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…
