Publications

Too many low-income, college-ready students enroll in colleges for which they are academically overqualified or don’t go to college at all. This brief offers five strategies from MDRC’s College Match Program in Chicago for practitioners interested in helping high school students make the best college match possible.

This paper examines the properties of two nonexperimental study designs that can be used in educational evaluation: the comparative interrupted time series (CITS) design and the difference-in-difference (DD) design. The paper looks at the internal validity and precision of these two designs, using the example of the federal Reading First program as implemented in a midwestern state.

Family Rewards, a three-year demonstration, provided cash payments to low-income families in New York City for achieving specific health, education, and employment goals. New results show that the program substantially reduced poverty and material hardship while it operated and had positive results in improving some education, health, and work-related outcomes.

School-based mentoring programs have been shown to improve students’ academic performance and self-confidence. This study examines what makes the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America school-based mentoring program effective, offering key insights for practitioners. It also contributes a theoretical structure with which to assess other randomized evaluations of such programs.

A case study from the Behaviorial Buzz newsletter of the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project focused on increasing requests for child support order modifications by incarcerated noncustodial parents in Texas.

Interim results suggest that performance-based scholarships improve students’ academic performance and increase the number of credits they earn. In some sites, the scholarships also appear to reduce student debt. In the one location for which data are available so far, the program increased the proportion of students earning a degree.

New data from a rigorous study confirm that New York City’s small public high schools, which have nonselective admissions and serve many disadvantaged students, have substantially improved rates of graduation with Regents diplomas. This report also describes what principals and teachers at these schools believe accounts for their success.

MDRC is learning what programs work best to prevent at-risk youth from getting in trouble, help juvenile offenders turn their lives around, and give reentering prisoners the chance to get a foothold in the labor market and reduce their chances of rearrest.

Many students lose their way academically in ninth grade, never recover, and never graduate high school. Ninth Grade Academies aim to ease the transition into high school by creating smaller learning communities for ninth-graders. This report evaluates one urban school district’s effort to implement this complex reform districtwide.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for designing and interpreting research on variation in program effects. The framework categorizes the sources of program effect variation and helps researchers integrate the study of variation in program effectiveness and program implementation.

This policy brief discusses a new skills-building model designed to help low-income adults prepare for, enter, and succeed in quality jobs, in high-demand fields with opportunities for career growth. WorkAdvance uses strategies found in sector-based employment programs, combined with career coaching after participants are placed into jobs.

This program aimed to improve the quality of health care while reducing Medicaid costs by helping individuals use appropriate care that would reduce hospital admissions and emergency department visits. Like a similar pilot run by Colorado Access, which is described in a separate report, it had little effect on health care use.

One year after enrolling, students in LaGuardia’s GED Bridge program were more than twice as likely to have passed the GED exam and three times as likely to have enrolled in college as students in a more traditional GED preparation class.

Both Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) may serve low-income individuals with disabilities. Yet the two programs’ differences in approach and structure pose challenges to coordinating services. This report describes how TANF agencies interact with local SSA offices and documents the extent to which adult TANF recipients are connected with the SSI system.

“Acceleration” strategies seek to help developmental students progress to college-level math quicker. This report examines two models: one at Broward College compresses a traditional 16-week course into eight weeks and another at Tarrant County College divides a course into modules, allowing students to skip content they’ve already mastered.

This article, first published in Community Development Investment Review, proposes a vision of a social impact bond model that moves beyond just achieving cost-savings to spurring innovation, knowledge-building, rigorous evaluation, and, potentially, outcomes that achieve other socially desirable goals.

This pilot program aimed to improve the quality of health care while reducing Medicaid costs by helping individuals use appropriate care that would reduce hospital admissions and emergency department visits. The program had little effect on health care use, but the report suggests several ways to improve its design.

This policy brief describes an innovative program designed to target the psychological and social behaviors that contribute to pain, disability, and inactivity among veterans with disabilities. The goal is to help these veterans resume daily activities and get on a path to work.

Home visiting programs seek to improve maternal and child outcomes by supporting families with young children. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 included $1.5 billion for the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, with a national evaluation required. This report describes the design of that evaluation.

SaveUSA, a pilot program in New York City, Newark, San Antonio, and Tulsa, offers a matched savings account to low-income tax filers, building on the opportunity presented by tax-time refunds, especially the Earned Income Tax Credit. This 12-page brief offers early implementation findings.