Author Archives: Patrick Lester

Evidence Commission’s Proposed Data Service May Be Built in Stages

Additional details are beginning to emerge about next steps following the release last week of the final report of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. A hearing by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, originally scheduled for September 12, has … Continue reading

Posted in Evidence

Congress Expected to Act on Evidence Commission Recommendations

The House and Senate are reportedly readying legislation that will adopt at least some of the recommendations of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, which released its final report earlier today. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray, who sponsored … Continue reading

Posted in Evidence

Conservatives Push Back on Liberal-leaning Academic Research

Lurking below the bipartisan harmony on evidence-based policy is an important conflict. How much of the evidence is driven by left-leaning political agendas? The division surfaced in interviews with prominent conservatives last year: “A lot of the people doing these … Continue reading

Posted in Criminal Justice, Evidence

Medicare Value-based Care Program Penalizes Physicians Serving High-risk Patients

A new paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has indicated that value-based payments to physicians in the Medicare program penalize those who serve socially or medically high-risk patients. The study investigated first year results for the … Continue reading

Posted in Health

Using Active Contract Management to Improve Program Outcomes

Jeffrey Liebman, a former Obama administration official who is now at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, has authored a paper that brings together some of the disparate strings of evidence-based policy and performance management. The paper, Using Data to … Continue reading

Posted in Performance Management

Study Suggests Central Role of Leadership in Evidence-based Change

A study of research use in schools published in the American Educational Research Journal suggests that involved leadership is centrally important to the success of evidence-driven improvement programs. The study followed 23 school administrators across six school districts that were … Continue reading

Posted in Education

Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us

Evidence-based policy rests, in part, on the assumption that the effectiveness of certain programs can be determined through rigorous research. But what if the research — not just on social programs, but science in general — is usually wrong? That … Continue reading

Posted in Evidence

Trump Budget Uses Research Evidence to Justify Spending Cuts

President Trump’s full budget proposal for the coming federal fiscal year (FY 2018), which was released earlier today, has shown that evidence can be used not just to justify increased funding for programs that work, but also to cut funding … Continue reading

Posted in Evidence

Congress Set to Defund Social Innovation Fund

An omnibus appropriations package that Congress is slated to vote on later this week contains no funding for the Social Innovation Fund.  Barring any last minute changes, this may be the end of the road for this signature evidence-based program. … Continue reading

Posted in Evidence, Social Innovation Fund