In a review of important 2017 releases, MDRC [Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation] recently referenced a memo to policymakers with recommendations for increasing research use and applying evidence to all policy decisions, both educational and otherwise.
Recommendations included:
Programs and policies should be independently evaluated. To ensure high-quality evaluations, they should be directly relevant to policy, free of political or other influences, and credible to subjects and consumers.
The government should provide incentives for programs to apply evidence results to improve their performance.
Utilize a tiered evidence strategy, such as is used in the Every Student Succeeds Act, to set clear guidelines for standards.
Existing funding sources should be applied to generate evidence. A 1% set-aside was recommended.
Federal and state agencies should be allowed to access and share their data for evaluation purposes.