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.
What Several Months of COVID-19 Revealed in the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) Demonstration
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 describes the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on PJAC project agencies and parents during the spring and summer of 2020, and examines agencies’ responses.
MDRC’s work appeared in a variety of mainstream and trade publications in 2020 — on such topics as criminal justice reform, responses to the pandemic, community college programs, career and technical education, and high school reform. Here are 10 of our favorites.
MDRC’s Evidence First podcast features experts — program administrators, policymakers, and researchers — talking about the best evidence available on education and social programs. Here are the five most popular episodes from 2020.
A Statewide Education Collaboration That Centers on Rural Communities
A West Virginia campaign to double college degree attainment by 2030 includes five evidence-based strategies proven to help students succeed and is customized to suit the particular needs of rural communities. This paper summarizes Part II of a four-part podcast series coproduced by Rural Matters and MDRC.
Findings and Lessons from Three Colleges’ Efforts to Build on the iPASS Initiative
The iPASS initiative aims to helps colleges use technology-based advising practices to improve students’ academic performance and college completion rates. This report describes how three schools used enhanced iPASS services in an effort to strengthen and reform their existing advising practices, including the standard version of iPASS.
College Access Strategies in Rural Communities of Color
Education strategies that consider the local context, needs, and desires of rural students of color, who have historically been shut out of equal access to a college education, are getting increasing attention. This paper summarizes Part III of a four-part podcast series coproduced by Rural Matters and MDRC.
Rural colleges are using technological advantages to try to boost enrollment as well as their local economies through infrastructure development and workforce training in advanced fields. This paper summarizes Part IV of a four-part podcast series coproduced by Rural Matters and MDRC.
In this Q&A originally published by The Duke Endowment, Meghan McCormick describes MDRC’s ongoing evaluation of the promising Child First home visiting model — and talks about finding a silver lining in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Research-Based Advice for Community College Administrators
Two decades of MDRC research shows that a holistic counseling strategy that reduces adviser caseloads and offers students more frequent, comprehensive guidance can help them address both academic and personal issues and improve college outcomes. This paper provides lessons for higher education professionals interested in implementing this approach.
When COVID-19 upended normal operations at STRIVE, a workforce development nonprofit founded in New York, the Center for Applied Behavioral Science at MDRC documented the agency’s real-time innovations that allowed it to continue serving clients during the crisis. Greg Wise, STRIVE’s National Vice President, shared a first-hand account of the transition.
When Washington state’s Division of Child Support closed its offices in March 2020 in response to COVID-19, its employment program—Families Forward Washington—kept running with minimal interruption, because the original design was based on working remotely. Its model may offer useful pointers for other service agencies for adapting to the pandemic.
In 2020, MDRC published 100 reports, briefs, practitioner guides, blog posts, and infographics — offering evaluation results, profiles of innovative programs, and evidence-backed advice for policymakers and practitioners confronting both the crisis of the pandemic and longstanding inequities in society. Here are the 15 most popular.
Barriers to Student Success and Opportunities for Improvement
Working with the City University of New York, MDRC’s Center for Applied Behavioral Science mapped factors that impede students transferring from community colleges. This blueprint shows the stages of the transfer process, with information about challenges at each stage and interventions informed by behavioral science that could help overcome them.
In this commentary originally published in Government Executive, MDRC Senior Vice President Dan Bloom argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that it’s important for decisionmakers to make bold policy reforms and to build evidence for future action at the same time.
Low-wage workers have been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, experiencing greater levels of unemployment than their higher-wage-earning peers. Training programs that focus on moving workers into skilled jobs in industries with strong local demand could reposition them for 21st-century success.
Early Implementation Findings from a Study of the Male Student Success Initiative
Men of color complete college at lower rates than their fellow students. To help overcome this gap, many colleges have programs offering academic and social support to male students of color. This report summarizes MDRC’s evaluation of one such program at the Community College of Baltimore County.
Even before the COVID-19 crisis, early care and education providers faced challenges attracting and retaining qualified, well-trained, and diverse early educators — and staff turnover can affect children’s early progress. Three approaches may help improve these workers’ access to professional education, their overall economic well-being, and their sometimes difficult working conditions.
Lessons from Two Decades of Research and Technical Assistance
Colleges support students with academic and other types of advising, counseling, or coaching. Some schools enhance those services by reducing adviser caseloads and providing more comprehensive, frequent guidance, which can improve students’ semester-to-semester retention and average credits earned. This brief describes important lessons on designing and implementing those services.
A college degree remains critical to unlocking opportunity and to accessing America’s middle class, yet millions of students who pursue higher education never earn degrees. This memo, produced with Results for America, draws lessons and policy implications from two decades of rigorous research in postsecondary institutions focused on addressing this problem.
This paper describes the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model, a framework for providing employment services to those facing barriers to work. MDRC, in partnership with MEF Associates and Abt Associates, is studying IPS as part of the Building Evidence on Employment Strategies for Low-Income Families (BEES) project.
