Show Me the Evidence - by Ron Haskins & Greg Margolis (Paperback)

About the Book

The first comprehensive history of the Obama administration's evidence-based initiatives. From its earliest days, the Obama administration planned and enacted several initiatives to fund social programs based on rigorous evidence of success. Ron Haskins and...

Book Synopsis

The first comprehensive history of the Obama administration's evidence-based initiatives. From its earliest days, the Obama administration planned and enacted several initiatives to fund social programs based on rigorous evidence of success. Ron Haskins and Greg Margolis tell the story of six--spanning preschool and K-12 education, teen pregnancy, employment and training, health, and community-based programs.

Readers will appreciate the fast-moving descriptions of the politics and policy debates that shaped these federal programs and the analysis of whether they will truly reshape federal social policy and greatly improve its impacts on the nation's social problems.

Based on interviews with 134 individuals (including advocates, officials at the Office of Management and Budget and the Domestic Policy Council, Congressional staff, and officials in the federal agencies administering the initiatives) as well as Congressional and administration documents and news accounts, the authors examine each of the six initiatives in separate chapters. The story of each initiative includes a review of the social problem the initiative addresses; the genesis and enactment of the legislation that authorized the initiative; and the development of the procedures used by the administration to set the evidence standard and evaluation requirements--including the requirements for grant applications and awarding of grants.

Review Quotes

Scholars of public policy often complain that government decides what to do on political grounds rather than "on the merits." In Show Me the Evidence, however, Haskins and Margolis describe the Obama administration's remarkable initiatives in "evidence-based policymaking." In these cases, programs have been funded based on hard evidence about "what works." The authors tell the story masterfully, based on exhaustive research. Their conclusions are cautious but hopeful: making policy on the merits has not yet triumphed, but it is advancing.--Larry Mead, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, New York University

Throughout our history, social policy has been made largely by anecdote, selfinterest, and ideology. In Show Me the Evidence, Ron Haskins and Greg Margolis tell the little-known story of the Obama administration's systematic attempt, in the midst of a deeply partisan political culture, to use evidence to drive government policy and budgets. Using the tools of investigative reporting to peer into the inner workings of government and with a historian's eye for turning points, they reveal the strategies and tactics key actors used to turn the quest for evidence-based policymaking into reality. Will the revolution they describe leave a legacy? The authors identify the challenges ahead, and drawing on personal experience in Congress, they offer a blueprint to each of the key players--government, philanthropy, and nonprofit organizations--for navigating the evidence-based movement's uncertain future. The stakes are high and the failure to do what works has produced cynicism among taxpayers about the ability of government to make a difference, but Haskins and Margolis show us the evidence that it doesn't have to be that way.--Gordon Berlin, President, MDRC

About the Author

Ron Haskins is the codirector of the Center on Children and Families, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served as a senior adviser for Welfare Policy to President George W. Bush and as a Republican staff welfare counsel on the Committeee on Ways and Means. He is the author of Work over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law (Brookings, 2006) and coauthor, with Isabel Sawhill, of Creating an Opportunity Society (Brookings, 2009). Greg Margolis is a senior research assistant who spent three years at the Brookings Institution studying evidence-based policymaking. He is currently obtaining his Juris Doctor degree.