Publications

In this commentary originally published in Community College Daily, Erika Lewy, Susan Bickerstaff, and Katie Beal outline five evidence-based principles that college administrators can use to guide the reform of developmental (or remedial) education, a common roadblock to student success.

The SUCCESS project aims to improve college completion rates for traditionally underserved students at community and broad-access colleges. This brief highlights the experiences of students 25 years or older in four SUCCESS colleges. The findings suggest how programmatic and institutional structures may promote or hamper student success for this population.

This paper, originally published in Evaluation Review, provides researchers with new information about the values of the key design parameters needed for planning randomized controlled trial evaluations of interventions in community colleges.

This report presents 20-year findings from an analysis of an employment-focused program offered to individuals who received welfare benefits. The program generally increased average earnings but did not change employment trajectories. The findings represent some of the first evidence on how these individuals fared in the labor market long term.

In this commentary originally published by Community College Daily, Alex Mayer explains which programs have been proven to help students complete college or increase their earnings.

Implementing institutional change is challenging. Achieving the Dream (ATD) provides expert guidance to promote positive change, close achievement gaps, and accelerate student success at community colleges, particularly among students of color and from low-income backgrounds. This brief summarizes the common drivers of institution-wide reforms at nine ATD colleges in Florida.

In community colleges nationwide, underrepresented students and students from families with low incomes face many barriers to academic success. In 2018, Westchester Community College in New York State launched Viking ROADS to help students overcome those obstacles. Despite the pandemic, the program had positive effects on enrollment and credits earned.

Young adults facing homelessness are a growing demographic. Covenant House is a nonprofit organization that provides housing and supportive services for young people facing homelessness and survivors of human trafficking. MDRC and Covenant House partnered to explore the perspectives and experiences of those young people as they navigate the workforce.

Policymakers, community colleges, and philanthropies have invested heavily in short-term or “stackable” noncredit career and technical education programs, despite a lack of evidence that the programs support positive career outcomes. A new MDRC study will explore how such programs influence outcomes including academic progression, program completion, employment, and earnings.

Millions of Americans have had their driver’s licenses suspended at some point because they have not paid legal fines and fees. This brief examines the causes, consequences, and scope of this practice, and highlights a program based in Florida that works to address the challenges of people affected by it.

Risk factors such as housing instability and untreated mental conditions are prevalent among people who come in contact with the criminal justice system, so some jurisdictions are trying to connect them with social services. This blog post provides several examples of these support-oriented pretrial approaches and research on their effectiveness.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) agencies are increasingly focused on using administrative data to assess how well programs are working and to inform policies and best practices. This toolkit was created to help TANF professionals develop more robust practices using employment data for program monitoring, reporting, and evaluation.

In this commentary originally published in the Albany Times-Union, Rachel Rosen makes the case that New York State should build on its investment in P-TECH 9-14 schools to help young people launch careers in the growing green-energy economy.

This report studies a proposal to add one year of high school quantitative reasoning coursework to California State University’s admissions requirements. It analyzes how the proposal, had it been accepted, could have affected students’ access to and success at the university, particularly for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds.

This profile provides background information on an evaluation of three programs in Illinois, New Hampshire, and North Carolina that provide employment services to individuals with a range of mental health and substance use disorders. The programs are being implemented as part of MDRC’s Building Evidence on Employment Strategies project.

The Detroit Promise Path combines a tuition-free scholarship with additional forms of support, such as a campus coach and personalized communications, to keep students on track to graduate. After four years, the program helped students stay enrolled in school but had no impact on degrees earned.

A review of impact and implementation studies from the past 10 years, this report summarizes what is known about how innovations in developmental education (that is, remedial college courses) can improve student outcomes. It also identifies five principles that are essential to successful reforms.

Community Health Workers (CHWs) are critical to Los Angeles County’s Reentry Intensive Case Management Services program, which assists clients following incarceration or probation by connecting them to services. This brief describes CHWs’ role, outlines their strategies, and offers insights for incorporating “lived experience” into their approach to helping clients.

In this blog post originally published by New America, Head Start educators report on challenges they’ve faced collecting and using assessments and identify opportunities for improvement.

Social services programs are increasingly looking to forecast which participants are likely to reach major milestones. Some explore advanced predictive modeling, but the Center for Data Insights (CDI) has found that such methods come with trade-offs. This post outlines CDI’s approach to predictive analytics, using illustrations from two studies.