Science magazine interviewed former leaders of the Institute for Education Sciences, where DOGE canceled scores of contracts. One thought it was great, the others thought it was alarming.
Science reports:
The sudden cancellation Monday of hundreds of millions of dollars of government contracts to collect information on the state of U.S. education will blind the government to important trends from preschool to college and beyond, according to education researchers angered by the move. The decision to terminate a reported 169 contracts at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) follows other assaults on federal statistical agencies triggered by a slew of executive orders from President Donald Trump. It was orchestrated by the administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk, which said the cancellation affects $881 million in multiyear commitments.
Scientists opposed to the move say it promises to disrupt research on the problems in U.S. schools, including declining student mental health, the growing gap between low- and high-achieving students, and rising chronic absenteeism.
“In my view, the termination of these contracts is capricious and wasteful and cruel,” says sociologist Adam Gamoran, president of the William T. Grant Foundation, which supports research seeking to improve the lives of young people. “It’s taking a sledgehammer to what should have been a judicious process of evaluating those contracts, the vast majority of which are worth the investment…”
Education policy analyst James “Lynn” Woodworth led NCES during the first Trump administration and is now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. Woodworth described to Science how the cancellations will affect nearly all federal education statistical efforts and the researchers who rely on the data.
Q: Why is ending these contracts such a big deal for NCES?
A: Unlike other federal statistical agencies, NCES can use only a tiny slice of the money IES gets from Congress to hire staff to carry out these duties. So it has to contract out almost all of its work. NCES has fewer than 100 employees, and more than 1000 contractors.
Q: What’s the immediate impact on the work now going on?
A: Some of these surveys are now in the field. For others, researchers are analyzing the data that’s been collected. All of that work is being stopped, immediately, which means all the money that’s been spent getting to that point is just wasted.
Q: What will happen to the data?
A: It’s not clear. NCES doesn’t have its own data center, because NCES has never been given the funds to set one up and hire people to run it. So the data are held by the contractors. And when their contract is terminated, is the money for data storage also being terminated?
Q: The Department of Education has said its decision won’t affect the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), dubbed the nation’s “report card,” a massive activity managed by NCES. But it relies on data from other NCES surveys that have now had their contracts terminated. What’s your take?
A: NAEP is based on the test results of a small but representative sample of U.S. students. To figure out which students or which school should be included in your sample, you need the data from the CCD [Common Core of Data, an NCES-managed database on students in U.S. public schools]. Another NCES survey, the PSS [Private School Survey], provides NAEP with the same data for private schools. Without the data from the CCD and the PSS [whose contracts are now terminated], you can’t select and create a proper sample. And that is true not just for NAEP. It will affect every researcher in the country who uses CCD as the frame for sampling and weighing of their survey population.
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