Publications

In this commentary originally published by Higher Ed Dive, Third Way’s Michelle Dimino and MDRC’s Alyssa Ratledge explain how research shows that wraparound support programs are the most effective way to help students earn college degrees.

In 2021, MDRC posted nearly 100 reports, briefs, practitioner guides, and other publications—offering evaluation results, profiles of innovative programs, and evidence-backed advice for policymakers and practitioners. Here are 15 of the most popular.

This interactive guide and the accompanying, full toolkit are designed for school-based and community-based programs interested in implementing evidence-based early childhood curricula. The guide provides practical guidelines and tools for four stages of implementation.

Homeboy Industries (HBI), one of the largest gang rehabilitation and reentry organizations in the world, is transforming its data infrastructure and the way it uses technology to better support its client-centered program services. MDRC recently collaborated with HBI on a project to establish program logic models and to assess the organization’s data collection needs and practices. This post draws on what was learned from that collaboration.

To reach policymakers, practitioners, and other important decisionmakers, MDRC experts authored or coauthored more than a dozen commentaries on evidence-based solutions for a variety of venues in 2021. Here are a few of them.

MDRC hosts several blogs, including InPractice: Lessons for and from Practitioners, Ideas and Evidence 2021, the Implementation Research Incubator, and the Future of Career and Technical Education. Here are the top blog posts from 2021.

Children who received two years of early math enrichment in New York City had improved math test scores in third grade. The size of the effect is equivalent to closing about 40 percent of the achievement gap between children from families with low incomes and their peers from families with higher incomes.

Some students are referred into developmental (or remedial) education inappropriately when placed using only standardized placement tests. When multiple measures assessment was used, students in Minnesota and Wisconsin were more likely to enroll and pass college-level math and English courses within three semesters. The additional cost of this alternative assessment averaged $33 per student.

In 2021, MDRC posted a handful of videos highlighting projects and the work of our staff. Here’s a selection from across the organization.

This brief, produced with the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, offers promising strategies to address the barriers that state-level postsecondary leaders have observed inhibit evidence-based policy making in higher education.

In this commentary, which originally appeared in The Crime Report, Sam Schaeffer and Ivonne Garcia describe how temporary cash grants provided by the Center for Employment Opportunities helped more than 10,000 returning citizens transition from prison during the pandemic. They also share findings about the program from MDRC’s recent study.

Slingshot Memphis invited MDRC to assess its efforts to strengthen antipoverty organizations that work directly with Memphis families and individuals. This issue focus describes MDRC’s findings and presents suggestions it offered Slingshot to improve its processes, which may be useful to larger human services field.

Policymakers are considering historic investments in high-quality, universal pre-K. In this commentary originally published by New America, JoAnn Hsueh and Meghan McCormick explain why and how researchers, districts, and states should make prekindergarten assessments of children more equitable, useful, and actionable.

To learn more about how program designers, educators, and other stakeholders can learn from the past to build equitable career and technical education (CTE) programs today, MDRC’s Center for Effective CTE spoke with Dr. Eddie Fletcher, an associate professor in workforce development and education at The Ohio State University.

Schools and school districts are being asked to provide more and more services to students while being given few additional resources. This brief discusses how school districts can use partnerships with outside organizations and agencies to help provide those additional services.

In this commentary originally published by New America, Meghan McCormick and Alyssa Ratledge explain that reliable child care is critical to the success of student-parents in community college. They offer three evidence-driven approaches states and colleges can take to better support student-parents.

In this essay, MDRC President Virginia Knox describes two recent projects that have benefited from inviting the expertise of front-line staff members and program participants to inform how MDRC designs, implements, and writes about its work.

The routine, large-scale collection of unbiased data about children’s skills, knowledge, behaviors, and classroom experiences is critical to the expansion of equitable pre-K programs nationwide. A new initiative aims to shift the data landscape and reimagine with an equity-centered lens the tools used to measure children’s early learning skills.

A previous brief from this series summarized the experiences and recommendations of leaders who are working to reexamine their districts’ systems, structures, and policies to ensure they support the well-being and learning of all students. This accompanying brief provides those leaders’ thoughts in their own words.

This paper discusses several ongoing trends in the labor market and their potential effects on the nature of work over the next 10 to 15 years for low-income populations. The trends are used to highlight potential questions to inform research and evaluation agendas on this topic.