Dive Brief:
- Established in the 1980s, the Education Department’s Experimental Sites Initiative was designed to test out new policy and program ideas for improving the nation’s multi-billion dollar student financial-aid programs. Ideally, this wing of Education Department would facilitate a range of experiments for informing future federal policy changes and improving student outcomes.
- However, the promise of the department’s experimental unit has never come to fruition, according to a New America report. Beginning with its initial quality assurance pilot to test different methods for verifying financial aid data, the bureau has not rigorously evaluated experiments, and, in many cases, used its authority primarily to provide regulatory relief to select institutions.
- Looking back, a consistent experimental strategy combined with rigorous evaluation standards, might have led toward the development of nationwide policy changes, benefiting millions of students and saving billions of federal dollars. The report lays out a number of recommendations for lawmakers, schools, and the executive branch of federal government to enhance the work of the Experimental Sites Initiative.
Dive Insight:
Notably, New America’s Putting The Experiment Back In The Experimental Sites Initiative recommends the Education Department, “Consult a wide range of stakeholders in designing new experiments. ... [S]eeking comment should include soliciting input early in the design process from college administrators, higher education researchers, policy organizations and nonprofits that work closely with colleges. This will ensure that the Department is focused on timely, important, and relevant policy questions.”
More than maintaining relevance, this advice is essential to ensuring the quality of experiments and preventing student abuse. Derek Gottlieb, an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado likened a similar strategy when discussing the need to balance innovation with institutional accountability. According Gottlieb, local stakeholders should be allowed to shape the metrics that determine success. Protections for the most disadvantaged students should also be included in that formula. Educational experiments should embrace a similar strategy. As institutions test and figure what works bests, safeguarding the most vulnerable should be one of the highest priorities, a stance former Bush and Obama advisers underscored with the release of their roadmap to higher ed reform earlier this week.