This report presents a conceptual framework for efforts to prepare at-risk youth for healthy adult functioning and self-sufficiency. Produced as part of the Youth Demonstration Development project for the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, the...

This paper presents evidence on after-school programs’ effects on behavior from the national evaluation of the U.S. Department of Education’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers after-school program. Findings come from both of the study’s components: (1) an elementary-school component...

This report describes the cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development of children who take part in the Head Start program. Focusing on children who first entered Head Start in fall 2009 and completed one or two years of the program before starting kindergarten, the authors examined...

This Evaluation Highlight discusses the early accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned from the following four states pursuing practice-level quality measurement: Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. It describes the states’ efforts to select meaningful measures,...

This report projects health care spending in Minnesota from 2008 to 2018, updating Mathematica’s earlier projections completed in 2009. Changes to the input data are documented, as are changes to the methodology to account for the recession’s spending impacts and health care reform.

The final report to Congress presents complete findings from our seven-year national evaluation of Early Head Start. The findings show that the program promotes learning and the parenting that supports it within the first three years of life. Participating children perform significantly better...

In 1998, Mathematica began a five-year comprehensive evaluation of WFNJ to determine how clients were faring under the new reforms, how reform was implemented, and how communities responded to welfare reform and local challenges and opportunities. This report provides a brief summary of key...

This article evaluates a program that constructed high quality “girl-friendly†primary schools in Burkina Faso. After 2.5 years, the program increased enrollment by 19 percentage points and increased test scores by 0.41 standard deviations. Girls’ enrollment increased by 5 percentage...

This brief examines how policymakers’ positive engagement can benefit children’s health care coverage advocates, as well as the strategies for making this engagement happen. Key strategies include understanding states’ unique political environments; identifying, nurturing, and supporting...

The U.S. Department of Labor awards National Emergency Grants (NEGs) to states or local areas that need supplemental resources to provide workforce development services. This report summarizes an evaluation of NEGs to military communities to support U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) employment...