Promoting the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE), a study of 13,444 randomly assigned youth and their families, includes six model demonstration projects and a technical assistance center funded through the U.S. Department of Education and a national evaluation of the model demonstration projects funded through the…

A nonprofit community development financial institution and Extension collaborated to conduct a demonstration project to evaluate efficacy of Grameen peer-group microfinance methodology in addressing barriers faced by low-income women entrepreneurs in a small metro area. Program performance metrics achieved by 284 culturally diverse, low-income…

The FNS Research Corner provides a continuing series to summarize recently completed and current research conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) in the area of child nutrition. Summaries of recently completed research projects and in-progress research are provided in this article.

In 2010, Hillsborough Community College (HCC), a large multicampus institution in Tampa, Florida, worked with MDRC to create the Mathematics Access Performance Scholarship (MAPS) program to help academically underprepared community college students succeed in developmental math. MAPS provides an incentive for low-income students referred to…

The intention of the program is that conditioning additional financial aid on certain behaviors will lead students to increase their effort towards their studies, which in turn will lead them to perform better in their classes in the short-term and progress through their degree requirements at a quicker rate in the medium-term. The program is…

One of the key barriers in accessing postsecondary opportunities for many students is financial aid. This chapter begins by providing a review of prior evidence on the relationship between financial aid and postsecondary outcomes. One type of financial aid intervention that challenges traditional aid and scholarship options are "promise…

While postsecondary completion rates are a concern among many student populations across the country, college graduation rates for Latino students, especially Latino male students, are even lower than the national average. Low-income Latino men face many barriers to postsecondary success, including both financial and personal obstacles. This…

The School Choice Demonstration Project has published a series of reports written in the fifth and final year of its evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). This review is of Report #32, which compares the test performance of MPCP students to that of a sample of students from the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). The comparisons…

The Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) program in Fort Worth was part of a demonstration that is testing innovative strategies to help increase the income of low-wage workers, who make up a large segment of the U.S. workforce. The program offered services to help workers stabilize their employment, improve their skills, and increase their…

The Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) program in Fort Worth was part of a demonstration that is testing innovative strategies to help increase the income of low-wage workers, who make up a large segment of the U.S. workforce. The program offered services to help workers stabilize their employment, improve their skills, and increase their…

The Wallace Foundation is funding a multiyear demonstration project to determine whether voluntary, district summer learning programs can stem summer learning loss for low-income students. Six districts--Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Duval County (Florida), Pittsburgh, and Rochester, New York--were selected for the demonstration project and…

Difficulties in paying for college and in maintaining good academic performance are two major hurdles to college graduation for low-income students. In recent years, state and federal budgets for postsecondary education have been cut significantly, limiting the options policymakers, education leaders, and communities have to improve rates of…

The expense of attending college is one factor that may explain why low-income students often drop out of school. In California, despite generous state aid and relatively low fees at community colleges, many low-income students still have substantial college-related costs that they cannot cover. To compound matters, federal support for students…

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) is the nation's oldest and largest urban school choice program, offering private-school scholarships to low-income students in the city of Milwaukee since 1990. In the early years of the program, voucher schools were not required to test their students, though many of them did so using nationally normed…

In 2007, New York City's Center for Economic Opportunity launched Opportunity NYC-Family Rewards, an experimental, privately funded, conditional cash transfer (CCT) program to help families break the cycle of poverty. Family Rewards provided payments to low-income families in six of the city's poorest communities for achieving specific goals…