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Policymakers talk about solutions, but which ones really work? MDRC’s Evidence First podcast features experts—program administrators, policymakers, and researchers—talking about the best evidence available on education and social programs that serve people with low incomes.
60 Episodes
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Both college-going and college completion rates are far lower in rural areas than in other geographical settings. To learn what works to help rural students enroll in and complete college, MDRC, supported by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), has launched the National Rural Higher Education Research Center. The center will work with college systems to conduct eight research studies in two regions: the South and the Mountain West. In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with Alyssa Ratledge, research associate at MDRC, about the research questions the Center will address in response to the needs of rural practitioners and policymakers.
Many states and school districts are eager to expand high-dosage tutoring programs, a proven way to accelerate student learning by providing personalized instruction in small group settings several times a week. But there are challenges to getting these programs successfully off the ground, like recruiting tutors in a tight labor market, fitting sessions into already packed school days, and ensuring consistent student participation. To help practitioners address these challenges, the University of Chicago's Education Lab and MDRC launched the Personalized Learning Initiative (PLI) in 2021. PLI is supporting and studying the expansion of high-dosage tutoring programs in school districts across the country. In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with Barbara Condliffe, a senior research associate at MDRC, who's leading the implementation research on PLI, about the early lessons from the project.
Developmental education, also known as remedial education, refers to courses that some entering college students will have to take if they are deemed unprepared for college-level courses. However, studies have shown that developmental education can actually hinder students’ progress in college. Additionally, students of color, adults, first-generation students, and those from low-income backgrounds are disproportionately placed in developmental education programs, so there’s a lot of interest among policymakers, college practitioners, and researchers in reforming developmental education programs to address these challenges and support more equitable outcomes for students. As part of MDRC’s 50th anniversary celebration, this episode of Evidence First features MDRC’s longtime partner the Community College Research Center, or CCRC. In 2014, MDRC and CCRC launched the Center for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness, or CAPR, to research the effectiveness of developmental education reforms and to understand their implications for equity. In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with Nikki Edgecombe, a senior research scholar at CCRC who leads CAPR, and Michael Weiss, a senior fellow in postsecondary education at MDRC, about what has been learned about promoting equity in developmental education reform.
Sector-focused employment programs aim to improve the economic mobility of people with low incomes by training them for quality jobs in sectors that have strong local demand and opportunities for advancement. By partnering with local employers, these programs provide them with a skilled and able workforce. As part of MDRC’s 50th anniversary celebration, this episode of Evidence First features MDRC’s longtime partner Per Scholas, a leading national nonprofit offering training and employment services focused on specific employment sectors. MDRC’s evaluation has confirmed that Per Scholas offers a highly effective training model. Leigh Parise talks with Tamara Johnson, Chief of Staff at Per Scholas; Shondra Tobler, Senior Director of National Admissions at Per Scholas; and Donna Wharton-Fields, a senior fellow at MDRC. They discuss MDRC’s long-term research partnership aimed at helping Per Scholas improve its program and expand its reach.
As the cost of higher education climbs, skills-based hiring has gained traction. It’s a labor market trend in which employers hire based on applicants’ skills, with the understanding that degrees are not the only way to acquire competencies. In a follow-up to an earlier episode on skills-based hiring, Rachel Rosen, who leads MDRC’s Center for Effective Career and Technical Education, speaks with two guests: Kelli-Marie Vallieres, Connecticut’s Chief Workforce Officer who leads the state’s Office of Workforce Strategy, and Elizabeth Creamer, Vice President of Workforce Development for the Community College Workforce Alliance, which is the workforce development division of Brightpoint and Reynolds community colleges, within the Virginia Community College System. They discuss which sectors are experiencing an uptick in skills-based hiring in Connecticut, what non-degree programs are offered in Virginia, and whether skills-based hiring can promote equity.
Most pre-K classrooms use a whole-child approach to educational curricula, which focuses on the broad development of children’s academic skills. By contrast, domain-specific curricula focus more on specific areas of learning, such as math, literacy, or science. MDRC has partnered with the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) to implement a new domain-specific curriculum in its schools. In this episode, Leigh Parise speaks with Cheryl Ohlson, DCPS deputy chief of early childhood education, and Michelle Maier, MDRC senior associate, to outline their domain-specific curriculum strategy and to explain some of the ups and downs of their ongoing implementation in pre-K programs across Washington, DC. They explain how domain-specific curricula intersects with other important trends in pre-K education, including the importance of play and of providing developmentally appropriate instruction. Ohlson also discusses how teachers were trained to teach domain-specific curricula and addresses some of the challenges of implementing the initiative at scale.
