DOGE Slashes $900M from Student Progress Tracking Office—What It Means for Education

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has cut almost $900,000,000 from a federal research office which tracks the progress of America’s students.

Musk’s team has slashed a number of contracts, but it’s not clear to what extent the Institute of Education Sciences of the Education Department will survive. At least 169 contracts, which accounted for most of the Institute’s work, were terminated abruptly on Monday.

The Education Department has not yet released any details about the cuts. Madison Biedermann said that the cuts will not impact IES’ main work, such as the NAEP assessment (also known as the Nation’s Report Card) and College Scorecard database, which tracks university costs and results.

Students’ advocates raised alarms that the cuts would hurt accountability in America’s educational system and leave the nation in darkness about the effectiveness of schools. In the past, low-income and minority students have tended to fall behind their peers in terms of academic achievement.

Biedermann refused to reveal the names of those vendors whose contracts had been terminated.

She said: “Contracts contain sensitive business information. Our contractors have reputational concerns that we want preserved. And our contractors didn’t agree to having their business information made public outside the FOIA context.”

She responded to questions by referring to a DOGE social media post that stated Musk’s team terminated 89 contracts totaling $881 million. This included $1.5 million for a contractor hired at a mailing center to “observe the mailing and clerical operation”. A second post stated that 29 grants worth $101 million were cut for diversity, equity and inclusivity training.

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is the central source of data on the state of education in America. It tracks the progress of students across the nation, regardless of demographics. It assesses the effectiveness and efficiency of federal programs and relies on its research for colleges and schools to improve student outcomes.

One of the contracts that will be terminated is a research project aimed at accelerating math learning in students from fourth and fifth grades. The project, known as ReSolve was led by MDRC. An official federal notice directed MDRC to stop the project “for the convenience of the government.”

The latest NAEP results were released by IES last month. They revealed that the children of America have lost ground in reading and math skills in the wake the COVID-19 pandemic.

Congress allocated the Institute about $800,000,000 last year. This is roughly 1% the annual Education Department budget.

Two prominent research associations have called for the reinstatement of these contracts. They claim that IES is required to perform a lot of work by Congress, and contracts are needed to fund its small staff. The groups claimed that 169 contracts were cut, limiting the institute’s capacity to provide data on school finances as well as student outcomes.

According to the leaders of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, “Without this research, students’ learning and development would be negatively affected.”

The Institute oversees many different projects, such as the NAEP test and the U.S.’s participation in PISA (an assessment that compares academic performance across countries). The institute is also a major funding source for education research, and maintains a database that contains research results that have improved education.

The Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy and research group, said that IES sheds light on inequality and that its work goes “beyond numbers and statistics”. The group stated that without IES, “we are left in darkness, unable see where educational gap exist or how to reduce them.”

Sen. Patty Murray, D. Washington, a former educator and member of Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has said that she will “sound the alarm” in order to fight back.

The Washington senator stated in a press release that “an unelected billionaire has bulldozed the research arm of Department of Education – destroying high-quality data and research we need to improve public schools.” “Stopping these investments once the contract is signed is wasteful.”

Trump has pledged to abolish the Education Department, and give its powers to the states and schools. The White House is looking at an order that would instruct Trump’s Education Chief to dismantle as much of the agency as possible, while calling on Congress for a complete shutdown.

It is unclear how far Trump can go to reduce the spending of his department, as much of it is ordered by Congress.