3. Investment in Capacity to Learn What Works

Since FY 2017-18, Colorado’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting (OSPB) administers a $0.50M annual fund for program evaluation and implementation grants, which provides competitive funding to support program implementation and/or evaluations. The $0.50M annual fund is 2.5% of the Office’s total discretionary fund. Through this grant, the Governor’s Office has invested approximately $3.7M in grants to support evidence-based policy.

H.B. 22-1295 created the Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC) and established the new universal preschool program (UPK). The bill appropriated $10.31M, $0.15M, and $0.45M for evaluations of early intervention needs throughout the state, the newly established state agency, UPK respectively. The $11.41M this bill appropriated for evidence building made up 14% of the state agency’s total discretionary funding for SFY 2022-23.

The Colorado Department of Labor & Employment (CDLE) Office of Labor Market Information (LMI) conducts a majority of the data collection and evidence building throughout the state agency. The Office receives $3.6M annually to collect and analyze information about labor market trends throughout Colorado. In addition to other evidence building activities CDLE spends 6% of its total discretionary funding of $66.5M on evaluation.

The Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) is committed to data transparency and learning from our ongoing initiatives. CSDE used federal coronavirus relief funds to establish the Center for Connecticut Education Research Collaboration (CCERC) and is now institutionalized. This collaborative partners with institutions of higher education in CT to evaluate the effectiveness of public investments in education. Another significant investment is the CSDE’s data portal EdSight which provides public access to a wide array of datasets and dashboards on topics ranging from student enrollment, engagement and outcomes, to educator capacity and diversity, and school and district performance.

The Office of Workforce Strategy is allocating resources for evaluation of the CareerConneCT program, which funds job training at several providers in Connecticut. The Office of Policy and Management has established the Data and Policy Analytics division, which consolidates resources for collection, management and analysis of data for executive branch agencies.

The New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development has invested an average of $239,000 per year on its required annual evaluation of WIOA Title I services since 2019, representing 1% of its total allocation for those services. NJDOL has allocated up to three percent of the $18.2 million allotted by USDOL for service delivery to conduct its first random control trial (RCT) of services delivered under the Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessment (RESEA) program. ​

The North Carolina FY 2021-23 budget appropriated $1 million in nonrecurring grant funds to OSBM for state agency research and evaluation needs (6% of OSBM’s budget). OSBM launched the North Carolina Evaluation Fund to support government-researcher partnerships that inform program and policy decisions. OSBM awarded grants to eight high-impact research projects in 2022 on topics including teacher and student outcomes, workforce development, juvenile recidivism, behavioral health and social service programs, and domestic violence. Project pre-analysis plans and final materials to date are available on the State of North Carolina Registry.

As part of the FY23 budget, Tennessee allocated $1.5 million in recurring state dollars for rigorous program evaluations to support evidence building. Programs ready for evaluation are identified in the program inventory process, in partnership with the Office of Evidence & Impact, and agencies are connected with external research partners who conduct the program evaluation. For FY26 budget requests that were programmatic, 33% of dollars requested were associated with evidence-based programs.