Government agencies work hard to help the people they serve, whether it's helping individuals find jobs or improve family well-being. But despite best efforts, some participants still don't succeed. What are some ways government agencies can improve services and ensure participants remain on the right track?

In this episode, Kate Gualtieri, MDRC's Director of Strategy, talks with MDRC Senior Fellow Melissa Wavelet, the former director of the Office of Performance and Strategic Outcomes in the Colorado Department of Human Services, about her experience implementing a variety of data-driven strategies that help city and state government agencies meet their goals and improve the lives of the people they serve. They also discuss Melissa's work at MDRC on the TANF Data Collaborative, a new initiative sponsored by the Office of Family Assistance and the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the federal Administration for Children and Families, created in an effort to accelerate the use of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) data for program improvement and evidence-building at the federal, state, and local levels.

Nationwide, only 25 percent of full-time, first-time students at community colleges earn a degree within three years. To increase graduation rates for low-income community college students, the City University of New York (CUNY) launched Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) — a comprehensive program that provides wrap-around support services to students, including one-on-one advising, help covering transportation and book expenses, and tutoring.

MDRC's evaluation of the CUNY ASAP model found that the program doubled graduation rates in New York City. Three community colleges in Ohio successfully replicated the ASAP model as part of the ASAP Ohio Demonstration, and MDRC's evaluation found positive results in line with those at CUNY.

Join Katie Beal as she talks with Dr. Marcia Ballinger, President of Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, about the demonstration and what it takes to scale a comprehensive program like ASAP.

High-quality preschool education can have substantial positive impacts on children's early learning and development, as well as longer-term outcomes like graduating from high school and attending college. But the boost in skills young children experience can fade out as they move on to kindergarten and elementary school, exacerbating the achievement gap between children from more- versus less-advantaged backgrounds.

This fadeout pattern has drawn greater attention to students' experiences after preschool, in early elementary school, and helped increase support for improving curricular alignment from preschool to third grade. Alignment refers to the range of policies and practices designed to launch young children on a positive developmental pathway, with the early elementary grades continuing to build on what children learn in preschool. Join Leigh Parise as she talks with MDRC's Meghan McCormick about measuring quality in preschool programs and the challenges of implementing aligned curricula.

Can giving small loans to low-income people to start or grow their businesses help lift them out of poverty and improve overall well-being? That's the idea behind microlending – a promising approach implemented by institutions worldwide. But only limited rigorous evidence is available on the model's effectiveness, especially in advanced economies.

MDRC is evaluating Grameen America, a program that provides small loans to groups of low-income women in the U.S. using a model designed by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus for the original Grameen Bank program in Bangladesh in the 1970s.

But carrying out the first random assignment evaluation of Grameen America and its complex model presented unique challenges. In this episode, Katie Beal talks with Marcus Berkowitz, Vice President of Technology and Innovation at Grameen America, and Richard Hendra, MDRC's Senior Fellow who leads the evaluation, about the partnership between the organizations and how they worked together to overcome those challenges.

One out of every 10 young people between the ages of 16 and 24 is neither working nor in school. These "disconnected" young people face an uphill battle finding work and are at risk of economic hardship well into adulthood. Although there are many programs that aim to reconnect young people to education and employment, findings from evaluations of these programs have been mixed. The evidence base has grown substantially in the past several months, though, as studies of three pro­grams — YouthBuild, Year Up, and New York City's Young Adult Internship Program (YAIP) — have released new findings. MDRC's Dan Bloom and Cynthia Miller recently wrote a brief that discusses findings from the new studies and their implications for youth programs.

Students who are placed into developmental (remedial) courses often fail to complete them, and many colleges and states are therefore interested in reforming developmental education. But what if students are not accurately placed into developmental courses in the first place? What if some of the students placed into developmental courses could have succeeded in college-level courses? Research suggests that standardized tests — the traditional method for placing students — actually does misplace substantial numbers of them. An alternative strategy is to place students using multiple measures of college readiness, including grade point averages, instead of a single test score. Join Katie Beal as she talks to MDRC's Dan Cullinan and the Community College Research Center's Elisabeth Barnett about early findings from a Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness study of systems that use multiple measures for placement, and about lessons for colleges interested in implementing these systems.

How should policymakers address the long-standing youth unemployment problem in Puerto Rico, which only worsened in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria? With support from the W. T. Grant Foundation, MDRC partnered with Instituto del Desarrollo de la Juventud, or the Youth Development Institute, to develop recommendations that can create pathways into the workforce for young people and that are supported by evidence-based and promising practices relevant to the current situation in Puerto Rico. Join Katie Beal as she talks to John Martinez, Director of Program Development at MDRC, about those recommendations and the challenges of implementing them.

Career and technical education programs have taken on many different forms, but one that has been gaining in popularity is apprenticeships. Join Katie Beal as she talks to Noel Ginsberg, CEO of CareerWise Colorado, and Gretchen Morgan, former president of CareerWise Colorado, about the initiative that seeks to enlist hundreds of employers from many sectors to employ thousands of high school students in the nation's first large-scale youth apprenticeship program. MDRC is currently working with CareerWise Colorado to help its leaders understand the factors that either impede or promote the smooth implementation of this complex initiative, so that the program can continue to improve.

This summer Congress passed the long-awaited reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, which governs the federal investment in career and technical education (CTE). But what do CTE programs actually do? And how have they evolved over time? Join Katie Beal as she talks to Mary Visher, a senior research associate at MDRC, about CTE programs — including their development and challenges. They also discuss MDRC's two-decade history of constructing and evaluating CTE programs, including the landmark study of Career Academies, and the other CTE programs MDRC is currently partnering with to build evidence and inform policy and practice.

Early math ability is one of the best predictors of children's math and reading skills into late elementary school. Children with stronger math proficiency in elementary school are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college. But most early childhood programs don't focus on math instruction. What kinds of math programs can improve children's early math abilities? And can they lead to positive impacts for other longer-term outcomes?

The Making Pre-K Count and High 5s demonstrations were designed to rigorously assess whether providing high-quality math instruction, aligned across prekindergarten (pre-K) and kindergarten, could lead to long-term gains across a variety of domains for students growing up in low-income communities in New York City. Making Pre-K Count and High 5s are the first studies of the Robin Hood Early Childhood Research Initiative, a partnership between Robin Hood and MDRC, which is supported with lead funding from the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Overdeck Family Foundation, and other funders.

MDRC's findings show that these programs reduced the achievement gap in math skills between low-income children and their higher-income peers.

Join Katie Beal as she talks to Shira Mattera, Research Associate at MDRC, and Robin Jacob, a Research Associate Professor at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, about the positive impacts of the Making Pre-K Count and High 5s demonstrations on kindergarten outcomes.