"Proof," Policy, and Practice: Understanding the Role of Evidence in Improving Education

How can we “fix” our schools? Improve graduation rates in college? What works?

These are questions that make the headlines and vex policy makers, practitioners, and educational researchers. While they strive to improve society, there are frequently gulfs of mutual incomprehension among them.

Academics, longing for more influence, may wrongly fault irrationality, ideology, or ignorance for the failure of research to inform policy and practice more powerfully. Policy makers and practitioners may doubt that academics can deliver ideas that will reliably yield desirable results.

This book bridges the divide. It argues that unrealistic expectations lead to both unproductive research and impossible standards for “evidence-based” policy and practice, and it offers promising ways for evidence to contribute to improvement. It analyzes the utility and limitations of the different research methods that have been applied to policy and practice, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of educational reform strategies. It explains why using evidence for “accountability” often makes things worse rather than better.

Paul Lingenfelter offers educational researchers and policy makers a framework for considering such questions as: What problems are important and accessible? What methods will be fruitful? Which help policy makers and practitioners make choices and learn how to improve? What information is relevant? What knowledge is valid and useful? How can policy makers and practitioners establish a more productive division of labor based on their respective capabilities and limitations?

He cautions against the illusion that straight-forward scientific approaches and data can be successfully applied to society’s most complex problems. While explaining why no single policy or intervention can solve complex problems, he concludes that determination, measurement, analysis, and adaptation based on evidence in specific situations can lead to significant improvement.

This positive, even-handed introduction to the use of research for problem-solving concludes by suggesting emerging practices and approaches that can help scholars, practitioners, and policy leaders become more successful in reaching their fundamental goals.

Paul E. Lingenfelter has had an unusually diversified career bridging research and public policy. At the University of Michigan during his doctoral studies he staffed university committees awarding faculty research grants and examining the role of the dissertation in graduate education for the Rackham School of Graduate Studies.

At the Illinois Board of Higher Education from 1974 to 1985 he helped shape the state’s funding model for community colleges, planning and budgeting systems and cost studies for public colleges and universities, and state budgets and policies for all sectors of higher education. He was Deputy Director for Fiscal Affairs from 1980 to 1985.At the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1985 to 2000 he initially served as Director of Program Evaluation. In 1996 he became Vice President of the Program on Human and Community Development, which supported research and practice in economics, mental health and human development, education, and community development.

From 2000 to 2013 Lingenfelter served as CEO/President of the association of State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO), where he staffed the National Commission on Accountability in Higher Education, created the annual study State Higher Education Finance, and worked to build stronger relationships between K-12 and higher education. He is now Senior Scholar at the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment at the University of Illinois.Lingenfelter has been a frequent participant in international meetings on higher education issues including governance, budgeting, quality assurance, and the assessment of student learning. He has published and spoken widely on issues in higher education and philanthropy, and he has served on numerous education boards and commissions.


He is the 2019 recipient of the Excellence in Public Policy inHigher Education Award.

Michael S. McPherson serves as the President at The Spencer Foundation in Chicago. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2003, Dr. McPherson served as President and Trustee of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota for seven years. A nationally known economist whose expertise focuses on the interplay between education and economics, Dr. McPherson spent the 22 years prior to his Macalester presidency as professor of economics, chairman of the Economics Department, and dean of faculty at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Dr. McPherson, who is co-author and editor of several books, including College Access: Opportunity or Privilege?, Keeping College Affordable and Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy, was founding co-editor of the journal Economics and Philosophy. He has served as a trustee of the College Board, the American Council on Education, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Dr. McPherson has been a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He holds a B.A. in Mathematics, an M.A. in Economics, and a Ph.D. in Economics, all from the University of Chicago.