Following the recent national test scores showing millions of American students failing to learn even the basics in reading and mathematics, the Department of Government Efficiency has announced the termination of nearly $900 million in education research contracts managed by the Institute of Education Sciences. The move is being celebrated by DOGE’s fans and denounced by stakeholders in the education sector.
We’ve been urging significant reforms to the federal education R&D enterprise for the past few years. For this reason, we are optimistic that the Trump administration’s moves could be the first in a series of actions to rebuild the federal education R&D infrastructure and increase its return on investment for American students in a new era of widespread parental choice in education.
To that end, we recommend that DOGE, the Trump administration’s new leaders at the Department of Education, and Congress approach the Department with an eye to improving transparency around public funds for education and helping parents access useful information about educational options, all while working to cut the wasteful projects that the Department has undoubtedly been funding. In some cases, ending contracts could reduce transparency, making it harder for education reformers, including Republicans, to understand how our education system is functioning today.
For example, some of the canceled contracts may be counterproductive if the broader goal is to improve how American tax dollars are being used while making sure that American children have a chance to succeed in K-12 education. For example, DOGE apparently canceled program evaluation contracts, already well underway, to review major federal education programs including Title I of ESEA (to evaluate how funds could be better used when local governments have more flexibility) and the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (to evaluate whether federally funded after-school programs are working). The savings from canceling these research projects amount to $26 million, but these evaluations could be useful for Congress and the new leaders of the Department of Education for considering broader reforms to these programs, which received nearly $20 billion in federal funding last year. The DOGE team also appears to have ended the Institute of Education Sciences’ $16 million contract to manage the nation’s ongoing participation in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which has served as an important barometer of American students’ performance compared to their peers around the world.
As more information becomes available about what exactly has been cut from within the Institute of Education Sciences’ budget, it will become clear to what extent these cancellations will affect the essential work of the National Center for Education Statistics. DOGE is right to suspect that many federal education contracts are wasteful and fund unproductive research projects, but NCES’s work is both more mundane and more valuable. By collecting education statistics from across the country, it plays a useful role in giving policymakers, teachers, and most importantly parents information about how public schools are using taxpayer funds, where students are succeeding and failing, where reform efforts should be concentrated, and where students can access the best opportunities.
For example, our friend Paul Diperna of EdChoice wrote a thoughtful essay about the importance of federally collected data, the transparency of its management, and the importance of maintaining public trust. Diperna writes: “In recent weeks, the federal government has removed key public datasets and more than 8,000 web pages, dismantling the internet’s roads and bridges connecting policymakers, businesses, and researchers to essential information for improvements and innovation,” adding that the cancelation of the IES contracts raises more questions about data transparency.
If we look past these contract terminations, there is an opportunity to build a new federal education R&D enterprise that can help reverse the academic crisis in the U.S. and support the historic reforms that are underway in states across the country.
In the coming weeks and months, new leaders will arrive at the Department of Education, including former state education leaders who have experience working with the Institute of Education Sciences. Presumably a new director will be appointed to lead IES. Members of Congress will provide input, particularly through the appropriations process, on how federal funds should be used for education R&D and statistical programs.
DOGE’s recent moves should therefore be treated as an opportunity for the Trump administration, Department of Education leaders, and Congress to rethink and rebuild the federal role in education R&D. We have already provided a series of recommendations for reforming the federal education R&D enterprise in a paper published last fall. To summarize, we think that the North Star for everyone involved in this debate should be to make decisions that are in the best interest of American children, rather than the adults or organizations that receive funding through these programs.
With thoughtful reform, the U.S. has an opportunity to apply the findings and best practices identified through decades of federally funded R&D and to make that information more available to school leaders, teachers, and parents. In particular, the federal education R&D enterprise can play an important role in providing transparency about K-12 education and helping parents and other stakeholders make informed decisions. This is particularly important now that 13 states have enacted universal education choice programs and more than 22 million parents have access to education savings accounts and similar options to direct their children’s education.
