Trump is targeting the Education Department Research Arm in the Latest Cuts: NPR

An independent research arm in the US Ministry of Education is anything but closed, says employees at the department. Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is responsible for collecting and disseminating data on a wide range of topics, including research -supported teaching practices and the performance of the American student.

Many contracts have already been canceled, according to two employees informed of the movements. The shared screens with NPR of E emails that were sent on Monday, which notified them of completed contracts.

Employees said they learned about the cuts at an emergency meeting called Monday afternoon by leaders of IES, a non -party department of the education department that includes the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Employees asked that their names were not used because they feared for their jobs.

The research collected by IEs is used by teachers, state and local educational departments, school districts, colleges and other researchers to better understand students’ performance, registration and a number of other important functions that shape the education system in this country.

At the Monday Meeting, employees were told that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a device within the Trump administration operated by Elon Musk, plans to cancel most of IES ‘contracts. Two employees shared screenshots of E emails calling them to this meeting.

Employees described a bleak mood in which some fought back tears and others raised questions about the future of IES.

One of the employees who spoke with NPR said that all the contracts they oversee have been completed. “So it raises the question, what will this mean for our job?”

Another employee was skeptical of the idea that these cuts would lead to more efficiency. “If they do this to save public money, they are wasting millions today. All the money we’ve spent on working on these products down into the drain.”

NPR reached out to the Department of Education and to the White House for comment. The White House has not answered. A spokesman for the education department responded by sharing a link to a Monday Evening Posts In the X account of DODE.

The post said, “The Institute of Education completed 89 contracts worth $ 881mm” and that “a contractor was paid $ 1.5mm to ‘observe mailing and clergy operations’ in a mail center.”

But a third source with extensive knowledge of many of these canceled educational department contracts that would not speak publicly for fear of retaliation, NPR told that a shoe program was already underway in the classrooms – to study ways to help students nationwide to compensate for the Earth , they have lost in math.

According to this source, students in several states already worked with high quality adaptive digital tools. Now, with cancellation of this contract, the study will be truncated and the learning tools could soon be removed from the classrooms.

The canceled contracts also include studies and data collection on a number of questions, including private schools, home education and career and technical education programs.

“This is a decimation,” said the source of NPR, “the destruction of knowing what works for children.”

“It’s shocking, it’s pointless,” said Thomas Weko, a former commissioner at NCES who refers to stops in important research work.

He added that the creation of IEs was “an attempt to put our understanding of education on a scientific basis with other areas of knowledge such as medicine.”

If contracts associated with IES and NCEs are actually completed and its research becomes unavailable online, a trove of data collected for many decades about the Education State in the United States may be difficult to access. It is unclear what these contract information 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 performance and releases widely used data on how K-12 students manage in core topics, 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 was sent on Sunday: “I will tell (Elon Musk) very soon, as maybe at 24 hours, to check the Department of Education. He will find the same thing. So I will go , go to the military.

In recent days, administrative officials also placed dozens of employees in the education department on paid administrative leave with little explanation. At that time, the White House confirmed the president’s plans to shoot programs within the department that are not protected by the law and his plans to call on Congress to close the department completely.

Trump’s choice to be Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, is ready to appear for Congress Thursday To her confirmation hearing.