DOGE DECRIFIES EDUCATION DEPARTMENT arm that tracks national school performance – Propublica

The Trump administration has terminated more than $ 900 million in the education department contracts and removes a key source for data on the quality and performance of the country’s schools.

The cuts were made upon request for Elon Musk’s cost -saving crewDepartment of Government Efficiency, and was revealed on X, the Social Media Platform Musk Owner, Shortly after Propublica asked the US Department of Education staff about the decision to decimate the agency’s research and statistics arm, the Institute of Education Sciences.

A spokesperson for the department, Madi Biedermann, said the standardized test known as the nation’s report card, the national assessment of educational progress would not be affected. Not either College ScorecardWhich allows people to search for and compare information about colleges, she said.

IES is one of the country’s largest funding of educational research, and the cut -out of contracts can mean a significant loss of public knowledge about schools. The institute maintains a massive database of educational statistics and contracts with researchers and educational companies to prepare and publish schools on schools every year, such as information on school crime and safety and high school course.

The total annual budget is about $ 815 million, or approx. 1% of the Education Department’s total budget of $ 82 billion this financial year. The $ 900 million in contracts that the department cancels include multi -year agreements.

The huge data of data represents much of what we know about the state of America’s approx. 130,000 schools, and without a national stock of data and statistics, it will be more difficult for parents and educators to track schools or compare the attainment of students across states.

There has been a federal educational statistics agency since 1867, though the current iteration was created in 2002 under President George W. Bush. Congress sets out funding for the institute’s work.

Biedermann, The Education Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Communication, said Propublica that she could not give details of the canceled contracts and said that “my understanding is that we do not release specific information.”

But she said there were 90 contracts that had been identified as “waste, fraud and abuse.” She said that cancellation of them was “in line with the department’s goal of ensuring that it is focused on meaningful learning” and to “make sure that taxpayers’ funds are used properly.”

She directed a reporter to the DODE account of X to get more details.

DOGE wrote in a post: “Today, too, the Department of Education ended 89 contracts worth $ 881mm. A contractor was paid $ 1.5 mm to ‘observe mailing and clerical operations’ in a mail center. “

The Trump administration has repeatedly expressed the desire to “return” responsibility for schools to the states, although state and local authorities are already checking the largest proportion of funding for education. There is no national curriculum; States and districts decide what to teach and dictate their own policies.

The US institutes for research, a nonprofit conducting research in education and other areas, said on Monday that it had received termination notifications for several contracts that are underway and that cancellation of them would be a bad financial decision early.

“This is an incredible waste of taxpayers’ dollars invested-PR. Congress grants and many according to specific legislation-in long-term data collection and analysis efforts and politics and program evaluations, ”spokesman Dana Tofig said in an email. That nonprofit has a contract with the department for years.

Schools and districts across the country are dependent on research from IES and contractors, such as the US institutes for research to guide best practices in the classrooms.

“These investments inform the entire education system at all levels about the state of education and distribution of students, teachers and resources in school districts throughout America,” Tofig said.

“If the purpose of such cuts is to ensure that taxpayers’ dollars are not wasted and used well, evaluation and data work is completed, exactly the work that determines which programs are effective uses of federal dollars and which ones. “

Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, blasted the contract’s terminations on IES. “A non-elected billionaire bulldozer is now the research arm for the Institute for Education-to take a devastating ball for high quality research and basic data we need to improve our public schools,” she said in a statement. “To cut off these investments after the contract is already ink is the definition of wasted.”