MDRC’s 2009-2010 Corporate Report highlights today’s heightened demand for high-quality research evidence in the education and social policy fields. As MDRC President Gordon Berlin notes in his opening letter:

In this time of economic and human crisis, both the low-income people MDRC seeks to assist and the government programs that serve them are vulnerable. Adding to this vulnerability, an equally daunting crisis lies just over the horizon: looming budget deficits that will put an extraordinary strain on government programs, the people they serve, taxpayers, and society as a whole. Simply put, policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels, in both the executive and legislative branch, face very difficult choices: Which investments will pay off in the long term? And which expenditures are no longer essential?

When limited government resources demand that the nation make the most of its investments in social and education programs, policymakers need credible information that identifies effective strategies for addressing serious national problems — for example, lack of quality in preschool programs, poor educational and employment outcomes for at-risk youth, low levels of college completion among community college students, and high recidivism rates among released prisoners.