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Blog
September 2024

Insights from Brenda Plazola of Rocketship Public Schools

Brenda Plazola of Rocketship Public Schools shares her thoughts and advice on integrating tutors into a school community.

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.

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.

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.

Blog
May 2024

This blog post describes eight processes and cultural shifts that the NYC Human Resources Administration and the Santa Cruz Human Services Department implemented to encourage innovation among staff members in response to the COVID-19 pandemic—and how each of the processes came to life.

Blog
May 2024

Expanding Access and Reducing Barriers for Job Seekers

As part of the Building Evidence on Employment Strategies project, researchers conducted virtual interviews with staff members at 10 workforce programs to learn how they used technology to adapt their services during the COVID-19 pandemic. This blog post examines five adaptations they made.

Issue Focus
October 2023

The Houston Housing Authority (HHA) joined an MDRC-led research project called MyGoals for Employment Success, an innovative employment coaching intervention informed by behavioral psychology. This blog post describes the experiences of HHA staff members and the MDRC team and how they used participatory research methods to inform decision-making. 

Issue Focus
August 2023

Teachers Weigh In

There is limited evidence on how best to implement high quality early care and education curricula and professional development that is aligned with the diverse backgrounds of children in pre-K settings. An MDRC research team led a project to learn more about how that might be accomplished.

Issue Focus
May 2023

Create Wellness Communities and Schedule Staff Celebrations to Boost Morale and Well-Being

Many program managers are integrating self-care into their management strategies to address work-related stress. This post offers two group activities that managers can use to boost staff morale and promote well-being: wellness communities and monthly staff celebrations.

Issue Focus
January 2023

Use Self-Care Plans to Support Worker Well-Being

An increased focus on staff well-being has been an unexpected benefit of the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. MDRC has helped program managers use a variety of tools to support their workers, including self-care plans that individuals can use to assess and address the stress of their jobs.