MDRC Videos

07/2023

The Strengthening the Implementation of Responsible Fatherhood Programs (SIRF) project sought to build evidence about promising practices to increase participation in fatherhood programs. These six short videos feature staff members from fatherhood programs discussing the approaches they used to enroll, engage, and retain fathers—and how the fathers responded.

03/2023

In this five-minute video, Jean Grossman, a Senior Fellow at MDRC, introduces the Personalized Learning Initiative, which aims to determine how K-12 schools can provide high-dosage tutoring and other supplemental instruction to serve the largest number of students in a cost-effective manner to address pandemic learning loss.

01/2023

This nine-minute video features staff members from TANF agencies reflecting on their challenges, accomplishments, and general experiences during the TANF Data Collaborative Pilot.

12/2022

MDRC staff shared their work and learned from their colleagues at this year’s Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Research Conference, “Advancing Policy Research with Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives,” in Washington, DC. Watch this five-minute video for some highlights.

11/2022

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) demonstration tested the efficacy of incorporating procedural justice principles into child support practices. In six short videos, child support professionals explain how the five principles of procedural justice—helpfulness, understanding, respect, voice, and neutrality—help them provide better services to parents.

10/2022

In this six-minute video, Gloriela Iguina-Colón, a research analyst at MDRC, describes MyGoals for Employment Success, an innovative employment coaching program intended to help recipients of federal housing subsidies who are not employed find work, build careers, and advance toward greater self-sufficiency.

05/2022

In this four-minute video, Louisa Treskon, a Senior Associate at MDRC, introduces the Reconnecting Youth Project, which developed two interactive web tools that can be used to inform a learning agenda focused on reconnecting youth to school and work.

04/2022

This four-minute video features MDRC staff members discussing the importance of inclusion for advancing equity in social policy research, which was the theme of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Research Conference in Austin, Texas.

04/2022

In this four-minute video, Sarah Picard, Director of the MDRC Center for Criminal Justice Research, explains what drew her to the field of criminal justice research, discusses current issues facing the system, and describes how partnerships can help build more effective and equitable practices. 

11/2021

MDRC Vice President Sharon Rowser recently retired after 34 years with the organization. Her colleagues celebrate her many accomplishments, her mentorship, and her enduring legacy.

10/2021

The Building Bridges and Bonds (B3) study worked with fatherhood programs to engage fathers and identify effective ways to provide employment training and support positive father-child relationships. In this video, program staff and fathers share their experiences about how programs prioritized fathers’ perspectives, which helped the programs to continuously learn how to better engage fathers.

10/2021

The Building Bridges and Bonds (B3) study worked with fatherhood programs to engage fathers and identify effective ways to provide employment training and support positive father-child relationships. In this video, program staff and fathers share their perspectives on how programs supported fathers’ engagement through positive experiences in the program.

10/2021

The Building Bridges and Bonds (B3) study worked with fatherhood programs to engage fathers and identify effective ways to provide employment training and support positive father-child relationships. In this video, program staff and fathers share their experiences about how programs supported fathers’ engagement by addressing challenges outside the program.

06/2021

In this five-minute video, Nandita Verma, a senior research associate at MDRC, discusses lessons from two decades of designing and evaluating strategies that use the housing subsidy system to promote economic mobility.

05/2021

This five-minute video introduces the Supporting Moves to Opportunity demonstration, the next generation of mobility initiatives. In partnership with public housing agencies and service providers in Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis, it will develop evidence to inform federal efforts to expand housing choice policy.

04/2021

This two-minute video introduces the Building Evidence on Employment Strategies (BEES) project and explains how a random assignment study can help researchers gather powerful information on what works to improve employment and earnings outcomes.

04/2021

In this three-minute video, Senior Associate D. Crystal Byndloss introduces MDRC’s Office of Outreach, Diversity, and Inclusion, which she directs, and describes how it informs MDRC’s work and organizational culture.

03/2021

In this video from the College Completion Network, Rashida Welbeck describes MDRC’s Men of Color College Achievement project. A partnership with the Community College of Baltimore County, the project is studying an intervention that integrates a culturally relevant student success course with mentorship, academic coaching, and other activities.

12/2020

In this three-minute video, Meghan McCormick, an MDRC research associate, describes evidence-based ways to promote equitable access to early care and education programs, a challenge made more urgent by the pandemic.

11/2020

John Martinez, MDRC Director of Program Development, has been nominated as the next President-Elect of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). In this brief video, Martinez describes why APPAM is important to him and to the field and expresses his thanks for the honor of being nominated.

