Text Steps was a project piloted by Ascendium Education Group in 2015 and expanded to 13 school districts in Wisconsin between 2018 and 2020. Its goal was to combat summer melt through a texting program. Summer melt, in which college-intending high school students are unable to enroll in the fall for any number of reasons, is a well-documented…

Open-access colleges are an important pathway to economic mobility for millions of Americans. But graduation rates at these colleges are low--for example, only 36 percent of first-time, full-time freshmen at community colleges graduate within three years. Over the last two decades, MDRC and others have conducted research to build the evidence base…

This Formative Evaluation Lessons Learned template captures the major findings and lessons learned from the formative evaluation of the Youth Transitions Partnership (YTP) program in Alameda County, California. The YTP program is an intervention built around the core components of intensive case management and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).…

Background: Teachers and preservice teachers may neglect intervening into and/or leading efforts to prevent bullying because they the lack confidence to do so. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of authentic learning exercises on health education preservice teachers' self-efficacy to perform bullying prevention…

The Kentucky System of Interventions (KSI) framework emphasizes optimizing instruction through targeted accelerated learning, development of teacher expertise and responsiveness to the needs of all learners. This approach to Response to Intervention (RtI) provides the structures needed for closing achievement gaps, ensuring readiness to learn and…

Implementation refers to the process by which an intervention is put into practice. Research studies across multiple disciplines, including education, have consistently demonstrated that interventions are rarely implemented as designed and, crucially, that variability in implementation is related to variability in the achievement of expected…

Lack of money has long kept promising preventive programs from expanding. Existing government-funded programs are furthermore subject to budgetary cutbacks or complete loss of funding. Moreover, preventive programs traditionally offer no accountability for success or failure. This leaves government entities in a bind where if they invest their…

Evaluation designs for social programs are developed assuming minimal or no disruption from external shocks, such as natural disasters. This is because extremely rare shocks may not make it worthwhile to account for them in the design. Among extreme shocks is the 2010 Chile earthquake. Un Buen Comienzo (UBC), an ongoing early childhood program in…

In this paper, the authors draw on empirical data from CCRC's Scaling Innovation project to examine trends in developmental education instructional reform and outline a framework for reform adoption and adaptation. The paper's findings are based on two qualitative data sources: a scan of developmental education reforms that involved changes to…

This paper describes the facilitators and barriers to implementing an attachment-based intervention in early education and care settings, the Partnerships in Early Childhood program (PIEC), based on findings from the process evaluation of its first year of implementation. The paper focuses on four areas: the nature of the partnership and program…

The concepts of professional learning communities and organizational disciplines support staff development and leadership that lead to sustainable systems. Little research has examined the ability of rural schools to achieve sustainable systems. This quantitative design study considered the relationships between predictor variables of…

This report focuses on the seven original Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) projects selected for funding in 2003. Three of the original seven projects were selected for a national random assignment evaluation in 2005; however, this report only focuses on program operations prior to joining the random assignment evaluation for the three…

Presents a framework and some practical examples for using rigorous implementation research to inform program outcomes and foster program development for developmental interventions. Focuses on: (1) role of process research, specifically developing developmental interventions; (2) characteristics of adherence process research; and (3)…

We present a discussion of some of the lessons the investigators learned during the development and implementation phases of the Parents Matter! Program (PMP). Lessons were learned that are relevant to various groups involved in large scale, multi-site, community-based intervention studies: investigators, community leaders, community members,…

A project to provide technical assistance to staffs of two demonstration programs for preschool handicapped children and their families is described. The focus was technical assistance developed and exercised by the Technical Assistance Development System (TADS), which assisted in the development of the Handicapped Children's Early Education…