Texas Lawmakers Should Use Evidence-Based Policy More Often

Government "reforms are advocated as though they were certain to be successful," yet most "programs end up with no interpretable evaluation" of their success. Donald Campbell wrote those words in 1969, but he could easily have been writing about Texas today. The state launches, expands and cuts programs without using evidence of whether they are achieving their goals. It doesn't have to be this way. Other governments are warming to Campbell's proposal of treating "reforms as experiments." The idea, now called evidence-based policy, is to launch a program with clearly stated goals, prior evidence that the goals are achievable, and a plan to evaluate whether the goals are being met. Programs that achieve their goals continue or grow. Programs that fall short are fixed or ended.