Publications

Millions of Americans have had their driver’s licenses suspended at some point because they have not paid legal fines and fees. This brief examines the causes, consequences, and scope of this practice, and highlights a program based in Florida that works to address the challenges of people affected by it.

Risk factors such as housing instability and untreated mental conditions are prevalent among people who come in contact with the criminal justice system, so some jurisdictions are trying to connect them with social services. This blog post provides several examples of these support-oriented pretrial approaches and research on their effectiveness.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) agencies are increasingly focused on using administrative data to assess how well programs are working and to inform policies and best practices. This toolkit was created to help TANF professionals develop more robust practices using employment data for program monitoring, reporting, and evaluation.

Community Health Workers (CHWs) are critical to Los Angeles County’s Reentry Intensive Case Management Services program, which assists clients following incarceration or probation by connecting them to services. This brief describes CHWs’ role, outlines their strategies, and offers insights for incorporating “lived experience” into their approach to helping clients.

In this blog post originally published by New America, Head Start educators report on challenges they’ve faced collecting and using assessments and identify opportunities for improvement.

Social services programs are increasingly looking to forecast which participants are likely to reach major milestones. Some explore advanced predictive modeling, but the Center for Data Insights (CDI) has found that such methods come with trade-offs. This post outlines CDI’s approach to predictive analytics, using illustrations from two studies.

The Detroit Promise Path 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. After four years, the program helped students stay enrolled in school but had no impact on degrees earned.

A review of impact and implementation studies from the past 10 years, this report summarizes what is known about how innovations in developmental education (that is, remedial college courses) can improve student outcomes. It also identifies five principles that are essential to successful reforms.

“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.

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.

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.