Dramatic cuts at the U.S. Department of Education have left a “skeletal staff” at offices that oversee research and troves of education data, putting efforts to improve schools at risk, a coalition of research organizations warned congressional leadership.
A March 26 letter—signed by the leaders of 12 education research associations representing a combined 40,000 members—asked House and Senate leaders from both major parties to intervene after President Donald Trump’s administration cut more than 1,300 Education Department employees. Those cuts decimated offices that handle data and research: the office for civil rights, the Institute for Education Sciences, and the National Center for Education Statistics.
At risk as a result: the future of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which has measured decades of achievement in the country’s public schools, as well as congressionally mandated data collections that are used to enforce civil rights laws, allocate federal funding, and fuel research to identify what works in schools, the letter said.
“The federal government plays an irreplaceable role in providing high-quality, objective, trustworthy, and nonpartisan education data nationwide—work that cannot be replicated at the same economy of scale by states, local agencies, or the private sector,” said the letter, whose signatories included leaders of the American Educational Research Association, the major association representing education researchers, and the National Academy of Education, a society of U.S. and international education researchers.
“If Congress fails to intervene and fulfill its constitutional responsibilities, the consequences will be far-reaching,” the groups continued. “Ultimately, it will be students, educators, communities, and the nation that bear the cost.”
Broad staff cuts threaten data collection
The letter comes as Trump tries to make good on a campaign promise to dismantle the Education Department. While federal money accounts for just 10 percent of school funding, critics of the agency have argued that associated regulations have amounted to federal overreach.
The federal agency, already the smallest Cabinet-level department by headcount, has shrunk from a staff of more than 4,000 to roughly half of that through a mass reduction in force and repeated buyout offers. Trump issued a March 20 executive order, directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of the department while ensuring its programs and services are carried out “uninterrupted.”
McMahon has acknowledged that full closure of the Education Department, or moving its responsibilities to other federal agencies, would require congressional approval. The department has repeatedly said its “strategic” reduction in force would not affect students and families, or its core responsibilities, but McMahon has provided few details on how programs like NAEP or federal data collections will continue with so few employees.
The Institute of Education Sciences, the agency’s research arm, cut 105 union-represented positions, more than half of the 167 staff it employed in 2023. The cuts left just three employees at the National Center for Education Statistics, which maintains several federally mandated data collections and administers the NAEP, also known as the “nation’s report card.”
Any interruption in that data will affect the ability to distribute federal funds, determine student samples for the achievement test, and ensure the accuracy of private research, the researchers cautioned.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that without NCES data, much of the education research in America will come to a halt,” the letter said. “These efforts drive evidence-based policies, innovations, and best practices in communities, districts, states, and regions across the country.”
Other cuts will also affect education data, the letter said.
The office for civil rights, which oversees a biannual data collection detailing educational disparities in race, ethnicity, gender, and disability status, lost 243 of its 562 employees.
In February, the administration abruptly revoked nearly $900 million in research contracts, including those with private organizations to report data on issues like school crime and safety, early childhood education, and postsecondary outcomes.
Education data collection has a long history
It’s hard to imagine the agency will be able to conduct the same level of robust data collection after such dramatic staffing decreases, said Felice Levine, executive director of AERA.
The data in question has been used to identify education success stories, like lauded improvements in early literacy in Mississippi, offering lessons for other states, she said.
Levine has also heard concerns from international researchers and statistical organizations in other federal agencies that rely on Education Department data to weigh the success of initiatives like federal housing programs.
“This has really shaken a wide-ranging community,” she said. “The loss could come to haunt us.”
The hits to IES and NCES are surprising because data collection has historically been considered “the least controversial aspect” of the federal role in education, said Ethan Hutt, an associate professor of education and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a member of AERA. Conservative lawmakers have championed consistent, rigorous data collection in the past to equip parents and policymakers to make better decisions, he said.
NCES was founded in 1867, when few states had compulsory education, he noted. Congress later established IES as an independent agency within the Education Department through the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002.
Even proponents of a greater state and local role in education should be interested in collecting accurate, comparable data to measure progress, Hutt said.
“It’s great to have a local system, but if we are going to try to understand this grand experiment of public education, then we need to be clear on what’s happening, and you need some federal coordination to determine what to collect, when to collect it, and from whom,” he said.
States have also placed a growing emphasis on longitudinal data systems—systems that track students’ progress, year over year, from early childhood to college and career. Even states like North Carolina with strong systems of their own need federal data sources to track the success of students who move out of state, Hutt said.
“There’s real value here, and throwing it away doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “It undercuts one of the best parts of our system.”
Spokespersons for Rep. Tim Walberg, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, and Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, did not respond to requests for comment on the letter. A spokesperson for the Education Department also did not respond.
The letter was signed by leaders of AERA, the Association for Education Finance & Policy, the Association for the Study of Higher Education, the Division for Research at the Council for Exceptional Children, the International Society of the Learning Sciences, the Literacy Research Association, the National Academy of Education, the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, the National Council on Measurement in Education, the Society for Research in Child Development, the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, and the University Council for Educational Administration.
