Up to now, I have written primarily about the potential impact of evidence-based policies on education policies and practice. I would now like to consider the potential impact on educational research. I believe that if evidence-based policies take hold, this will be enormously beneficial for all of educational research, not just research involving randomized or matched experiments. First, I am confident that when policymakers perceive that educational research and development is actually producing programs that are shown in rigorous experiments to improve student outcomes, they will fund research at far higher levels. This should not be a zero-sum game in which new funds for experiments will be taken from the very limited funds now available for educational research (see Shavelson & Towne, 2002). Rather, I believe that making research relevant and important to policymakers will make them more, not less, willing to invest in all forms of disciplined inquiry in education, be it correlational, descriptive, ethnographic, or otherwise. The popularity of medical research depends totally on its ability to cure or prevent diseases, but because randomized experiments routinely identify effective treatments (and protect us from ineffective treatments), there is vast funding for basic research in medicine, including epidemiological, correlational, and descriptive studies. Researchers and developers will be able to argue convincingly that basic research is essential to tell us what kinds of educational programs are worth evaluating.