As the cost of higher education climbs, skills-based hiring has gained traction. It’s a labor market trend in which employers hire based on applicants’ skills, with the understanding that degrees are not the only way to acquire competencies. Skills-based hiring has the potential to increase equity in the hiring process, providing avenues to socio-economic mobility for historically marginalized populations. However, there are also questions about whether the movement could demotivate students from pursuing two- or four-year degrees that may be more transferable to other jobs. To learn more about skills-based hiring across education and workforce training domains, Leigh Parise talks with Matt Sigelman, President of the Burning Glass Institute, which studies economic and workforce trends.
Many schools are expanding tutoring services and personalized instruction to address learning loss caused by the pandemic. This episode features Reading Partners, a successful national nonprofit that mobilizes community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring to students who struggle with reading in under-resourced elementary schools. MDRC has been working with Reading Partners for nearly 15 years to help document and improve the program’s effectiveness. MDRC’s rigorous evaluation of Reading Partners found that its program boosted three different measures of reading proficiency, including reading comprehension, for second- to fifth-graders. In the first episode of a series celebrating MDRC’s 50th anniversary and our longtime collaborators, join Leigh Parise as she talks with Dean Elson, Chief Knowledge Officer at Reading Partners, and Robin Jacob, a Research Professor at Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and Co-Director of the Youth Policy Lab. Jacob helped lead MDRC’s evaluation of Reading Partners and is currently studying their distance learning model, Reading Partners Connects. Elson and Jacob discuss MDRC’s study of Reading Partners, how to get volunteers to teach reading effectively, and how technology will continue to play a role in tutoring.
Montana 10 is a scholarship program offered by the Montana University System that offers wraparound academic, social, and financial supports to students from rural areas, first-generation college students, and Native American students. MDRC is partnering with the Montana University System on an evaluation of Montana 10.. In this episode, Leigh Parise speaks with Crystine Miller, Director of Student Affairs and Student Engagement in the Montana University System, and Alyssa Ratledge, a Research Associate in Postsecondary Education at MDRC, about the Montana 10 evaluation and its potential value to the field of higher education research. The pair describes the unique challenges of conducting an evaluation in a mostly rural higher education system. They also highlight what questions the evaluation is hoping to answer about rural students. For example, does the choice between returning to one’s hometown after graduating and moving away to pursue employment carry a special weight for students from rural backgrounds? To learn more about the Montana 10 project and some of the barriers facing rural students in postsecondary education, check out this recent commentary by Ratledge in The Hechinger Report.
In 2014, three Ohio colleges set out to adapt a student support model pioneered by the City University of New York called Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, or ASAP. The program requires students to attend college full time and provides them with support services for three years, including enhanced advising, financial aid, and career counseling. MDRC'S evaluation of the ASAP Ohio program has found that it doubled graduation rates for community college students after three years. With support from Arnold Ventures, MDRC recently released exciting long-term findings, showing that ASAP Ohio not only boosted attainment of associate’s and bachelor’s degrees after six years but also increased the earnings of students. In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with Christine Brongniart, the University Executive Director of CUNY ASAP, and Colleen Sommo, a senior research fellow in MDRC's Postsecondary Education policy area, to learn more about the CUNY ASAP model, its replication across the country, and the latest findings from MDRC’s study of the program in Ohio.
Nondegree credentials are typically certificates or licenses earned in a short period of time that confer some kind of professional or industry-recognized skill. They’re not new to the world of higher education, but they have received a lot of attention in the last few years as a “faster ” way to connect students to employment in comparison to earning a traditional college degree. Leigh Parise sits down with Paul Fain, a higher education journalist who writes an education and workforce newsletter called “The Job,” and Betsy Tessler, a senior research associate at MDRC, to answer some of the big questions surrounding nondegree credentials.
In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with MDRC President Virginia (Ginger) Knox and Naomi Goldstein, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) at the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Goldstein is also a member of the MDRC Board of Directors. They reflect on their experiences in evaluating programs and policies, the growth of the evidence-building movement, and future considerations for the field.
