Increasing Government Effectiveness Through Rigorous Evidence About “What Works”
The Coalition is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, whose mission is to increase government effectiveness through rigorous evidence about what works. In the field of medicine, public policies based on scientifically-rigorous evidence have produced extraordinary advances in health over the past 50 years. By contrast, in most areas of social policy — such as education, poverty reduction, crime and justice, and substance abuse prevention — government programs often are implemented with little regard to evidence, costing billions of dollars yet failing to address critical needs of our society. However, rigorous studies have identified a few highly-effective social interventions, suggesting that a concerted government strategy to build the number of these proven interventions, and spur their widespread use, could bring rapid progress to social policy similar to that which transformed medicine.
The Coalition advocates many types of research to identify the most promising social interventions. However, a central theme of our advocacy, consistent with a recent National Academy of Sciences recommendation, is that evidence of effectiveness generally cannot be considered definitive without ultimate confirmation in well-conducted randomized controlled trials.
Since the Coalition’s founding in 2001, our work with key Congressional and Executive Branch policymakers has resulted in important evidence-based reforms. For example, we have:
- Helped advance sizeable increases in Congressional funding/support for rigorous research and evaluation in education, crime prevention, and other areas of social policy;
- Provided key input into the Administration’s major new evidence-based home visitation and teen pregnancy prevention initiatives — initiatives summarized here by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag (his second paragraph links to our website); and
- Through our work with OMB and Congress, helped create a $13.5 million federal evidence-based home visitation program for low-income families, enacted in 2008.
A recent independent assessment of our work, conducted under our grant agreement with the William T. Grant Foundation, found that “the Coalition has successfully influenced legislative language, increased funding for evidence-based evaluations and programs, helped shape OMB’s Program Assessment Rating Tool, and raised the level of debate in the policy process regarding standards of evidence.”
The Coalition has a bipartisan Board comprised of leading evidence-based scholars, former government officials, and practitioners (see list in right-hand pane).
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> For a summary of the Coalition’s recent progress/accomplishments, click here.
> For an overview of our mission and activities, click here.
> Visit our sister sites: Social Programs That Work, Top Tier Evidence Initiative, and Evidence-Based Policy Help Desk
The Coalition is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, and has no affiliation with any programs or program models. Our work is primarily funded by philanthopic foundations, including the MacArthur Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.