anxiety and depression. State program administrators can help by strengthening home visiting services and using pediatric visits to reach families. This brief offers recommendations based on evidence of promising strategies, and insights from MDRC’s work.

In this commentary originally published in The Hill, MDRC’s Cynthia Miller and Lawrence Katz, Harvard economist and member of MDRC’s Board, describe why expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income workers without dependent children can be an effective part of the recovery effort.

CUNY Start aims to prepare students with significant remedial needs for college-level courses. This working paper reports that over three years, CUNY Start substantially increased college readiness, slightly increased credit accumulation, and modestly increased graduation rates (by increasing participation in another highly effective program).

This brief summarizes recent findings that show how a lack of access to high-quality summer programs may contribute to disparities in children’s learning and development during the transition to kindergarten. It identifies future research needed to ensure that equity-focused investments in summer learning pay off for children from underserved groups.

Some education programs’ early positive effects disappear over time, while other programs have unanticipated positive long-term effects. This Issue Focus introduces The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trials, an examination of program effects after a postsecondary education program ends, using a database drawn from 31 MDRC projects, sampling 67,400 stu­dents.

One of the six original members of MDRC’s Board of Directors in 1974, Dr. Phyllis A. Wallace was an economist whose research and policy work addressed the intersection of race, gender, and class in the United States. Wallace went on to serve on the MDRC Board for ten years.

Living-wage jobs increasingly require postsecondary education, though nonacademic career and technical education can also boost earning potential. But noncredit program benefits can be limited, so some community colleges are bridging the academic-nonacademic divide. This brief describes methods and strategies for connecting and promoting noncredit and credit pathways for students.

Some estimate that the expansion of the Child Tax Credit could help ameliorate the economic impact of the pandemic and, if made permanent, cut child poverty in the United States in half. But to achieve the promise of these estimates, policymakers should improve the design and delivery compared to the current child tax credit to minimize burdens and barriers for recipients. Here are four research-backed ways to do it.