{"id":1985,"date":"2011-10-13T11:39:38","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T16:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/\/"},"modified":"2016-01-26T11:40:54","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T16:40:54","slug":"politics-not-metrics-can-tell-us-what-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/politics-not-metrics-can-tell-us-what-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics not metrics can tell us what works"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting article by\u00a0William Schambra, director of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/pcr.hudson.org\/\">Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal<\/a>\u00a0at the Hudson Institute, for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tacticalphilanthropy.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tactical Philanthropy<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tacticalphilanthropy.com\/2011\/10\/what-metrics-dont-tell-us-about-effectiveness\" target=\"_blank\">challenges the role of metrics in assessing what works and the effectiveness of interventions<\/a>. It is particularly relevant for the current debate (is there any?) on the value of impact evaluations and randomised control trials in policy making.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The lessons of Bradley\u2019s involvement in welfare reform were the reverse of what might have been expected. Metrics, the heart of social scientific calibration, have long been understood to be the key to successful policy reform. They are supposed to lift policy discussion out of the bitterly contested realm of political values and local, subjective viewpoints, and put it on the serene plateau of indisputable, objective, universal facts.<\/p>\n<p>No such thing had happened in Wisconsin. Metrics were subsumed into the local political debate rather than the other way around. And a vigorous, face-to-face, fiercely partisan contest about the meaning of \u201cwhat works\u201d held Bradley accountable to its own community for concrete results, in a way that abstract measurement never could.<\/p>\n<p>Unhappily, many foundations today believe that \u201ceffectiveness\u201d requires detachment from immediate, hands-on engagement in the civic life of their own local communities, and tie their grantmaking instead to ever more elaborate, arcane, abstract theories and models. They\u2019ll end up with numbers aplenty. But they still won\u2019t be able to answer the question, \u201cwhat works?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting article by\u00a0William Schambra, director of the\u00a0Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal\u00a0at the Hudson Institute, for\u00a0Tactical Philanthropy\u00a0that\u00a0challenges the role of metrics in assessing what works and the effectiveness of interventions. It is particularly relevant for the current debate (is there any?) on the value of impact evaluations and randomised control trials in policy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[233,662,182,262,192,181,457],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}