Year-Round Pell Grants: The Challenge of Making Policy Decisions with Limited Evidence

Using evidence to inform policy decisions is particularly challenging when the existing research base is thin, and findings are not clear. This was the case for decisions regarding the Year-Round Pell Grant program which, over the course of the last decade, was created, discontinued, and reinstated. This brief tells the story of how these policy decisions were or were not informed by evidence and how policymakers adjusted the program over time as research studies were completed and their results released.