As a co-author of Show Me The Evidence and key driver of 1996 welfare reform policy, Ron Haskins knows a thing or two about finding programs that work. Now, as co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families and Budgeting for National Priorities Project, Haskins’ recent blog post, “Social Programs that Work,” highlights five evidence-based programs that “have produced big and lasting impacts on social problems.” These programs are:
- Career Academies – small learning communities of 150-200 students that result in an 11% increase in average annual earnings for graduates and significant increases in family stability.
- Nurse-Family Partnership – a home visitation program for at-risk new parents that shows impressive reductions in child abuse and neglect, reductions in subsequent births, less time spent on welfare, and better cognitive, academic and social outcomes for children.
- Carrera Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program – a youth development program for economically disadvantaged teens that not only reduces pregnancy rates by 40%, but shows participants are 30% more likely to complete high school (or GED) and 37% more likely to enroll in college.
- Success for All – a comprehensive reform program for high-poverty elementary schools that shows significant improvements in grade-level reading outcomes for second graders.
- Small Schools of Choice – A model that replaced 31 large, failing NYC high schools with more than 100 smaller schools with specialized curricula and philosophies. Students in SSCs were more likely to graduate and more likely to enroll in college.
One more fact worth mentioning: the cost of all of these programs is far less than that of the government programs successful participants would likely require later in life.