Today's funding environments demand meaningful assessment and evaluation as a minimum for any proposal to promote earth science teaching and learning. Within the past decade this requirement has evolved to require actual discipline-based educational research that requires substantively more planning, time and resources and can divert funds from the proposed project itself. This presentation will explore this trend using examples from the author's experience with funded projects and provide suggestions for principle investigators to consider when fashioning their plans or how the project will be evaluated and assessed so that this activity can pass muster as authentic educational research that can benefit the wider community. It will hopefully be an enlightening look into the promise, products and pitfalls of trying to prove that what you are trying to do works!