US gov on “smarter” investments

Peter R. Orszag, Director of the US Office of Management and the Budget, posted an entry in the blog for his office that emphasizes points I make on Teach Effectively. Here’s the lead

Building Rigorous Evidence to Drive Policy

One of the principles motivating the President’s Budget is that, as a nation, we haven’t been making the right investments to build a new foundation for economic prosperity — and we need smarter investments in education, health care, and social services.

But, in making new investments, the emphasis has to be on “smarter.” Many programs were founded on good intentions and supported by compelling anecdotes, but don’t deliver results.

This is good stuff. “Smarter” is a worthwhile emphasis. Good intentions are the pavement for just about every reform in education, but that doesn’t mean that the path goes in the right direction. The path has to lead to better outcomes for students. If a path hasn’t been proven to go there, then educators should go a different way. So far, the “educational investments” are mostly words, so we’ll have to see how they evolve, of course.

Meanwhile, here’s a suggestion: In education, we need some way to reward practitioners who employ evidence in determining their actions. That means we need objective standards (not just what people say they are doing) for assessing the degree to which practice is guided by evidence. Then we need to collect the data about those folks’ (buildings’, local education agencies’) practices and their students’ outcomes.

Link to read the entire entry.