If this era is to become a Golden Age of Educational Practice, we need successful, evidence-based practices—to the extent that they actually exist—to spread far and wide. Many ideas for how to get educators to use such practices are inherently top-down or “supply side” approaches—build tools or products or school models on top of the evidence base, and then market them to schools.

In 2014, in response to findings that African American students were three times as likely to be suspended as white students, the Obama Administration sent a lengthy “Dear Colleague” letter to school districts nationwide, spelling out a new policy on school discipline, motivated by disparate impact theory. It warned administrators that they could be subject to a federal civil rights investigation if their data showed significant racial disparities in the use of suspensions or expulsions, and could be found guilty of discrimination even if they had race-neutral discipline policies that were being applied even-handedly.

For the new year to bring a new politics to America—one marked by a pragmatic search for solutions, with good ideas from left, right, and center—it’s going to have to come from the bottom up, far away from the Washington outrage machine. A good place to start would be the contentious challenge of school discipline.

If we are going to take advantage of the End of Education Policy, and usher in a Golden Age of Educational Practice, we need our field to start taking rigorous evidence much more seriously. Getting inside the black box of the classroom is a necessary first step, and launching lots more research initiatives about teaching and learning is second. But the big payoff will come if we can more accurately and constructively identify “what works” (and when it works, and what it costs)—and get it implemented more widely across the country.