Deleting Data: "Nothing to see here"

By Christopher Lubienski and Joel Malin

As the current administration moves to shut down the federal Department of Education, it is also removing reporting requirements and access for many datasets available to the public, and to researchers. For instance, the DoE has proposed no longer requiring states to report on disproportionality for students by race or special needs status under federal law. In other cases, the USDA will no longer collect data on hunger in the US. Long-trusted economic data is delayed or of increasingly questionable value. With the elimination of government entities, we’re also seeing the loss of previously publicly available data related to climate, health, and equity. These examples, or course, are part of a broader pattern — an apparent strategy — of undermining sources of data useful for the public, or for “evidence-based” policymaking.

But it is not only DC that’s increasingly anti-data. States are playing a role, particularly around undermining data that could draw some scrutiny to their favored programs that aren’t working as promised.

For instance, Arizona has emerged as a leader on school choice issues. Arizona lawmakers began boosting such programs in the 1990s in response to a combination of ideological beliefs and practical concerns over the changing demographics and educational landscape of the state, arguing that they would improve student achievement while giving families options beyond their neighborhood boundaries.

Over the ensuing decades, policymakers have consistently expanded such programs despite a lack of evidence that their promises were accurate. This “foot in the door” strategy was based not on evidence of effectiveness, but rather on initial arguments about how specific populations — special education students, children of military families, kids in foster care, students experiencing poverty — needed additional schooling options, only to then argue that these programs should be expanded not because there was evidence that they do work, but because policymakers believe that they should work.

This pattern is clearly evident in the recent expansion of Arizona’s now-universal Education Savings Account Program — an extension of a program initially targeted only to children who met specific eligibility requirements. Policymakers pursued this program’s expansion despite the fact that Arizona voters had roundly rejected it, and that all evidence on similar programs in other states indicates that students in such programs see not academic benefits, but large relative declines in student achievement.

However, it is possible that Arizona policymakers were aware of the empirical record, since they inserted a clause into the legislation essentially preventing any type of evaluation of the program’s effectiveness. Such efforts to stymie scrutiny of program effectiveness raise concerns, suggesting not just that ideology rather than evidence-based research influences policy decisions, but that policymakers are concerned that researchers, taxpayers, or other potential critics will see the evidence.

This approach to policymaking is concerning, not just regarding the efficient use of taxpayer funds, but even more so in terms of the quality of educational options afforded to Arizona families. After all, it is difficult for parents to make effective decisions on school options when information about the effectiveness of different schools is entirely inaccessible.

But on a larger scale, if policymakers in the states or in DC want to make “evidence-based” policy,” to adopt “what works” and use taxpayer dollars efficiently, it comes with a duty to offer some evidence of the effectiveness of such programs.

There’s an old joke about policy and evidence: That policymakers use evidence like the town drunk uses a lamppost… for support, not illumination.

But there’s less illumination these days. Despite lofty rhetoric about “evidence-based policy,” many policymakers appear to have a fair-weather relationship with research evidence. They want it when it appears to support their position, and bury it when it doesn’t. This war on data is deeply troubling. Adopting a “head in the sand” strategy is concerning, but this is worse: a “nothing to see here” bait and switch that could cost taxpayers a lot.