Robin Tepper Jacob

With support from a grant awarded by Arnold Ventures, YPL has partnered with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) to conduct an impact evaluation of MIHP. Using a randomized encouragement design, outreach specialist will provide enhanced recruitment to a subset of individuals who are eligible for MIHP, with a goal of increasing participation in the program. YPL will leverage that increase in participation to evaluate the program’s impact on key maternal and infant health outcomes.

The Detroit Promise Path pilot is an add-on to the Detroit Promise scholarship program that is designed to improve student outcomes by incorporating evidence-based support components. The Lab was engaged by MDRC, the primary research organization evaluating this pilot, to provide supplemental, qualitative evaluation of the impact of this program.

High-quality early learning programs boost children’s kindergarten readiness and effects can last into adulthood. However, defining and measuring quality is difficult and expensive. Classroom video observations are a classic method used by education researchers to understand how the instructional environment relates to student learning. Although videos provide rich context on what occurs in the classroom, they require a significant amount of human labor and time to accurately code, which can lead to delays in acquiring information. Moreover, early education researchers have found that construc...