The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) provides wrap-around support and employment services to people returning home from incarceration. While participant feedback was always important to their work, CEO was looking to better understand the range of their participants’ experiences and use it to improve the services they provide. MDRC’s Center for Data Insights (CDI) partnered with CEO and used data science tools and qualitative research to better utilize the feedback CEO was receiving from their participants. In this episode, Leigh Parise first talks with Alissa Stover, a former research analyst at MDRC and CDI. Alissa describes CDI’s partnership with CEO, the importance of big-picture thinking in data science, and their implications. Ahmed Whitt, the director of learning and impact at CEO, then explains the critical lessons that were learned.
Through its Real World Learning initiative in the Kansas City metropolitan area, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is working to ensure that all students in participating districts graduate from high school with a diploma and at least one market value asset (or MVA). MVAs are designed to prepare students for further education and employment. They can include such activities as completing an internship or employer-sponsored project, earning an industry-recognized credential, engaging in an entrepreneurial experience, or earning college credits. MDRC is the learning and evaluation partner on this project. In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with Dan Tesfay, senior program officer at the Kauffman Foundation, and Osvaldo Avila, research associate in MDRC's K-12 education policy area. They discuss what it takes to create partnerships between school districts and industries to develop MVAs and what they hope to learn from MDRC’s evaluation work.
The Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC) is a state government agency with a goal of increasing educational opportunity and attainment for Washington residents. WSAC has partnered with the MDRC Center for Data Insights (CDI) to create manageable data-analytics tools for the agency to use to track and improve student outcomes. In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with Michael Meotti, WSAC Executive Director; Isaac Kwakye, WSAC Senior Director of Research and Student Success; and Rick Hendra, the Director of the MDRC Center for Data Insights about the partnership between WSAC and CDI. They dig into the details of how to use data analytics at the state level to increase evidence-based state policymaking in postsecondary education.
Industry-recognized credentials, or IRCs, are an increasingly common strategy used to demonstrate that high school students have learned skills or competencies in a specific industry or occupation. But what do we know about their impact on student outcomes? And do they help students succeed in college and in the labor market? In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with Matt Giani, a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Affiliate in the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, about his study for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute that looks at the education and employment outcomes of Texas students who earn IRCs in high school.
While the percentage of adults with a postsecondary degree has increased over the past several decades, there are large gaps in degree attainment by race, ethnicity, and income. In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with two higher education experts—Amanda Janice Roberson at the Institute for Higher Education Policy and Jinann Bitar at The Education Trust—about policies and practices to advance equitable student outcomes in higher education, including the federal College Completion Fund.
Child support agencies aim to secure payments from noncustodial parents to support the well-being of their children. When noncustodial parents fall behind on child support, they may face consequences, such as driver's license suspensions, civil contempt, and even jail time. These enforcement actions can make it harder for parents to make future child support payments. The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) demonstration, sponsored by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), integrates principles of procedural justice into enforcement practices in six child support agencies across the United States. Procedural justice is the perception of fairness in processes that resolve disputes and result in decisions. Research has shown that if people perceive a process to be fair, they will be more likely to comply with the outcome of that process, whether or not the outcome is favorable to them. MDRC, MEF Associates, and the Center for Court Innovation are evaluating the effectiveness of the PJAC model. As part of the demonstration, the PJAC Peer Learning initiative provided training and support to several additional child support agencies that were interested in procedural justice but not part of the PJAC study. In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with Michael Hayes and Tanya Johnson from OCSE, Melissa Froehle from Minnesota Child Support Enforcement, and Maria Lasecki, Director of Brown County Child Support in Wisconsin, about the role of procedural justice in child support, how the Peer Learning initiative works, and what the sites have learned so far.
The pandemic has had devastating effects on students’ learning. One strategy to help students is individualized instruction, which includes interventions like tutoring. In this lively episode, Leigh Parise talks with Andy Rotherham, cofounder of Bellwether, a national education nonprofit organization, and William Corrin, the director of MDRC’s K-12 Education policy area, about the promise, challenges, and politics of implementing individualized instruction.
Green jobs in diverse industries, such as transportation, construction, environmental management, and agriculture, have grown in recent years and are predicted to further increase in the future. Filling these jobs will require a skilled workforce, yet federal investments in training for green jobs have focused mostly on adults. In this episode, Leigh Parise talks with Rachel Rosen, a senior research associate and co-director of MDRC's Center for Effective Career and Technical Education, on evidence-based strategies that can help create pathways for careers in the green economy for young people.
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