California

Infographic

Lessons from the Los Angeles College Promise Program

September, 2019
Andrea Vasquez, Madeline Price

The Los Angeles College Promise aims to increase college access and success by offering support services and a scholarship that covers tuition and fees for two years. This brief highlights how it has established a cycle of continual program improvement that uses insights from behavioral science and involves the students themselves.

Issue Focus

Training Approaches Applied in the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) Demonstration

July, 2019
Zaina Rodney

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) project integrates procedural justice principles (the idea of fairness in processes) into enforcement at six child support agencies. This brief, intended for child support practitioners and administrators, describes the specialized training provided to staff members at the six participating agencies.

Report

Final Impacts and Costs of the Los Angeles County Transitional Subsidized Employment Program

July, 2019
Chloe Anderson Golub, Mary Farrell, Asaph Glosser, Bret Barden

Los Angeles County tested two different models of subsidized employment for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients: one subsidizes the wages of individuals placed at employers in the nonprofit or public sector, and the other offers wage subsidies to for-profit employers. This report offers findings from implementation, impact, and cost studies.

Report

Lessons on Adapting Interventions for Young People Experiencing Homelessness or Systems Involvement

September, 2019

Young people who experience homelessness or involvement in foster care or justice systems face unique challenges. The Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential (LEAP)TM initiative aims to help this population reach its full potential. An MDRC evaluation of two programs adapted by 10 LEAP grantees will contribute knowledge to this field.

Brief

Engaging California Parents During Child Support Order Establishment

June, 2019
Angela Gaffney, Michael Fishman, Jared Smith

Child support agencies in Sacramento and San Joaquin Counties and the Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services team tested whether a behavioral intervention could increase the percentage of parents who responded to early paperwork and got involved in the child support process.

Report

Studying Enhancements to Colleges’ iPASS Practices

July, 2019
Alexander Mayer, Hoori Santikian Kalamkarian, Benjamin Cohen, Lauren Pellegrino, Melissa Boynton, Edith Yang

Frequent advising seems to help struggling students, but advisers’ time is limited; could technology make a difference? This study examines the effects of three institutions’ efforts to expand the use of advising technologies and to use administrative and communication strategies to increase student contact with advisers.

For The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trial project ( THE - RCT ), MDRC has created the largest individual-participant database from higher education randomized controlled trials to date. THE - RCT makes standardized, deidentified data from more than 25 studies covering 50 institutions of higher education and 65,000 students securely available to qualified...

Report

Integrating Workforce and College-Readiness Training into California’s Adult Basic Skills Programs

July, 2019
Elizabeth Zachry Rutschow, Katie Beal, Chase Johnson

New models for adult education that integrate basic skills education with workforce and college-readiness training are catching on across the country. In this report, MDRC examines the development of these programs in California and suggests ways to expand these integrated models in adult basic skills programs across the state.

Brief

Introducing the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt Project

June, 2019

Procedural justice centers on the idea that individuals’ perception of the fairness of a process determines how they respond to it. In this random assignment demonstration, child support programs are applying this principle to reframe their work with families as a respectful, problem-solving endeavor.

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