DOGE's shock-and-awe campaign has canceled $881 million in research contracts, reports Kalyn Belsha on Chalkbeat. The Institute of Education Sciences, or IES, the research arm of the Department of Education, took a heavy hit.
“If the purpose of such cuts is to make sure taxpayer dollars are not wasted and used well, the evaluation and data work that has been terminated is exactly the work that determines which programs are effective uses of federal dollars, and which are not,” wrote Dan Tofig, a spokesman for the the American Institutes for Research, which had two contracts canceled.
“It’s hard to believe this administration is serious about stopping the alarming decline of U.S. student achievement and competitiveness when it puts the kibosh on federally funded research and access to data,” Robin Lake, director of Arizona State's Center on Reinventing Public Education, told Greg Toppo.
“How will policy makers and educators know the bright spots to replicate and what practices are harmful? How will parents make informed choices? How will teachers know the best ways to teach math and prepare students for the jobs of the future?”
Key research work will resume under new contracts, predicts Mark Schneider, former head of the IES, in another Toppo story. He thinks the agency needed “a full shake-up” to become more effective.
“What does a modern system look like, and how do we get that?” he asked in a podcast. “To just throw everything away is easy. To try to imagine how to rebuild some of these essential data systems that the nation needs so that they’re modern, efficient, effective — that’s a much harder challenge, and that’s the challenge I hope that we rise to meet.”
The new DOGE-ed Education Department tweets that "instead of improving outcomes for students," taxpayer dollars were going to:
- $4.6M contract to coordinate zoom and in-person meetings
- $3.0M contract to write a report that showed that prior reports were not utilized by schools
- $1.4M contract to physically observe mailing and clerical operations
That's not quite at the drag-shows-in-Ecuador level.
The conservative National Association of Scholars is taking a "mend-it-don't-end it" approach to the Education Department. Its new report titled Waste Land suggests ways to make the department more efficient and less ideological.
I will miss the NCES, the Digest, and the NAEP. The rest can wither and DEI.
DoE has had 45 years to figure out how to improve American education and we have little to show for it. To borrow a (rather dreadful) phrase from Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Three generations of imbeciles is enough." (Looking at YOU, Mark Schneider.)