The Left Ignores ‘The Science’ on Federal Education Programs

Why do the folks who shout about “following the science” repeatedly object when decisions are made to shutter federal education programs that rigorous research—i.e., “the science”— has shown to be ineffective? A prime example of this selective embrace of “the science” can be heard in the howls of protest to proposed cuts in the Trump administration’s budget for the Department of Education.

Two of the programs placed on the chopping block are TRIO and GEAR UP, which were previously known as Upward Bound and provide services to disadvantaged high school students to encourage them to earn a college degree. That all sounds very nice, but does it actually work?

The Department of Education commissioned a well-respected research firm, Mathematica, to conduct a large-scale evaluation that compared students accepted by lottery into the programs to those who lost the lottery and were unable to participate. This is the same kind of rigorous research design used in medical research.

Mathematica tracked almost 3,000 students for as long as nine years after they would have completed high school to determine if receiving extra services and supports increased the likelihood of students attending and completing college. The evaluation found: “Upward Bound had no detectable effect on the rate of overall postsecondary enrollment or the type or selectivity of postsecondary institution attended for the average eligible applicant.” It also concluded that: “Upward Bound had no detectable effect on the likelihood of applying for financial aid, or, the likelihood of receiving a Pell Grant.”

In short, TRIO and GEAR UP have been policy failures. Even worse, they have been expensive failures. Trump’s proposed budget says that eliminating these programs would save almost $1.6 billion next year alone.

The fact that these programs have been expensive failures has been known for a long time. Mathematica produced its first report indicating disappointing results in 2004 and their final report in 2009.

But as Ronald Reagan observed, “The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a Government Program,” even if rigorous evidence confirms its ineffectiveness. Advocates representing the army of people working for Upward Bound objected to the Mathematica study, claiming to find a technical error in its analysis. Russ Whitehurst, the founding director of the Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences, gathered feedback from reviewers and concluded that the technical error “did not undermine the bottom-line conclusions.”

But if proponents were so convinced that Mathematica was mistaken you’d think they’d want a second opinion. Incredibly, not only did they not solicit a second opinion, they prevented anyone from ever getting one in the future. 

Special interest groups succeeded not only in preserving funding for these ineffective programs, but—incredibly—got language inserted into the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 forbidding any future study that could have confirmed the negative results they disputed. Evaluating the impact of TRIO was analogous to conducting the infamous and unethical Tuskegee experiment, advocates shrieked.

As with so many federal programs, keeping the cash flowing matters more than the evidence of the program’s failure.

The Trump administration is not so cavalier with taxpayer money and decided to shutter programs that aren’t working. In addition to eliminating TRIO and GEAR UP, the proposed budget would cut $70 million from Teacher Quality Partnerships, which subsidizes ineffective university-based teacher training programs.

The Office of Management and Budget examined these teacher training efforts nearly two decades ago and found “’results not demonstrated,’ due to a lack of performance information and program management deficiencies.” Again, evidence didn’t matter and the federal government continued to spend taxpayer money regardless of effectiveness.

At some point, zombie programs that fail to prove their effectiveness need to stop consuming taxpayer dollars. In declaring that it intends to close the Department of Education, the Trump administration is taking steps in that direction by defunding programs that are proven failures.

Rather than fight to keep every program alive regardless of the evidence, we should be celebrating an administration for having the courage required to heed that evidence, ignore the special interest histrionics, and stop wasting taxpayer dollars.

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