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Early Results of a Louisiana Scholarship Program for Low-Income Parents Attending Community College
Funded by state welfare dollars, two community colleges in the New Orleans area offered performance-based scholarships and enhanced counseling to low-income parents, as part of MDRC’s Opening Doors demonstration. These early findings show the program had significant positive effects on academic achievement and rates of retention.
Lessons from Research on Three Reform Models
Recent MDRC evaluations of three high school reform models — Career Academies, First Things First, and Talent Development — offer hope that comprehensive programs can improve low-performing high schools. This research synthesis for policymakers and practitioners offers practical lessons for creating personalized learning environments, helping struggling freshmen, improving instruction, preparing students for the world beyond high school, and stimulating change in overstressed high schools.
Implications for High School Reform
A Commentary from Chicago
In this paper, prepared for MDRC’s 2005 high school reform conference, Melissa Roderick, Co-Director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, contends that the primary goal of high school reform should be to close the gap between the high aspirations of minority and low-income public high school students — most of whom want to go to college — and the low numbers who graduate with the skills they need.
The Center for Employment Opportunities Comprehensive Prisoner Reentry Program
The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) serves nearly 2,000 reentering prisoners a year with a structured program of pre-employment training, immediate short-term transitional work, and job placement services. This report, written jointly by CEO and MDRC, describes how the CEO program operates. Results from a random assignment evaluation by MDRC are expected next year.
Launching the Work Advancement and Support Center Demonstration
The Work Advancement and Support Center demonstration tests an innovative approach to fostering employment retention, career advancement, and increased take-up of work supports for a broad range of low-earners, including reemployed dislocated workers. This report examines start-up experiences in the first two sites: Dayton, Ohio, and San Diego, California.
Evidence from the UK Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) Demonstration
The largest ever random assignment test of a social policy in Britain is being applied in a demonstration of the Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) program. This report, written by MDRC and British colleagues as part of a consortium of social policy research firms and produced for the UK Department for Work and Pensions, examines how well random assignment worked.
Design Principles for a Study on Teacher Incentives
This paper, produced by MDRC and the Laboratory for Student Success at Temple University, describes design principles for a study about the use of incentives to recruit and retain high-quality teachers for underperforming schools.
An evaluation of a job placement, retention, and advancement program for individuals receiving welfare showed some effects — but not consistent or large effects — on employment and retention outcomes during the first two years of follow-up.
Elementary Student Achievement and the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative’s Focal Strategy
The Bay Area School Reform Collaborative’s strategy seeks to raise student achievement in six elementary school districts in the San Francisco Bay Area by coaching supervisors, principals, and teachers, instituting evidence-based decision making, and promoting sharing of experiences among schools. During the first two years of implementation, MDRC found no strong, pervasive association with student achievement.
An Exploratory Analysis
This analysis of data collected in MDRC’s evaluation of the First Things First reform initiative confirms that high school students’ engagement in school and perceptions of their own academic competence influence their mathematics achievement. The study also suggests that perceived academic competence may be more influential than engagement in boosting achievement in both mathematics and reading.
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