Mdrc

Family well-being and child developmentfor decades, mdrc has been a leader in developing and studying interventions to improve outcomes for children living in families with low incomes. Our current work in this area focuses on two main domains: early care and education (ece) systems and family-focused service systems. In early care and education, we've worked with practitioners to develop and test interventions to improve classroom quality, curriculum and professional development, math interventions and supports, early childhood assessments, and p-3 alignmentas well as studied ways to support…

K-12 educationfor 25 years, mdrc has been learning what may be most effective to raise the academic achievement of young people who are at risk of failing. We collaborate with public school systems, charter organizations, and national nonprofits to evaluate their programs and to use that information to help them develop evidence-based strategies for continuous program improvement.

Economic mobility, housing, and communitieslong regarded as the premier investigator of policies to improve the lives of families participating in public benefits programs, mdrc has brought its program development skills and reputation for methodological rigor to the challenge of learning how best to improve the economic health of workers and communities. The concentration of poverty and an associated lack of access to good jobs, affordable housing, quality goods and services, and economic and political resources presents special challenges for improving the prospects of residents of…

Postsecondary educationpolicymakers and the philanthropic sector have focused new efforts on increasing student persistence and achievement in postsecondary education. Mdrc has identified the most effective programs developed by others, helped replicate those programs in new contexts, and assisted communities and institutions in developing new interventions based on the evidence developed in the studies available. We are now focused on helping states and higher education institutions adopt and scale the more successful interventions that have been developed and tested.

Information and dissemination: for mdrc's evidence to make a difference in the public policies and practices that affect people with low incomes, it must reach a broad audience. We produce clearly written research reports as well as policy briefs, "how-to" guides and toolkits, interactive tools, infographics, blog posts, commentaries, videos, and podcasts that distill the results of our studies and discuss their implications for policy and practice. We widely disseminate our findings to the media and public interest groups; to government officials and philanthropy; to practitioners and…

Center for data insightsthe center for data insights furthers mdrc's long-standing commitment to helping organizations with which we collaborate their programs and systems by harnessing the benefits of operational data-science techniques those that produce actionable insights that can affect daily practice. Ranging from simple descriptive summaries to advanced machine learning algorithms, the center's projects aim to use institutions' increasingly rich data to provide new insights that can help them refine and target their services.