About MDRC
Doolittle joined MDRC in 1986, initially specializing in studies of employment and training programs for economically disadvantaged, out-of-school young people and adults. As MDRC expanded its work to include education, he focused on evaluations of elementary and secondary school reforms. At various points in his career at MDRC, he was Director of the Policy Research and Evaluation Department and the K-12 Education Policy Area and Interim Director of the Postsecondary Education Policy Area. He has served on the faculties of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and the Yale School of Management. Doolittle holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. At the end of 2020, he transitioned to consultant status and now services as Chair of MDRC’s Institutional Review Board and as a senior advisor to MDRC.
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MDRC Publications
ReportImpacts on Elementary School Students’ Outcomes
July, 2022Disruptive behaviors in school can hinder students’ learning and long-term success. This study evaluated a “multi-tiered systems of support for behavior” program, which reinforces good behavior and provides supplemental support to students in need. Overall student outcomes did not improve but students who struggled the most saw some short-term benefits.
ReportNovember, 2015This report describes the adoption of RtI practices in a large, multistate sample of schools, examines the implementation of tiered intervention services for students at risk of reading difficulty, and finds that assignment to receive intervention did not improve reading outcomes among students scoring just below the eligibility point.
ReportMay, 2011In a study sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences, intensive professional development programs for seventh-grade math teachers were implemented as intended, but teacher turnover limited the average dosage received. The programs had no impact on teacher knowledge or student achievement.
ReportApril, 2010This report presents first-year results from the Middle School Mathematics Professional Development Impact Study, sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences. The professional development programs for seventh-grade math teachers had an impact on one measure of teacher practice but no effects on teachers’ knowledge or student achievement.
ReportSeptember, 2009This report presents two-year implementation and impact findings on two supplemental academic instruction approaches developed for after-school settings – one for math and one for reading. It addresses whether one-year impacts are different in the second year of program operations and whether students benefit from being offered two years of enhanced after-school academic instruction.
ReportSeptember, 2008This report presents findings on the effectiveness of two specific professional development strategies on improving the knowledge and practice of second-grade teachers in high-poverty schools and on the reading achievement of their students.
ReportFindings After the First Year of Implementation
June, 2008This report presents one-year implementation and impact findings on two supplemental academic instruction approaches developed for after-school settings — one for math and one for reading. Compared with regular after-school programming, the supplemental math program had impacts on student SAT 10 test scores and the supplemental reading program did not — although the reading program had some effect on reading fluency.
ReportThe Effect of Project GRAD on Elementary School
Student Outcomes in Four Urban DistrictsJuly, 2006This report describes the effects of Project GRAD, an ambitious education reform that targets high schools and the elementary and middle schools that feed into them, on student test scores in elementary schools in Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Columbus, Ohio; and Newark, New Jersey.
ReportThe Effect of Project GRAD on High School Student Outcomes in Three Urban School Districts
July, 2006This report describes the effects of Project GRAD, an ambitious education reform that targets high schools and the elementary and middle schools that feed into them, on a variety of student outcomes in high schools in Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; and Columbus, Ohio.
ReportThirty-Month Findings from the Evaluation of the Center for Employment Training Replication Sites
June, 2003Efforts to replicate the experience of the Center for Employment Training in San Jose, California — a uniquely successful program that helped at-risk youth develop skills needed to compete in today’s labor market — showed mixed results.
ReportThe Milwaukee County Experience
June, 2003This report examines the implementation of the community service jobs component of Wisconsin’s Temporary Aid for Needy Families program during the program’s first three years of operation.
ReportCase Studies of How Urban School Systems Improve Student Achievement
September, 2002Some of the nation’s fastest improving urban school systems are raising overall academic performance while reducing achievement gaps among students of different racial groups. But instead of taking a school-by-school approach, they are tackling education reform on a district wide basis.
ReportThe Implementation of 24-Month Time-Limit Extensions in W-2
December, 2001ReportInitial Assessments in the Milwaukee County W-2 Program
November, 2001ReportThe Pre-Curricular Phase of Project GRAD Newark
August, 2000ReportImplementation and Interim Impacts of Parents’ Fair Share
September, 1998ReportLessons for the Child Support Enforcement System from Parents’ Fair Share
May, 1998ReportImplementation of a Program to Reduce Poverty and Reform Welfare
October, 1997ReportFinal Report on a Program for School Dropouts
October, 1993This report, which completes the JOBSTART Demonstration, addresses issues closely linked to the nation’s ongoing debate about how best to improve the employment and earnings prospects of low-skilled, economically disadvantaged young people, who otherwise live outside the economic mainstream.
ReportImplementation of the SEID Program
August, 1991 -
Other Publications
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Projects
Many high-need students do not learn to read well because they do not receive effective personalized literacy instruction during the early elementary grades. To address this, the data-driven A2i Professional Support System was designed by and for teachers, and it has shown strong evidence of effectiveness. A2i...
Almost 42 percent of third-grade students in Philadelphia are reading at or above grade level — which means that about 58 percent are reading below that level. For elementary school students, reading proficiency is critical not only for doing well in school, but for remaining in school in the future. In response to this situation, the City of Philadelphia put forth the...
Success Academy is a prominent charter network in New York City with schools located in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Across 32 elementary, middle, and high schools in 2014, Success Academy served roughly 9,000 students. In 2014, among the 2,255 students who were age-eligible to take the New York State achievement test, 94 percent were proficient in math...
