Filter Publications

Brief
September 2024

Elevating the Strengths of Children from Racially and Linguistically Marginalized Backgrounds

This brief aims to help the early childhood field identify and measure the skills and competencies of a diverse population of young learners.

Issue Focus
September 2024

Mission and Project Portfolio

This issue focus summarizes the current work of MDRC’s Center for Criminal Justice Research and future directions for that work.

Report
August 2024

A Meta-analytic Approach

This report summarizes findings from a meta-analysis conducted to identify the features of fatherhood programs most strongly associated with their success.

Commentary
August 2024

In this commentary originally published by the Alabama Daily News, Sarah Picard and Leah Nelson discuss how the strategy to fund justice systems through fines and fees is unfair and destructive.

Brief
August 2024

Preliminary Findings on Fairness and Efficacy

This brief presents early results from an analysis of how legal fines and fees are assessed and distributed in Jefferson County, Alabama.

Brief
August 2024

Educators’ Advice on High-Dosage Tutoring Programs

This brief offers advice on setting up a high-dosage tutoring program (which involves small-group sessions scheduled during school three or more times a week).

Brief
August 2024

Changes to Service Delivery at Three Sites in the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt Demonstration

This brief describes how child support changed with the COVID-19 pandemic, and relays agency staff members’ and parents’ perspectives on those changes.

Report
August 2024

A Look at Three Sites in the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt Demonstration

This report examines how three child support agencies experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on employment, earnings, and unemployment insurance patterns.

Blog
July 2024

This post describes an exercise for social services organizations that uses program attendance and engagement data analysis as part of a team-building effort—promoting equity by engaging diverse staff members in discussions about how to improve enrollment, service delivery, and participation outcomes.

Commentary
July 2024

In this commentary originally published by Route Fifty, Rick Hendra writes that artificial intelligence opens new opportunities for policymaking and service delivery, but it’s not magic. 

Blog
July 2024

A Conversation with Fulton County Schools’ Hannah Zey

Hannah Zey, who works at Fulton County Schools in Atlanta, shares advice for using vendors to recruit tutors for tutoring programs.

Issue Focus
July 2024

The Changing Landscape—and Growing Impact—of Career and Technical Education

Since the early 1990s, MDRC has partnered with pioneers in career and technical education to help them assess the effectiveness of their programs and to improve their services to students.

Blog
July 2024

How the MDRC Center for Data Insights Approaches Career and Technical Education Partnerships

The Center for Data Insights at MDRC partners with career and technical education organizations to augment their data analytics capacity, supporting the analysis that happens before, during, after, or separate from impact evaluations. These partnerships generally fall into one of three collaboration models: consultation, cocreation, and coaching.

Commentary
July 2024

In this commentary originally published in Spotlight on Poverty & Opportunity, Clint Key describes three ways funders and policymakers can better support the scaling of sector-based workforce training programs.

Commentary
June 2024

In this commentary originally published in the Deseret News, Dina Israel writes that the demand for fatherhood programs is growing, but more needs to be learned about how and why these programs work.

Report
June 2024

Cross-Jurisdiction Patterns, Pathways, and Perspectives from the Pretrial Justice Collaborative

This report presents findings from a multimethod study of racial and ethnic disparities in the pretrial processes of seven jurisdictions across the country.

Brief
June 2024

Early Findings from the FastForward Study

This brief presents findings from a study of noncredit career and technical education programs that were implemented in Virginia community colleges.

Brief
June 2024

This brief shares findings about cross-functional teams, which try to bring change to higher education by assembling departments that often work separately.

Blog
June 2024

High-dosage tutoring (HDT)—or three tutoring sessions of 30 minutes or more a week—is an effective way to improve academic outcomes for K-12 students. Ellen Kim, program manager of Chicago Public Schools’ Tutor Corps, speaks about the successes and challenges of developing an HDT program.

Issue Focus
June 2024

How Innovations in Course Placement are Helping Community College Students Succeed

For a decade, MDRC and its collaborators have studied multiple measures assessments, an alternative to using tests to determine whether students can succeed in college-level courses.