A Quick Guide to Results for America’s Economic Mobility Catalog

By Maia Jachimowicz and Ross Tilchin

The race to approve COVID vaccines this year has highlighted the critical importance of rigorously testing medical interventions through clinical trials, helping us understand the benefits as well as any side effects before they are broadly administered to the public.

This same principle holds for social policy. Without tracking the performance of various public policies and programs and evaluating their impact, governments may be investing in costly initiatives that have little to no effect or, even worse, cause harm.

The need for evidence-driven policy intervention is particularly acute with regard to addressing the extreme inequity across American society, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is clear that government policies and systems — whether intentional or not — have played a role in worsening inequity. But well-designed, evidence-driven government efforts can help reverse this trend, and expand opportunity for those who need it most. …

Results for America Fellowship Alumni give five answers in five minutes. This month, we caught up with Chris Woolard, Senior Executive Director for the Center for Performance and Impact for the Ohio Department of Education.

1. Summarize what you do and how you do it.
   Our team, the Center for Performance and Impact, develops and implements assessment and accountability systems and research and evaluation frameworks to use data for continuous improvement. Our mission has very much evolved in the past few years as we focus on how we can use these systems to support continuous improvement.
2. Share something exciting that you’re working on.
   Ohio has been working with our regional partners across the state to build up a network focused on supporting school districts in their use of data. The Regional Data Leads have a wide variety of experiences working directly with our districts and we are partnering with them to design and prioritize professional learning and resources. Our recent State Longitudinal Data System grant is directly supporting the work. Ideally, we can move the field’s perceptions of data away from “compliance” and toward something much more productive. …

Launched in 2013, Results for America’s annual Invest in What Works Federal Standard of Excellence (Federal Standard of Excellence) serves as a “north star” for how federal agencies and departments can consistently and effectively use data and evidence in budget, policy, and management decisions to achieve better outcomes for their residents.

The following Federal Standard of Excellence Agency Snapshots provide a glimpse into nine agencies’ evidence-based policy agenda. The Snapshots highlight key accomplishments and areas for future progress. …

By Kate Tromble

Under normal circumstances, 380,000 children are born to first-time mothers living in poverty every year. Many of these women face multiple health risks including: heart disease, depression, intimate partner violence, substance use, inadequate nutrition, and even death. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 22% of women in the U.S. do not begin prenatal care as early as they should, with rates rising to 33% for African American and American Indian and Alaska Native women.

During the COVID-19 health crisis, which has profoundly changed family life across the country, families, particularly those families who have been held furthest from opportunity by the inequities in our healthcare and social systems, face even more significant burdens such as illness, death of loved ones, job loss, and the disruption of critical support services, not to mention fear and anxiety. Low-income communities and communities of color have been disproportionately affected by the virus, so improving their health and economic well-being is key to recovery. …

Results for America Fellowship Alumni give five answers in five minutes. This month, we caught up with Heather Boughton, Director of the Office of Research, Evaluation & Advanced Analytics for the Ohio Department of Education.

1. Summarize what you do and how you do it.
   I help the Department answer questions about education in Ohio, by connecting teams to resources, demystifying the research process, and helping teams see the human stories in data and research.
2. Share something exciting that you’re working on.
   Through a partnership with Cleveland State University’s Center for Urban Education, Ohio is studying how school districts make sense of their school climate data and use it to improve. A sample of our districts will be partners in this work and we are excited to see how they help shape the study and how they learn through the process of their participation. As a precursor to this study, Cleveland State will also soon publish evidence-based guidance to districts on building a positive school climate during times of crisis and in remote learning environments as well as building a positive racial climate in schools. …

Results for America Fellowship Alumni give five answers in five minutes. This month, we caught up with Gilbert Montaño, Chief Administrative Officer for the City of New Orleans, LA.

1. Summarize what you do and how you do it.
   I serve as the Chief Administrative Officer for the City of New Orleans, tasked with being the Mayor’s second-in-command. My primary responsibilities are to oversee the day-to-day management of City departments, to prepare and execute the City’s operating and capital budgets, and to coordinate and implement innovative solutions to reform City government — and I do this with a lot of coffee.
2. Share something exciting that you are working on.
   I spend most of my day (and night) managing this dire situation unfolding before us: the COVID-19 pandemic. Every day, I see first-hand the seismic paradigm shift from the outbreak on local government, particularly from a financial perspective: New Orleans is uniquely vulnerable to the economic hardships on the travel and hospitality industries caused by the COVID-19 crisis. We, as city leaders, have to break down and modernize long-standing processes and legacy systems to ensure we are adequately responding to the rapidly expanding needs of our residents and businesses, while simultaneously balancing the budget. …

Results for America Fellowship Alumni give five answers in five minutes. This month, we caught up with Lanetta Haynes Turner, Chief of Staff for Cook County, IL.

1. Summarize what you do and how you do it.
   In my role as Chief of Staff to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, I am the primary connector and collaborator between the President’s Office and 10 other separately elected offices to ensure we have a seamless government for our residents. …

By Celeste Richie

With the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) expiring in September 2020, Results for America recently released Moneyball for Workforce Development with detailed recommendations for ways to leverage WIOA to improve the use of evidence in the public workforce system and achieve better results for the system’s participants.

I recently had the privilege to discuss RFA’s new paper as well as the promising evaluation findings from the WorkAdvance study and the impressive strides that the state of Pennsylvania is making in building a more evidence-based and equitable public workforce system with Frieda Molina, Deputy Director for the Low-Wage Workers and Communities Policy Area at MDRC, and Allison Jones, Deputy Secretary of Policy and Planning in the Office of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf. …