An independent research arm within the U.S. Department of Education is being all but shut down, employees of the department say. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is responsible for gathering and disseminating data on a wide range of topics, including research-backed teaching practices and the state of U.S. student achievement.
Many contracts have already been canceled, according to two employees briefed on the moves. They shared screenshots with NPR of emails sent on Monday notifying them of terminated contracts.
The employees said they learned of the cuts at an emergency meeting called Monday afternoon by leaders of IES, a nonpartisan division of the Education Department that includes the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
The employees asked that their names not be used because they feared for their jobs.
The research collected by IES is used by educators, state and local departments of education, school districts, colleges and other researchers to better understand student achievement, enrollment and a host of other important functions that shape the education system in this country.
In the Monday meeting, employees were told that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a unit within the Trump administration run by Elon Musk, plans to cancel most of IES’ contracts. Two employees shared screenshots of emails summoning them to that meeting.
Employees described a somber mood where some fought back tears, and others raised questions about the future of IES.
One of the employees who spoke with NPR said all of the contracts they oversee have been terminated. “So it begs the question, what will this mean for our jobs?”
Another employee was skeptical of the idea that these cuts would lead to more efficiency. “If they’re doing this to save government money, they are wasting millions today. All the money we have spent working on these products, down the drain.”
NPR reached out to the Department of Education, and to the White House, for comment. The White House has not responded. An Education Department spokesperson replied by sharing a link to a Monday evening post on the X account for DOGE.
The post said, “the Department of Education terminated 89 contracts worth $881mm” and that “one contractor was paid $1.5mm to ‘observe mailing and clerical operations’ at a mail center.”
But a third source with extensive knowledge of many of these canceled Education Department contracts, who would not speak publicly for fear of retribution, told NPR that one shuttered program was already underway in classrooms — to study ways to help students nationwide make up for ground they’ve lost in math.
According to this source, students in multiple states were already working with high-quality, adaptive digital tools. Now, with the cancellation of that contract, the study will be cut short, and the learning tools could soon be removed from classrooms.
The canceled contracts also include surveys and data collection on a range of issues, including private schools, homeschooling and career and technical education programs.
“This is a decimation,” the source told NPR, “the destruction of knowing what works for kids.”
“It’s shocking, it’s pointless,” said Thomas Weko, a former commissioner at the NCES, referring to the halt in important research work.
He added that the creation of IES was “an attempt to put our understanding of education on a scientific footing with other fields of knowledge like medicine.”
If contracts tied to IES and NCES are indeed terminated, and its research becomes unavailable online, a trove of data gathered over many decades about the state of education in the U.S. could become difficult to access. It’s unclear what these contract terminations would mean for future data collection.
According to the employees NPR spoke with, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), will be preserved, at least for now. NAEP, also known as The Nation’s Report Card, is the gold standard in assessments of student achievement and releases widely used data on how K-12 students are faring in core subjects including math and reading.
President Trump has repeatedly said he plans to close the Education Department, which employs more than 4,000 people and has an annual budget of $79 billion.
He told Fox News in an interview that aired on Sunday: “I’m going to tell [Elon Musk] very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. He’s going to find the same thing. Then I’m going to go, go to the military. Let’s check the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse.”
In recent days, administration officials also placed dozens of Education Department employees on paid administrative leave with little explanation. At the time, the White House confirmed the president’s plans to shutter programs within the department that are not protected by law and his plans to call on Congress to close the department entirely.
Trump’s pick to be education secretary, Linda McMahon, is set to appear before Congress on Thursday for her confirmation hearing.
Transcript:
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Some of the key functions of the U.S. Education Department are being eliminated, such as conducting research about U.S. schools and colleges and the millions of students who attend them. This is some of the work done by the Institute of Education Sciences. But employees of the department tell NPR that many of the contracts IES oversees have now ended. NPR education reporter Jonaki Mehta has been following the story. So before we get to what you’re hearing from your sources about these latest cuts, what exactly does IES do?
JONAKI MEHTA, BYLINE: The institute is responsible for overseeing a lot of the data that tells us everything from how students are doing in school to what teaching methods best work to educate students, enrollment data, school choice programs, just a massive swath of research that shapes how the education system works. IES supports school districts, state agencies and educators who then take this data and put it to work in classrooms and beyond.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Now to the cuts. What are you hearing about the kinds of cuts being made?
MEHTA: Yeah, I spoke to two employees of IES. They didn’t want to be named because they fear losing their jobs. They both told me that Monday afternoon, they got an email from IES managers calling for an emergency meeting. And in that meeting, they were told that most of IES’ contracts were going to be canceled based on guidance from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as most people know it now. That’s the unit within the Trump administration that’s being run by Elon Musk.
IES heavily relies on contractors to do what it does. So without these contractors, that work is essentially halted. The employees I spoke to said the mood in that meeting was somber and some were holding back tears. And one of the workers said all the contracts that they oversee were already canceled by the end of the workday, so they and their colleagues are really wondering what this means for their jobs.
MARTÍNEZ: Can you tell us, like, an example of one of the programs that might be threatened now?
MEHTA: So another source my colleague Cory Turner spoke to has extensive knowledge of many of these contracts we’re talking about. For example, they said there are some high-quality digital tools that are already being used in classrooms in many states to measure how kids can make up ground in math. It’s part of a study that IES was conducting, and now that that contract is canceled, the study is going to be cut short, and the tools could soon be pulled from classrooms. This source called these cuts, quote, “the destruction of knowing what works for kids.” And the Department of Education got back to me late last night linking to a post on X by DOGE that basically confirmed that DOGE has cut dozens of contracts worth millions of dollars.
MARTÍNEZ: So, OK, government efficiency is actually in the name of that unit, DOGE. Could these cuts make the government more efficient?
MEHTA: President Trump said over the weekend, efforts like these across the federal government will save billions, but one IES employee put it this way. DOGE wants to make the government more efficient, but the government just wasted millions of dollars today by cutting these contracts. And I want to add some of the research conducted by IES is mandated by Congress, and it’s not clear how those programs will be affected.
MARTÍNEZ: So now I’m wondering, Jonaki, what this means for our understanding of the education system in the United States.
MEHTA: That’s the big question. I spoke to a couple of researchers who say that they and their colleagues are furiously downloading data from IES because they’re afraid the whole website could go dark and decades of data could become really hard to access. And moving forward, we just don’t know what will happen to this research. Once these contracts are scrapped, they can’t just be restarted. There’s a long bureaucratic process to get them up and running.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR education reporter Jonaki Mehta, thanks a lot.
MEHTA: Thank you.
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is responsible for gathering data on a wide range of topics, including research-backed teaching practices and the state of U.S. student achievement. MindShift
