Last winter, Alonte Wilson had written off ever getting a high school diploma. He was 18, woefully short on credits and full of uncertainty about his future.

Then he got a series of texts from an outreach worker at Breakthrough Urban Ministries, a nonprofit on Chicago’s West Side:

“Here’s something that can help you so you’re not just sitting in the house doing nothing.”

MDRC is hosting Selena Cardona, a Postsecondary Education Applied Research (PEAR) Fellow, for an apprenticeship in our Postsecondary Education policy area.

Public community colleges are often hailed as engines of economic and social mobility for low- and middle-income students, as they tend to be more accessible and less expensive than their four-year and private counterparts.

MDRC is pleased to announce the selection of teams of innovators to develop early learning assessment tools as part of the Measures for Early Success Initiative. The Initiative is led by MDRC with funding support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

On May 9, PBS NewsHour Senior Correspondent Hari Sreenivasan reported on the long-term evaluation that MDRC is conducting of the replication of the City University of New York’s successful Accelerated Study in