Fred Doolittle, Mark van Dok, Pei Zhu, Barbara Condliffe, Sonia Drohojowska, Emma Alterman, Osvaldo Avila, Jedediah J. Teres, Hannah PowerToo often, elementary school students lack the behavioral and social skills necessary to focus on academics and achieve in school. Without proper support, teachers inevitably spend far too much time managing their students’ behavior and too little time actually teaching. Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Behavior (MTSS-B) is not a specific...
This project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides research and evaluation support for the Innovative Professional Development (iPD) Challenge, which seeks to clarify the extent to which changes in school district professional development systems lead to different teacher experiences and measurable improvements in key...
Students with learning difficulties are more likely to demonstrate low academic achievement despite recent advances in curriculum design, assessments to inform instructional decisions, and research-based intervention strategies. To better serve these students — and to avoid unnecessary referrals for special education services — researchers and practitioners have...
Kate Gualtieri, Dan Bloom, Melissa Boynton, William Corrin, Fred Doolittle, John Martinez, Louisa Treskon, Jean Grossman, Leigh Parise, Marie-Andrée Somers, Michelle S. Manno, Rebecca Unterman, Megan Millenky, Rashida Welbeck, Mary BambinoThe Social Innovation Fund (SIF), an initiative enacted under the Edward Kennedy Serve America Act, targets millions of dollars in public-private funds to expand effective solutions across three issue areas: economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development and school support.
The transition into high school is a volatile time for adolescents and a precarious point in the educational pipeline. Evidence shows ninth grade to be one of the leakiest junctures in this pipeline. MDRC’s research in urban districts suggests that as many as 40 percent of students fail to get promoted from ninth to tenth grade on time, and...
Fred Doolittle, D. Crystal Byndloss, Marie-Andrée Somers, Michelle Ware, Rebecca Unterman, Yana KusayevaTo remain globally competitive and to advance economic opportunity for all its residents, the United States must dramatically increase the number of low-income students who enroll in and graduate from college. Despite the broad political consensus on this point — and a significant investment of resources by public and private funders — efforts to restructure high...
A solid understanding of rational numbers — fractions, decimals, ratios, and proportions and percents — is necessary for student success in algebra and beyond. Yet, decades of research on student achievement show that students struggle with these concepts. Seventh grade is one of the last chances for students to receive formal instruction in rational numbers. While it...
Elementary schools that educate children at risk of academic failure have traditionally responded by offering remedial instruction that slows the pace of learning. Research suggests, however, that remediation makes it harder for students to catch up and join the educational mainstream. Accelerated Schools offer a different approach: accelerating learning for all...
Launched in Houston in 1993 by James Ketelsen, retired CEO of Tenneco, and since expanded to 12 additional school districts, Project Graduation Really Achieves Dreams (GRAD) combines a variety of promising reforms to improve instruction and raise student achievement in schools that serve primarily minority and low-...
The problems of urban middle and high schools are rooted in the inadequate preparation that too many students receive in elementary schools, and these problems become most visible in the ninth grade, when students encounter more demanding coursework and tougher requirements for grade-level promotion. In troubled high schools, a large percentage of ninth-grade students...
Big-city school districts play a critical role in educating America’s children. Although there are almost 17,000 public school districts in the United States, just 100 of them serve 23 percent of all students, 30 percent of economically disadvantaged students, and 40 percent of students from racial minorities. It is in the big cities that the challenges facing the...
An approach to educational reform that is gaining increasing currency is the one taken by the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC), a not-for-profit grantmaking and support organization that aims to increase educational equity among students in six San Francisco Bay Area counties. The central idea informing BASRC...
Today’s labor market puts a high premium on literacy skills, even in jobs that once required little education or training. Not being able to read or write can stand in the way of finding and keeping a job or earning a living wage. Literacy can also affect one’s ability to be an educated consumer, an informed voter, and a helpful parent or grandparent. As leading...
Developed by the Institute for Research and Reform in Education (IRRE), First Things First is an ambitious comprehensive school reform model that seeks to address the impersonal nature and poor performance of many secondary schools serving disadvantaged students. Calling for changes in structure, instruction, governance, and accountability in...
Especially in low-income neighborhoods, schools are an attractive setting for after-school programs for many reasons, including their physical facilities and their convenience. Indeed, the vision of some youth development experts is to transform public schools into full-service youth and community centers that open early in the morning and stay open into the early...
Young people without postsecondary education or vocational credentials face an uphill battle in the competition for jobs. Though the economic boom of the 1990s cut youth unemployment by one-quarter, it failed to benefit African-American and Hispanic young people as much as their white counterparts, and youth who lacked a high school diploma were actually more likely to...
For low-income youth who lack basic skills and drop out of school, finding employment at a living wage is a challenge. Developed by MDRC as a nonresidential alternative to Job Corps, JOBSTART was an unusual collaborative effort to help disadvantaged young people join the economic mainstream. The idea guiding this...
Many low-income children in the early grades need after-school care. And many of these children score well below their more advantaged peers on standardized tests of reading and math. The confluence of these circumstances suggests that it may be possible to strengthen the academic component of after-school programs (now often confined to providing help with homework)...
It is important that children who are learning to read be exposed to high-quality, research-based curricula, but it is also essential that teachers be well versed in the instructional practices that promote early literacy (see the description of Reading First for more on this topic). Many educators and...
In increasingly common currency is the idea that effective school principals, in addition to being managers and disciplinarians, must be instructional leaders of their schools — that is, they should convey to their staff members a common vision of what good instruction looks like, provide teachers with the resources and supports they need to be effective in...