Evidence First

Subsidized employment uses public funds to create jobs for the unemployed and are especially useful during economic downturns. Many have argued that subsidized employment programs should be part of policymakers' response to pandemic-induced mass joblessness.

MDRC has been studying subsidized employment for more than 40 years and recently completed two large-scale federal projects that rigorously tested 13 subsidized employment programs in eight states. The programs served very disadvantaged workers, such as people receiving cash assistance or people returning to the community from prison.

To learn more about subsidized employment programs and how they can be designed to reach the most disadvantaged, Leigh Parise spoke with MDRC Senior Vice President Dan Bloom.

The City University of New York's Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) provides comprehensive support services to community college students to help them stay enrolled and graduate. MDRC's evaluation of ASAP at CUNY community colleges found that it nearly doubled graduation rates within three years — which are some of the largest impacts found among programs for community college students.

To see if the program could work beyond New York City, CUNY, MDRC, and the Ohio Department of Higher Education worked with three Ohio community colleges to implement the ASAP model. Recent findings from MDRC's evaluation show that the Ohio programs had similarly large impacts on student outcomes, illustrating that the program can be successfully replicated and serve as a model for community colleges across the country.

To learn more about the Ohio results and what it takes to replicate and scale the successful ASAP model, Katie Beal spoke with Christine Brongniart, the University Executive Director of CUNY ASAP, and Camielle Headlam, a research associate at MDRC.

New types of career and technical education programs are trying to prepare workers for an increasingly complex labor market. For high school students, this preparation can mean combining academic study with a strong career focus and hands-on work experience with an industry partner. MDRC is testing the effectiveness of this approach in an evaluation of the New York City P-TECH 9-14 school model. P-TECH 9-14 schools collaborate with local community colleges to allow students to earn high school diplomas and cost-free, industry-recognized associate's degrees at the same time. During the six-year program, employer partners support P-TECH 9-14 schools by providing students with work-based learning experiences such as internships, mentoring, and job shadowing.

Interim results show that after three years, students in P-TECH 9-14 schools earn about two more credits than students at other schools. Students in P-TECH 9-14 schools also pass state-level proficiency exams earlier and pass at higher rates.

In this episode, Leigh Parise talks about the NYC P-TECH grades 9-14 high school model and MDRC's study with Rachel Rosen, codirector of MDRC's Center for Effective Career and Technical Education and co-principal investigator on the study.

Community colleges graduation rates remain low. Some studies have shown that students who enroll in summer courses are more likely to stay on track and graduate, yet despite these benefits most college students do not attend during the summer.

So why don't students attend, and how can colleges encourage more of them to enroll in the summer? To answer these questions MDRC launched the Encouraging Additional Summer Enrollment — or EASE — project in partnership with the Ohio Association of Community Colleges and 10 community colleges in Ohio. MDRC designed, implemented, and tested two interventions to encourage summer enrollment, using insights from behavioral science, a study of how people make decisions. Both interventions worked to increase enrollment, and both could be operated at a relatively low cost.

Join Leigh Parise as she talks about the EASE study with Caitlin Anzelone, deputy director of MDRC's Center for Applied Behavioral Science.

Individual Placement and Support (IPS) is a model for helping people who have serious mental illness find employment. There is a good deal of evidence showing the model's success, but less is known about the model's effectiveness with those who have other types of disabilities and health conditions, such as physical disabilities or less severe types of mental illness.

Between 2016 and 2018, MDRC led an evaluation of Breaking Barriers, a program in San Diego County that implemented the IPS model. Breaking Barriers served individuals who had a wide range of disabilities, not only serious mental illness. An initial analysis of data found that Breaking Barriers' IPS services did not have an effect on employment outcomes. With funding from the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, MDRC will be conducting additional analyses of Breaking Barriers, as part of the Building Evidence on Employment Strategies for Low-Income Families (BEES) project.

In this episode, Leigh Parise talks to Robert Drake, one of the developers of the IPS model and the vice president of the IPS Employment Center at the Rockville Institute, and Lily Freedman, a member of the MDRC evaluation team, about the IPS model, Breaking Barriers implementation, and the further analysis to be done under BEES.

In the beginning, MDRC was known primarily for evaluations of state welfare-to-work programs. Since then, MDRC has brought its unique approach to an ever-growing range of policy areas and populations. Recently, MDRC celebrated 25 years of working in the field of K-12 research – collaborating with teachers, school leaders, and districts to improve students' prospects for success. Join Leigh Parise as she talks with Fred Doolittle, MDRC Senior Fellow, and William Corrin, Director of K-12 education research at MDRC, about how the organization expanded into education and the lessons they've learned from 25 years of research.

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.