Results for America strongly encourages congressional staff members, federal agency officials and White House leaders to review the following examples of how federal agencies are defining evidence of effectiveness and to include similar definitions in federal authorization bills/laws, agency-wide regulations and federal grant program NOFOs.
Federal Laws
Below are five federal authorization laws that define evidence of effectiveness:
- Early Childhood: Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Programs (2010)
K-12 Education: Every Student Succeeds Act (2015)
Foster Care: Family First Prevention Services Act (2018)
Juvenile Justice: Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (2018)
Workforce Development: Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment Program (Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018)
Full evidence definitions for each can be viewed here.
Federal Agency Regulations/Guidance
Here are two federal agency-wide regulations/guidance that define evidence of effectiveness:
Education Department General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR), CFR Title 34, Subtitle A, Part 77, Section 77.1, U.S. Department of Education. EDGAR, which governs U.S. Department of Education’s grants, features four tiers of evidence (strong, moderate, promising and evidence that demonstrates a rationale). The evidence tiers mostly parallel the definition of “evidence-based” in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. In EDGAR, the department further aligned its definitions to the technical requirements of the Institute of Education Sciences’ What Works Clearinghouse. Like the U.S. Department of Treasury’s American Rescue Plan definition of evidence (see below), EDGAR’s tiers are distinguished from each other according to the design of the relevant studies and the relative strength of any causal claims of effectiveness.
American Rescue Plan (ARP) Reporting and Compliance Guidance, U.S. Department of Treasury. This ARP guidance features three tiers of evidence (strong, moderate and preliminary) to guide implementation of the $350 billion State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF).
Strong evidence requires “one or more well-designed and well-implemented experimental studies conducted on the proposed program with positive findings on one or more intended outcomes.”
Moderate evidence requires “one or more quasi-experimental studies with positive findings on one or more intended outcomes OR two or more non-experimental studies with positive findings on one or more intended outcomes.”
Preliminary evidence requires at least one non experimental study.
Federal Agency Clearinghouses
Here are five federal “What Works” Clearinghouses that define evidence of effectiveness:
U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse
U.S. Department of Labor’s Clearinghouse for Labor Evaluation and Research
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families’
U.S. Justice Department’s CrimeSolutions clearinghouse.
Federal Agency Notice of Funding Opportunities
Eleven federal agencies currently define and prioritize evidence of effectiveness within Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) for 98 federal economic mobility grant programs.Below are examples from many of these agencies. (A full list is here).
AmeriCorps, State and National Program. This program awards grants to institutions proposing to engage AmeriCorps members in evidence-based or evidence-informed interventions/practices through community service.
U.S. Department of Education, Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program, This program aims to promote academic achievement and improve results for children with disabilities. Proposals must describe how their project will be based on current research and make use of evidence-based practices.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Administration for Children and Families, Teen Pregnancy Prevention 1. This program supports medically accurate and age-appropriate evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs and services. Applicants must identify evidence-based programs that meet the needs of teens and the community.
Administration for Community Living, Alzheimer’s Disease Prevention. This program supports and promotes the development and expansion of dementia-capable home and community-based service (HCBS) systems. Applicants must include at least one dementia-specific evidence-based or evidence-informed intervention.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), A strategic approach to advancing health equity for priority populations with or at risk of diabetes. This program aims to decrease risk for type 2 diabetes and improve self-care practices, quality of care and early detection of complications among people with diabetes. Grantees must implement evidence-based strategies.
Health Resources and Service Administration, The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program. This grant program considers models to be evidence-based depending on the quality of studies and the breadth of impacts. In brief, service models are considered evidence-based if: “At least one high- or moderate-quality impact study of the model finds favorable, statistically significant impacts in two or more … outcome domains”, or “At least two high- or moderate-quality impact studies of the model … find one or more favorable, statistically significant impacts in the same domain.”
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, State Opioid Response. This program provides resources to increase access to medications for the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD), as well as recovery support services. Program funds are required to be used for evidence-based treatments, practices and interventions for OUD and stimulant use disorders.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Choice Neighborhoods. This program supports development of comprehensive plans to revitalize severely distressed public housing and/or HUD-assisted housing and the surrounding neighborhood using evidence-based methods.
U.S. Department of Justice, Title II Formula Grants. The program assists state and U.S. territories to improve juvenile justice systems through a combined effort of direct funding and training, and technical assistance. Seventy-five percent of funds must be dedicated to evidence-based or promising programs.
U.S. Department of Labor, Re-entry Employment Opportunities. This program supports communities in planning and implementing comprehensive reentry programs to help adults and young adults who have been involved in the juvenile or adult justice system make successful transitions to the community. Applicants must propose evidence-based and evidence-informed interventions, promising practices or a combination of both that support increased employment outcomes for target populations.
U.S. Agency of International Development, USAID Host and Impacted Community Resilience Activity (HICRA). This program improves the overall well-being and resilience of people residing in the communities hosting Rohingya refugees or impacted by the Rohingya refugee crisis. Applications should present an overall evidence-based and technically sound approach to achieving proposed goals and outcomes