The Department of Government Efficiency has severed dozens of contracts that helped the Department of Education meet congressionally mandated data reporting requirements.
Now, federal workers at the department say they are paralyzed in their jobs — left unsure if the cuts mean the agency will default on statutory mandates to collect, analyze and report statistics on the state of American education.
Meanwhile, in Congress, lawmakers who have previously been on the record in support of these reporting requirements are still catching up on what exactly DOGE has slashed.
“DOGE should allow the Secretary, once she is confirmed, to do a careful review,” Sen. Susan Collins said. “I have been critical of the cuts that have been made because they include cutting some research on what helps children learn better, which would be very helpful for educators to have.
“To me, now that we have secretaries in many of these departments, we should allow them to be making the decisions and the reviews,” Collins continued. “It’s one thing if Elon Musk and his assistants are pointing out areas that they think should be reviewed, but I do not believe they should have the authority to make decisions.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, who has co-led the bipartisan effort to reauthorize the law on education data gathering, said he wanted a chance to review which reports were affected before commenting, because he was unsure of the necessity of all of them.
But many of the contracts supporting the creation of those reports have been cut. Within the National Center for Education Statistics, which performs the agency’s statistical work, DOGE axed multi-million dollar contracts that facilitated the creation of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, and the School Survey on Crime and Safety, among other things.
An employee at the Department of Education (who asked not to be named for fear of retribution at their job) described a critical breakdown of the way the Institute of Education Sciences — which houses NCES and produces key reports — functions:
“So many — pretty much all of our contracts have been canceled. All of that work — millions and millions of dollars of work — isn’t happening,” the employee told NOTUS. “So I would say none of our work is happening right now because the contractors are gone and we don’t even know if we’re allowed to continue working.”
The NCES as it’s known today is a product of former President George W. Bush’s Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002, which sought to improve the federal government’s education research process. There’s historically been bipartisan recognition that collecting statistics and information on education is important for improving equity, efficiency and accountability in education.
“I agree with the overall sentiment that I’d like to have a lot of decisions about education closer to the families, to the communities. But there are certain things that the federal government can and should be doing in terms of tracking data across all states so that we can make sure that standard for our country is being met,” Sen. Andy Kim told NOTUS. “It’s hurting our ability to understand how my kids and other kids are growing and whether or not there are more resources or other actions we need to be taking to help them improve.”
Kim was one of 92 Democratic lawmakers — including Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Ranking Member Bernie Sanders and House Education and Workforce Ranking Member Bobby Scott — who co-signed a letter to the Department of Education’s acting secretary and acting director on this very issue.
“The lack of information about and apparent disregard for careful planning and consideration for sweeping terminations of contracts and firing of staff is alarming,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter. “The consequences of these actions will prevent the public from accessing accurate information about student demographics and academic achievement, abruptly end evaluations of Federal programs that ensure taxpayer funds are spent wisely, and set back efforts to implement evidence-based reforms to improve student outcomes.”
In 2023, Cassidy, then the ranking member on the committee, and Sen. Bernie Sanders moved a bill forward to reauthorize the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002, which advanced through the Senate’s HELP Committee.
“This legislation applies what we’ve learned about education research over the past 20 years,” Cassidy said at the time. “It improves education research at the Institute of Education Sciences and enhances evidence-use in the classroom to improve students’ academic outcomes, addressing concerns we’ve heard from researchers and education leaders.”
Now, as IES is gutted and many federal education research efforts grind to a halt, Cassidy told NOTUS he wanted a chance to review the various reports IES produces because he wasn’t sure of their importance. He added that the What Works Clearinghouse — a resource managed by IES for educators on the efficacy of instruction materials — was good.
Cassidy’s office did not respond to further inquiries from NOTUS about whether he’d be interested in working to reinstate WWC as it was scrapped by DOGE. Contractors who partnered with the WWC, like Mathematica, Inc. and Abt Global, faced significant cuts from DOGE according to DOGE’s database. Neither contractor commented by press time.
DOGE also ended the US’s participation in international education assessments as well as efforts to evaluate the efficacy of various programs and policies. And while the administration has touted having generated the most savings at the Department of Education, in many cases, contracts were halted in the middle of work — with millions of dollars already paid.
There’s also the question of what will become of the data that was actively being collected by the contractors.
“There’s a waste element here and a massive loss of information element here,” the federal employee said. “If you’re really thinking about it from an efficiency standpoint, to spend however many millions of dollars collecting data over the years — we have these enormous resources of how to understand the research and the data — and you’re basically saying, ‘I don’t care if those millions and millions of dollars of work will disappear overnight.’ There’s been no attempt to preserve what the public paid for.”
—
Violet Jira is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.