MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social policy research organization based in New York City; Washington, DC; and Oakland and Los Angeles, CA. Focused on improving programs and policies for low-income people, MDRC designs new interventions, evaluates existing programs using the highest research standards, and provides technical assistance to build better programs and deliver effective interventions at scale. MDRC is by President Virginia Knox, Senior Vice President Jesús Amadeo, and Vice Presidents Dan Bloom and Sharon Rowser. The Chair of the is Mary Jo Bane, Thornton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management Emerita, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Mission
According to its website, MDRC is committed to finding solutions to some of the most difficult problems facing the nation — from reducing poverty and bolstering economic self-sufficiency to improving public education and college graduation rates. MDRC designs promising new interventions, evaluates existing programs using the highest research standards, and provides technical assistance to build better programs and deliver effective interventions at scale. It works as an intermediary, bringing together public and private funders to test new policy-relevant ideas, and communicate what we learn to policymakers and practitioners — all with the goal of improving the lives of low-income individuals, families, and children.
History
In 1974, the Ford Foundation and six government agencies together created the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. Its purpose was to implement and document the results of new programs intended to help the poor. In the 1980s and 1990s, it became well known for its evaluations of state welfare-to-work programs. It formally adopted "MDRC" as its registered corporate identity in 2003.
MDRC helped pioneer the use of random assignment to test social programs. Its evaluations of welfare work programs influenced the welfare reform of the 1990s. In the 1990s and 2000s, MDRC’s evaluation of the Career Academies high school reform model, which showed impacts on participants’ earnings eight years after graduation, influenced the expansion of the model around the nation. MDRC was the intermediary for the first social impact bond demonstration in the United States, a project to reduce recidivism among 16- to 18-year-olds incarcerated at Rikers Island. MDRC's study of the City University of New York's Accelerated Study in Associate Programs has demonstrated that the program has doubled the three-year graduation rate of students who begin college requiring remedial education.
