The Trump administration abruptly canceled a test that has measured the math and reading skills of the nation’s 17-year-olds for more than 50 years, sparking concern among education policy experts that recent federal spending cuts will affect the long-term data used to measure educational progress.
The federally mandated National Assessment of Educational Progress Long-Term Trend Assessment has monitored the performance of 9, 13, and 17-year-olds since the 1970s. Unlike the main NAEP assessment—which was launched in the 1990s and is revised periodically to reflect changes in academic standards—the long-term test uses a narrower, largely consistent set of questions focused on basic skills, allowing for comparisons of student achievement over decades of shifts in policy and practices.
The decision conflicts with prior statements from the new Trump administration that NAEP would not be affected by a swath of spending cuts to the Education Department that now total close to $1 billion.
State education departments received a message from the U.S. Department of Education Feb. 19, canceling a planned administration of the assessment to 17-year-old students scheduled for March 17 to May 23.
A long-term assessment of 9-year-olds, which is currently in the field, will be completed, said the message, which a state official shared with Education Week.
The decision not to field the test, which was last administered to 17-year-olds in 2012, “will cripple our ability to understand the effectiveness and efficiency of our schools,” said Sean Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford University.
Assessment experts say long-term data is crucial as educators and policymakers monitor recovery from pandemic-related learning interruptions.
The test “provides the only long-term trend in the performance of students as they prepare to leave high school for the labor market or college,” Reardon said in an email. “In that sense, it provides a summary measure of how well we are preparing students for jobs in the modern economy.”
The decision to axe the test came amid a flurry of sudden, disruptive spending decisions in recent weeks. President Donald Trump, who has pledged to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, empowered billionaire Elon Musk to slash federal contracts and grants through the Department of Government Efficiency, an office within the executive branch. Recent moves included the sudden cancellation of millions of dollars for teacher-training programs and education research contracts.
A spokesperson for the Institute for Education Sciences, which oversees NAEP, referred questions about the test cancellation to Education Department spokesperson Madison Biedermann, who did not immediately respond to messages.
The decision appears to have been made without the approval of the National Assessment Governing Board, a nonpartisan board of educators and assessment experts that meets quarterly to discuss scheduling and administration of the test and the release of results. Members of the board, which is next scheduled to meet March 6, referred questions to the Education Department.
The board debated the value of the long-term assessment in the past as it has sought to balance growing priorities. In 2015, the board postponed plans to administer the test, typically given every four years, in 2016 and 2020, citing budget constraints.
There are also broader concerns about how seriously high school students take assessments that don’t affect their grades, said Dale Chu, an educational consultant who previously worked in the Florida and Indiana education departments.
“But that [concern] to me doesn’t translate to, let’s have less data,” he said. “If anything, we should be going in the other direction. It’s a slippery slope.”
