Gemeinhart, Dan, author

Gonzales, Kathryn, author

Barnett, Mac, author

This presentation series offers education researchers across the Chicago region an opportunity to learn about each other’s work, interact informally, and support the field of education research in Chicago.

Through the Parents and Children Together evaluation, Mathematica researchers are contributing to the evidence base regarding approaches to increase positive father involvement in children’s lives. At a forum on December 7, researchers, program administrators, and program participants shared their experiences and what they learned.

The Child Care and Early Education Policy Research Consortium (CCEEPRC) provided a forum for researchers and policymakers to investigate emerging research findings, questions, and methods that relate to improved outcomes for children and families. Several Mathematica researchers presented on topics such as: child care quality measures, support for home-based care providers, and research on coordinated services for children and their families.

This webinar was for practitioners of human services programs, applied social science researchers, and anyone else interested in learning more about this analytic approach to managing program change.

Child welfare agencies regularly make crucial program decisions that can impact the health and well-being of children and families across the country. Agency leaders and line staff alike can benefit from current, high quality data and evidence to inform their decisions. However, systemic challenges at play in the realm of child welfare—including, for example, short deadlines, limited resources, and high staff turnover—can make it difficult for program leaders to draw on relevant research and encourage a culture of evidence. At the same time, research evidence can be difficult to access or interpret, or it may not fully address the needs of practitioners and other decision makers.

Amid renewed interest in the role of principals in supporting effective instruction, there is a growing need for practical guidance on how to prepare principals to serve as instructional leaders.

This conference highlighted the DRC’s latest research findings and their implications for the future of state and federal disability policies and programs.

In 1968, Mathematica led the nation’s first major social research experiment, helping to spur a revolution in the application of social science to public policies and programs. For more than four decades, social scientists have revised and refined those methods, but the gold standard for research remained much the same.

Research reveals that the earliest years of life are a critical period of human development. Early relationships and experiences have a strong influence on brain development and future health and well-being. Young children’s foundational relationships and experiences take place in the context of families and communities. Yet, low-income families—especially families of color and rural families—often do not have access to the basic necessities and resources for fostering the nurturing experiences and stimulating environments that young children need to thrive. Furthermore, policy and program silos can impede cross-functional solutions and service delivery, which are designed to holistically address the needs of children and families.

The current earnings rules for Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) specify that, after using available work incentives, DI beneficiaries are not owed a DI benefit check if they earn more than a certain threshold. The Benefit Offset National Demonstration (BOND) tested a design intended to encourage DI beneficiaries to work by replacing the so-called cash cliff with a ramp—a $1 reduction in benefits for every $2 of additional earnings. BOND simultaneously tested the new rules with two groups: a nationally representative sample of DI beneficiaries and a group of recruited and informed volunteers—those thought to be most likely to earn more than the earnings threshold. Results from the five-year evaluation of BOND are now available for both groups.

There is increased awareness and urgency within the research community to ensure that evaluation and assessment practices are sensitive to the cultures of people who are most impacted by those practices. Driven by changing demographics and the increasing complexity of problems that researchers and communities seek to address, new efforts are underway to develop research practices that better account for the unique perspectives and needs of the communities being studied. But there is hardly consensus on what culturally responsive research actually means or, more broadly, what implications such approaches could have on evidence-based policies and programs.

In the past two decades, many federal and state Medicaid initiatives have been designed to rebalance the long-term services and supports (LTSS) system by increasing access to home and community-based services (HCBS) in order to reduce the use of expensive institutional care.

While many industries have increasingly turned to data science to make informed business decisions, social service organizations and government agencies have been slower to fully embrace the potential of current and emerging data science methods. The challenges are real.

This webinar explored research on culturally responsive pedagogy and what is known about its effectiveness.

This webinar explored how best to prepare educators to implement culturally responsive pedagogy, including and exploration of how programs train future teachers and school administrators and what changes programs may need to consider to effectively prepare these educators.

Interested in learning how to build more evidence into philanthropic practice? Join Mathematica, The Wallace Foundation, and the Afterschool Alliance for a Grantmakers for Education webinar.