Education scientists nationwide are fighting to stabilize a research system roiled by ongoing federal funding disruptions and political fights—and the specter of increased political interference in education research.
Thousands of researchers and teachers, as well as scientific and advocacy organizations, have called for the U.S. Department of Education to reconsider a grant overhaul that, they say, would gut evidence and destabilize education research.
The proposed overhaul via the department’s administrative regulations, known as EDGAR, would allow the administration to delay funding to projects “for convenience,” and revise how it defines research quality.
The EDGAR proposal drew at least 5,510 comments by the Sept. 23 due date, overwhelmingly critical of the changes.
If finalized, the new rules would codify steps the Trump administration already has taken or attempted in the last few years to tighten control over education research. Congress and the courts have blocked some prior attempts to eliminate research funding or change grant criteria for active projects to align with the administration’s policy goals.
The Education Department’s proposals for education research and other grants mirror similar highly contested proposed grant rules for the Office of Management and Budget and the National Science Foundation. The administration received more than half a million comments on those proposed regulations, and Congress has put those new rules on hold for now.
Proposed rules get a chilly reception from researchers
The American Educational Research Association, the Association of American Universities, and the research and development advocacy groups including the Friends of IES and others have called for the proposed changes to be withdrawn entirely.
“These changes could lead to ideologically driven, rather than scientific merit-based, decisions regarding what education research gets funded, affect whether projects can be completed, and impact how research findings are or can be used,” said Tabbye Chavous, the executive director of AERA, the largest education research group, in an emailed statement.
IES now supports projects in three- to five-year grant cycles, with more intensive projects often receiving extensions and regularly continuing across different political administrations. Until the start of the second Trump administration, active research projects could be canceled if they did not meet financial, performance, or reporting requirements, but not solely because of changes in research or policy priorities.
The Future of Evidence in Education Network, a convening of mostly university researchers and evaluators, cautioned that effective research systems need stability and continuity in both funding and evaluation criteria, and should not be subject to political whims.
“Researchers must complete planned data collection and analyses and report all findings, including those that conflict with current policy preferences,” the group noted, warning that the federal Education Department’s proposed changes could “weaken scientific integrity, reduce the public return on federal funding, and make federal research support less reliable.”
Elizabeth Odders-White, a 20-year researcher and former finance professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argued in her submitted comments that the proposed rules would chill education research nationwide.
“It is nearly impossible to embark on and advance a research program under continual threat of grant suspension or termination,” Odders-White wrote. Disrupting active research projects “disincentivizes researchers from applying for funding at all, which further diminishes the scientific output that keeps us competitive in a global economy.”
Similar changes to grants for other agencies have been put on hold
Congress barred the Trump administration from moving ahead with the OMB and NSF rules while a continuing budget resolution approved in September is in effect. But the proposed changes to the Education Department’s regulations weren’t addressed in that bill.
Critics also contend that the administration’s proposal would conflict with the federal Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002—the law governing federal education research, which requires its work to be “free of partisan political influence.”
Repeated attempts to update the nearly quarter-century-old law to address changing technology, methodology, and data collection needs (most recently in 2023) have foundered in Congress, and the Trump administration has moved to shrink education research staff and defund competitive research grants.
For its part, the Education Department has tacitly encouraged states to take the lead on funding education research as it works to shrink the federal role. In September it released a “learning agenda playbook” based on pilot programs in eight states, which lays out tools to help state education leaders set priorities, engage researchers, and develop long-term research and development programs.
“Because of the changes that are happening at the federal level, we’re starting to see everyone really shift to emphasizing the importance of solidifying [education] R&D at the state level, not just for a grant or two, but as something that’s really going to endure over time and across administrations,” said Heather Boughton, the associate director of state policy at the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition of more than 150 research and development groups and member of the working group that developed that playbook.
States could struggle to fund their own education research systems
Boughton acknowledged many states would face a steep learning curve to assume such a role in funding research.
“State capacity has always been pretty ebb and flow,” said Boughton, who previously supervised research at the Ohio department of education. “In general, education hasn’t had that same infrastructure for R&D that we’ve seen in medical field or other scientific fields.”
Researchers have been bracing since 2025 for the Trump administration to “devolve generating evidence to local levels,” but individual states and districts aren’t prepared to develop consistent, transparent standards for evidence or coordinate large research projects, said Vivian Wong, an associate education professor at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville.
Alongside its comments on the proposed rules, the Future of Evidence in Education Network, of which Wong is a member, released recommendations Sept. 23 for federal, state, and organization leaders to redesign the national research and development system. The group is working to integrate its recommendations in both state and federal legislation, calling for:
- Rigorous, independent, and relevant evidence standards,
- Transparent review and reporting processes for study results,
- Research plans and syntheses that help practitioners learn from variation in results,
- Partnerships and training for education leaders and practitioners to use research and evidence to make decisions,
- Stable, scaled investment in education research and development; and
- Ongoing evaluations of the effectiveness of the R&D system.
“You need the federal government to be the honest broker about what meets rigorous [research] standards, because of the politics that may be embedded in the situation” for states or districts, said Daniel Goldhaber, the director of the Center for Education Data and Research at the University of Washington, and a member of the network.
