Invest in Learning and Sustaining Innovation

Congressional support for research has built a remarkable body of knowledge about what works - for families and children as well as for government budgets and taxpayers - with respect to welfare-to-work strategies, earnings supplements, and, to a lesser extent, time limits. Indeed, to an important degree, TANF's very success builds on a body of research that demonstrates the value of employment-focused work-first programs. New research findings are poised to play a similar role as states search for ways to fulfill TANF's new overarching purpose: to improve child well-being. But the AFDC waiver structure that nourished these research efforts no longer exists. Welfare reformers now confront a large new agenda to develop and refine their understanding about a host of new challenges, including how to promote job advancement and retention; assessing the role of public employment in rural areas and tribal lands, where unemployment is perennially high; how to help the hard-to-employ overcome their severe, persistent, and multiple employment barriers; how best to engage low-income adolescents as their mothers go to work; what strategies work to promote and sustain healthy marriages; assisting noncustodial fathers who owe child support and are unemployed; and defining the role of faith-based institutions in service delivery. Initially, the block-grant structure and the surpluses states enjoyed as a welcome by-product of the remarkable economic expansion of the late 1990s fueled a new round of state-led innovation. But the economic slowdown coupled with states' reluctance to commit their own funds to new endeavors that may turn out to be ineffective and be difficult to roll back have limited the amount of experimentation in a number of critical areas. Creating the wherewithal for states and localities to engage in bold experimentation and rigorous evaluation is crucial. An annual set-aside of program dollars that states could apply for to pay for pilot tests of new ideas - tests that include requirements for rigorous independent evaluations - is needed.

The Bush administration proposes two such resource pools to spur the development and testing of new approaches in the marriage field, but only one appears to include research requirements. An additional source of program funding is needed to cover the other areas mentioned above. In addition, the administration proposes to grant broad waiver authority to permit states to consolidate and integrate programs. Past efforts to couple waiver authority with rigorous learning have been essential to building knowledge about what works. Here again, a learning agenda should be prescribed. Back to summary of policy implications