How Place-Based Employment Programs like Jobs Plus Can Help During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Employment programs situated within public housing developments are facing multiple challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With routine operations disrupted by shelter-in-place orders, programs like Jobs Plus can find creative ways to keep their doors open and their clients engaged.
School closures have left many high school students without in-person access to the advisers and counselors they were relying on to help them transition to college. Crystal Byndloss offers resources from MDRC’s College Match Project to help advisers provide virtual assistance.
Ongoing Implementation Experiences
Households receiving federal rental subsidies struggle to become self-sufficient. Jobs Plus provides grants to public housing agencies to offer tenants employment-related services, rent-based work incentives, and community support for work. This report examines a second round of Jobs Plus implementation, including evolving program operations, challenges, resident participation, and technical assistance.
A Feasibility Study of the Bridges to Pathways Program
In a program to reduce criminal justice involvement, participants received mentoring, case management, subsidized internships, and the opportunity to earn a high school credential. The program reduced the arrest rate for felonies and violent crimes but did not affect overall rates of arrest or incarceration, educational or training certification, or employment.
Reflections on Running the College Match Program
In this commentary originally published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, MDRC’s Crystal Byndloss offers lessons from our College Match demonstration in Chicago and New York, which helped college-ready, low-income high school students choose selective colleges that matched their academic profiles, financial considerations, and personal needs.
For The Higher Education Randomized Controlled Trial project ( THE - RCT ), MDRC is creating the largest individual-participant database from higher education randomized controlled trials to date. THE - RCT will make standardized, deidentified data from more than 20 studies covering 50 institutions of higher education and 50,000 students available to...
Final Report on Aid Like A Paycheck
This study, implemented at two community college systems in Texas and one in California, tested whether biweekly disbursements of financial aid rather than lump sum payments could help students budget more efficiently and improve their academic and financial outcomes. Overall, this approach did not have substantial impacts on student outcomes.
Stability and Change
Community organizations are at the center of neighborhood improvement efforts. But how do organizational networks evolve over time, and how does their evolution affect local capacity for positive change? This report takes on these questions to advance an understanding of how community networks function, and how to better support them.
Final Implementation and Impact Findings from the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation-Strong Start
MIHOPE-Strong Start rigorously examined the effects of home visiting services, as provided by 66 local programs in 17 states, on outcomes such as low birth weight, preterm birth, and infant health care use. This final report details those effects as well as the services received by families in the programs.
The Experience of a New Program for Young People Involved in the Juvenile Justice System
STRIVE International engaged MDRC to help the organization improve a new program model aimed at increasing educational attainment and employment of young adults involved in the juvenile justice system. This Issue Focus describes the partnership and offers advice to organizations implementing new programs on how to build evidence of effectiveness.
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