The education research field was reeling after the U.S. Department of Education slashed staff from its research arm and canceled scores of contracts and research efforts earlier this year. Since then, the Institute of Education Sciences has delivered some data late and in a scaled-back fashion, and the body that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress has announced fewer tests in the coming years because of the cutbacks.
But last month, a glimmer of hope emerged when the department asked the public how it could improve IES, as the research arm is called.
In late September, it issued a notice requesting input on how IES could function more cohesively, produce more timely data about schools and students, and better serve educators and education leaders who struggle to apply lessons from education research published in academic journals.
More than 400 public comments flowed in by last week’s deadline, calling on the Trump administration to fund education research and staff the institute, bring states together to share best practices, and continue its collection of key federal data on the nation’s schools.
“The number of groups thoughtfully, meaningfully engaging with this is a reflection of the value of this institution, and should speak very, very loudly about how much it is needed to really drive student success,” said Rachel Dinkes, president of Knowledge Alliance, which represents education research groups. “I think the small, fractional investment of the federal government in education R&D really makes all the federal expenditures on education more impactful.”
For many, the future of IES isn’t just about continuing its work the way it was done before President Donald Trump took office in January. Many focused their comments on suggestions for creating a more streamlined, modern, and effective federal research and data-gathering operation.
In the months before soliciting public input on IES’ future, the Education Department hired a researcher to work temporarily on restructuring the office, advertised for other positions, and restored some contracts it canceled. It’s given education research groups some cause for optimism. But IES is still a fraction of the size it was less than a year ago, and the Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposes to cut the institute’s spending by two-thirds. So researchers’ optimism is tempered.
“Obviously, I believe we lose a lot when the administration pulls back on this kind of thing,” said Sara Schapiro, the executive director of the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a newly formed coalition of groups promoting education research. “If you have fewer high-quality, federally validated tools and datasets and curriculum, I don’t think that will be a good thing for schools and districts.”
The institute enjoyed bipartisan support, until Trump’s second term
The two-decade-old IES is best known for administering the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the one test taken by samples of students in each state to track national performance and compare states. It’s also responsible for statistics-gathering and dissemination through the National Center for Education Statistics, with the data used to set the stage for NAEP and the distribution of federal funds. It’s a major funder of education research, with a roughly $800 million budget in 2024. And part of its mission involves disseminating the findings of education research through Regional Educational Laboratories that work with states and school districts and the What Works Clearinghouse guide to research-backed practices.
For years, it has enjoyed bipartisan support. But it was an early target of the second Trump administration’s cuts: most of its positions were eliminated in March as part of a broader Education Department downsizing, and hundreds of its contracts were gutted. Those actions have blown a hole in data collection with almost the same level of disruption as the COVID-19 pandemic, research groups say. Lawsuits have challenged the cuts with some success, but most remain in place.
Though some philanthropies and private-sector organizations tried to stem the loss by funding the last steps of some in-progress research projects the department slashed, “it’s very hard to do this from the outside,” Schapiro said.
“There’s going to be an asterisk next to this year, because we’re going to be missing data,” she said.
But even as the department hacked away, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said her goal was to “revamp” the institute. The department in May hired Amber Northern, senior vice president for research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank, to advise on the scaffolding of a new IES.
It was an encouraging sign to the field that Trump might not entirely be shirking the federal role in education research, several research organizations said—at best, a promising start to revolutionizing it.
“The ALI Coalition came together because we didn’t think the infrastructure for R&D in education was working as well as it could,” Schapiro said. “We’re not trying to sort of keep the status quo. We’re trying to push the field forward, push the department … forward.”
The feedback seeks to build on what worked, improve what didn’t
The September request for information asked how the Institute of Education Sciences could function more smoothly across its four centers; better meet state and local leaders’, educators’, and parents’ needs; deliver more timely and accessible statistics and research; modernize its peer review of research proposals and IES reports and grantmaking; and scale up the dissemination of research-backed practices.
In the responses, Dinkes, from Knowledge Alliance, saw a theme “of building on what works.”
“How do we take what we’ve learned over the 20-or-so years that IES has been in existence and scale and drive change in policy and practices?” she said.
The Knowledge Alliance proposed leveraging social media—and influencers—to get messages out, or holding an annual state leader conference that shares implementation strategies. Bringing everyone together is something the federal government does well, Dinkes said.
Other organizations proposed creating grants to communicate concepts beyond journal publications aimed at academics, translating findings into tools like dashboards or policy briefs, and simplifying how educators can search through research so they can ask questions in “plain English.”
One of the biggest critiques of IES is the delay in data collection and delivery. Data have often been years old by the time they’re released.
The Knowledge Alliance suggested streamlining IES surveys, and releasing preliminary research findings at key study milestones, rather than waiting until the studies conclude.
Many organizations urged the department to uphold its historical role of collecting data—one of the earliest federal undertakings in education dating back to the Civil War era.
“We don’t think the federal government should make decisions for states and districts,” Schapiro said. “We just want to make sure that the federal government continues to have a role to provide the unbiased data they need to make good decisions.”
As groups envisioned how the department could improve IES, the Heritage Foundation—which authored the conservative playbook Project 2025, a blueprint the Trump administration has followed in education policymaking—suggested it should deepen the cuts.
It pressed the department to close the What Works Clearinghouse (which the administration is maintaining, but not expanding) and the Regional Educational Laboratories, as “both functions are beyond the appropriate scope of federal activity,” wrote Jay P. Green, the organization’s senior research fellow of education policy, and Jonathan Butcher, acting director of education policy. The pair argued that conducting or commissioning evaluations of policies or practices is “inappropriate” and “ultimately political in nature and prone to intellectual corruption.”
IES, Green and Butcher wrote, should retain its role in collecting data needed for civil rights enforcement, particularly so the Education Department can track “so-called reverse discrimination against whites and Asians.”
The Heritage Foundation said what remains of IES should be shifted to the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the U.S. Census Bureau.
The ALI Coalition was “purposely agnostic” as to where some of IES’ functions could live should Trump make good on his pledge to shutter the Education Department, Schapiro said. Others pressed the department to rebuild the institute’s staff, and hire carefully.
“A combination of strategic rehiring and new talent acquisition may provide the most effective approach,” the National Council on Measurement in Education, a group of assessment and testing specialists, wrote in its recommendations. “NCME recommends engagement with experts outside of ED in developing an appropriate recruiting and staffing plan.”
Without that staff, the quality of federal education data, progress on key research, and public trust are all threatened, Tabbye Chavous, executive director of the American Educational Research Association, a group of education researchers, said in a prepared statement.
“Clearly, now is the time for the department to make meaningful investments in IES’s staffing and infrastructure as part of any reform effort,” Chavous said.
2025-10-21 16:42:47
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