Publications

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) project integrates procedural justice (the idea of fairness in processes) into enforcement at six child support agencies. This brief explains which parents these agencies refer to civil contempt for not paying child support, and describes the business-as-usual contempt proceedings.

This paper presents new estimates of the effects of the City University of New York (CUNY) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) model, evaluated first in New York and later in Ohio. It shows long-term effects in New York on degrees earned and consistent effects in both states.

Living-wage jobs increasingly require postsecondary education, though nonacademic career and technical education can also boost earning potential. But noncredit program benefits can be limited, so some community colleges are bridging the academic-nonacademic divide. This brief describes methods and strategies for connecting and promoting noncredit and credit pathways for students.

Some estimate that the expansion of the Child Tax Credit could help ameliorate the economic impact of the pandemic and, if made permanent, cut child poverty in the United States in half. But to achieve the promise of these estimates, policymakers should improve the design and delivery compared to the current child tax credit to minimize burdens and barriers for recipients. Here are four research-backed ways to do it.

Participants in the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program are more likely to obtain a GED or high school diploma, earn college credits, and be employed. This study evaluates an expansion called Job ChalleNGe, which includes more court-involved youth and includes an add-on residential training program.

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.

Creating Moves to Opportunity greatly increased the number of families with young children leasing in areas with high upward income mobility in the Seattle area. It offered education, coaching, housing search assistance, landlord engagement, and financial supports to Housing Choice Voucher program applicants. This report offers lessons about implementing the model.

This post describes the creative adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic of two employment providers that use the Individual Placement and Support model to help people find and keep jobs despite multiple, serious barriers to employment.

This brief from the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness, a project of the Community College Research Center and MDRC, presents four case studies on how community college state systems changed course placement policies and supported new placement practices in the midst of the pandemic.

The Rent Reform Demonstration is testing an alternative rent-setting system for housing choice voucher recipients. It offers an employment incentive and aims to reduce administrative complexity and cost without burdening participating households. This report presents impacts on labor market and housing-related outcomes through roughly three and a half years.

In this commentary originally published in Route Fifty, experts from MDRC’s Center for Applied Behavioral Science and BIT North America describe how government agencies can use behavioral science to adapt policies, programs, and services during the continuing pandemic crisis.

MDRC, Ascendium Education Group, and Rural Matters partnered to present an audio series about higher education that aired on the Rural Matters podcast. This special supplement presents summaries of all four installments in that series.

In this commentary originally published in Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, MDRC President Virginia Knox explains that public and philanthropic investments have built a foundation of evidence that can inform decision makers as they work to build economic mobility and reduce inequality.

This Issue Focus highlights MDRC’s efforts to incorporate principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion into the content of our work and how we conduct it, providing examples of current and ongoing initiatives to advance those goals.

This report from the Building Evidence on Employment Strategies for Low-Income Families project examines programs that integrate employment services with treatment and recovery services for people with substance use disorders. It explores the role employment plays in recovery and reviews limited but promising evidence on the effectiveness of these integrated programs.

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) project integrates procedural justice (the idea of fairness in processes) into enforcement at six child support agencies. This brief describes the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on PJAC project agencies and parents during the spring and summer of 2020, and examines agencies’ responses.

MDRC’s work appeared in a variety of mainstream and trade publications in 2020 — on such topics as criminal justice reform, responses to the pandemic, community college programs, career and technical education, and high school reform. Here are 10 of our favorites.

MDRC’s Evidence First podcast features experts — program administrators, policymakers, and researchers — talking about the best evidence available on education and social programs. Here are the five most popular episodes from 2020.

A West Virginia campaign to double college degree attainment by 2030 includes five evidence-based strategies proven to help students succeed and is customized to suit the particular needs of rural communities. This paper summarizes Part II of a four-part podcast series coproduced by Rural Matters and MDRC.

The iPASS initiative aims to helps colleges use technology-based advising practices to improve students’ academic performance and college completion rates. This report describes how three schools used enhanced iPASS services in an effort to strengthen and reform their existing advising practices, including the standard version of iPASS.