How Policymakers Define ‘Evidence’: The politics of research use in New Orleans

• In Event: 60.076 - The Social and Political Contexts for Research Utilization in Education Policy Making

Abstract

Our work joins the literature on research utilization to include the interaction among national policymakers, intermediary organizations, and school districts with respect to what we call “incentivist” policies (Lubienski, Weitzel, & Lubienski, 2009). In this new policy terrain, we see intermediary organizations working on supply and demand sides for evidence, in support of, and in opposition to, these highly contested and politicized education policies. The role of intermediary organizations is growing as philanthropic donations and independent research play an increasingly greater role in determining educational policy (Lubienski, Scott, & DeBray, 2011). While much of the previous work on research utilization by policymakers has focused on the national level, including the advocacy coalitions that promote and disseminate such research (Sabatier), fewer studies have examined research use at the local and state levels.

We ask how policymakers in two key reform districts, New Orleans, Louisiana and Denver, Colorado, define, access, and interpret research or evidence on two key reforms, charter schools and teacher incentive pay, and how, if at all, such evidence informs their decision-making. We interviewed key district and state policymakers, as well as representatives from dozens of intermediary organizations in the area, who, we argue, are also shapers of policy. In addition to conducting over 100 interviews in the two sites, we collected documents and research reports, and we observed key dissemination events.

We find that policymakers primarily used personal anecdotes to justify their position and explain the success of reforms, and they relied on blogs or non-peer reviewed sources for background information. We look closely at the sources cited by local and state policymakers. We analyze, in particular, the increasing use of social media to disseminate and share research with policymakers. Peer-reviewed research was seldom used, typically passed to policymakers via an echo chamber of intermediary organizations, personal contacts, or key partners. Connecting supply to demand, we find that intermediary organizations broker research and evidence to advance their policy agendas, and they serve as de facto policymakers in New Orleans, while philanthropic foundations took a more active role in Denver. We compare how differences in the two cities’ reform histories and political contexts influenced the promotion and use of research in the two settings.

Authors

• Priya Goel La Londe, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Huriya Jabbar, The University of Texas - Austin

• Elizabeth H. DeBray, University of Georgia

• Janelle T. Scott, University of California - Berkeley

• Christopher A. Lubienski, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign