In order for our country to make progress on poverty, stagnant wages, educational failure, homelessness, and other social problems, the essential ingredient is credible evidence about which programs and policies are effective, and which are not. Without that critical piece, we’re just spinning wheels, relying on an endless stream of opinions (guesses) from public officials and program advocates on how to address these problems and never learning what truly works. And from decade to decade, we face the same problems in a perpetual loop of wasted funding and damaged lives.

 

The federal government – under both Republicans and Democrats – has taken the lead in the U.S. and indeed the world in funding rigorous program evaluations, including gold-standard randomized controlled trials, to determine what works and what doesn’t. Over the past 25 years, that investment has built a growing body of interventions proven to make important, lasting improvements in people’s lives. The number of proven programs is still modest, and our system of social spending is still learning how to harness them to produce progress at scale. But the building blocks are there.

 

The recent cancellation of many federally-funded rigorous evaluations is deeply damaging to this effort. We urge public officials from both parties to reverse these decisions and put us back on a path toward progress based on objective evidence rather the dead end of guessing at solutions.

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Examples of cancelled federally-funded RCTs can be found here.

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