05/2020

Many states and colleges are making reforms to their developmental education practices, but to what extent are they reaching students? In this video, Elizabeth Zachry Rutschow discusses findings from a survey of reform efforts at two- and four-year colleges across the country.

05/2020

In this video, Elizabeth Zachry Rutschow describes the promising findings from a study of the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways — a developmental education reform that aligns the content of students’ math courses with their career interests and helps them complete a college-level math course within one year of starting school.

04/2020

In this four-minute video, Leigh Parise, Associate Director of Program Development and a senior K-12 researcher, describes how her experiences as a former elementary school teacher and the head of a nonprofit championing school-aged kids inspire her work at MDRC.

03/2020

In this 5-minute video, MDRC President Virginia Knox describes what got her interested in public policy and research, what excites her about some recent MDRC projects, and what she sees for the future of MDRC and the field.

01/2020

This 70-second video introduces Bridging Access to Benefits and Care (BABC), an innovative collaboration among three nonprofit organizations designed to improve connections to public benefits and health care services for people dependent on opioids and intravenous drugs in the Bronx.

10/2019

This eleven-minute video features staff members and students from Northeast Wisconsin Technical College describing how the college’s promising GED Bridge program, which helps students pass the General Educational Development, or GED, exam and prepares them for college and career.

08/2019

This three-minute video introduces the challenges facing the nation’s court systems as they seek to ensure the fair treatment of defendants and curb growing jail populations, while maintaining court appearances by defendants and the safety of the public.

07/2019

This four-minute video describes the TANF Data Collaborative, an exciting new effort to accelerate the use of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) data, earnings data, and other administrative data for program improvement and evidence building at the federal, state, and local levels.

06/2019

In this seven-minute video, John Martinez, MDRC’s Director of Program Development, interviews Brad Dudding, Chief Impact Officer at the Center for Employment Opportunities, which offers individuals just coming home from prison the ongoing support necessary to build career capital and financial stability, about the decade-long partnership between the two organizations and the most recent work around program improvement through data insights.

05/2019

This 12-minute film, produced by Results for America’s What Works Media Project, explores the Detroit Promise Path, an evidence-based approach that aims to build on the potential of College Promise programs by offering comprehensive coaching, monthly financial supports, and other services to help students stay enrolled and succeed.

03/2019

In this five-minute video, Heather Clawson from Communities In Schools, Monica Rodriguez from Detroit Promise Path, Karen Pennington from Madison Strategies, and MDRC Director of Program Development John Martinez describe how MDRC applies its research knowledge, program experience, and operational expertise when closely collaborating with nonprofit organizations.

12/2018

This two-minute video from the Ohio Department of Higher Education offers highlights from the December 12th release of MDRC’s evaluation of the replication of the City University of New York’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) at three Ohio community colleges.

11/2018

In this 30-second video, MDRC Senior Associate Donna Wharton-Fields describes how the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has invested in the replication of Jobs-Plus, a successful employment program for residents of public housing that MDRC helped develop and evaluated.

10/2018

In this 30-second video, MDRC Research Associate Barbara Condliffe references key points from our recent literature review on project-based learning, a concept in which a class project is the central vehicle of instruction in a K-12 setting.

09/2018

This video summarizes the findings from the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency project, which tested 15 behavioral interventions in work support, child support, and child care programs in eight states, highlighting projects in Indiana, Los Angeles, and Texas.

06/2018

In this five-minute video, MDRC’s Meghan McCormick and Jason Sachs from the Boston Public Schools describe an ongoing evaluation of Boston’s innovative early learning program that combines evidence-based curricula with coaching and professional development for teachers, reinforced by system-wide alignment of instruction from prekindergarten into elementary school, so that each grade seeks to build on the lessons and skills that children learned in the previous grade.

06/2018

In this 30-second video, MDRC Senior Research Associate Crystal Byndloss introduces MDRC’s ongoing evaluation of an innovative model of career and technical education that prepares students for both college and careers. 

10/2016

This eight-minute video profiles the lives of six New Yorkers who are participating in the Paycheck Plus demonstration and evaluation of an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income single workers without dependent children.

02/2014

Much attention is being paid to low-income, college-ready students who are “undermatching” — enrolling in colleges for which they are academically overqualified or not going to college at all. A number of “light touch” informational interventions targeting the top 15 percent of standardized test-takers appear effective at getting these students to attend selective colleges.