InPractice: Lessons for and from Practitioners

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

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

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.

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.

Homeboy Industries’ (HBI) experience implementing a new data system was described in an earlier InPractice post. This post examines the complexities and challenges that must be addressed before successful implementation can take place, and how HBI managed that change process.

Homeboy Industries (HBI), one of the largest gang rehabilitation and reentry organizations in the world, is transforming its data infrastructure and the way it uses technology to better support its client-centered program services. MDRC recently collaborated with HBI on a project to establish program logic models and to assess the organization’s data collection needs and practices. This post draws on what was learned from that collaboration.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced leaders of the Male Student Success Initiative at the Community College of Baltimore County to create an entirely online environment for a formerly hands-on program. Here are some measures the program took to deepen its commitment to supporting and mentoring its students.

The InPractice blog is MDRC’s place for sharing resources and tips developed by practitioners, for practitioners. This review of the past year’s posts shows how our program partners adjusted to difficult, uncertain conditions and continued to deliver services during the worst of the pandemic.

The pandemic required service providers to make abrupt, often improvised adjustments to keep working with clients, and some of those changes may become permanent. One Ohio-based social service agency is figuring out which changes it will retain as more normal operations resume.

New approaches to child support enforcement aim to be less punitive and to serve the whole family, not just child support recipients. Lessons from Washington State's Alternative Solutions Program show how this shift in perspective has made a difference during the pandemic.