Musk’s Doge announces millions in cuts to the education department in the middle of legal pushback

Elon Musk’s cost -saving efforts announced a number of cuts in the education department of a total of over $ 900 million, apparently with the aim of hobbling the department’s research arm, Institute of Education Sciences.

The team Mr. Musk has collected that have worked in relative secrecy in shutting other agencies such as USAID and cutting government programs, said Monday that the education department had “terminated” 89 contracts as well as 29 grants in connection with diversity and equity education.

Most, if not all, of the contract cuts hit the Institute of Education Sciences’ portfolio, including Educational innovation and research scholarships And review projects associated with what Works Clearinghouse that produces and curates research on best practice in education, according to three people who are familiar with the department’s contracting. The people requested anonymity for fear of retaliation because they were not authorized to discuss the cuts.

Less than two weeks after the release of new federal test data showing reading performance on historically low students’ behavioral challenges.

A spokesman for the education department did not elaborate on the programs or assigned that it gave the order to suspend, and referred journalists to a Social Media Post From the account attached to Mr. Musk’s efforts.

The move created immediate alarm among researchers and legislators who see the information gathered by the department as an invaluable resource for teachers working to improve teaching methods.

Cuts to the agency’s research fellowships are particularly notable considering that the federal government has taken a leadership role in the collection of data on education – and highlighting the best practice – since the 1860s, said Chester E. Finn Jr., who served under President Ronald Reagan as the educational department’s assistant secretary for research and improvement.

Dr. Finn compared educational research with medical research and pointed out that there is no equivalent with the role that pharmaceutical companies play as a source of financing in the private sector.

Educational research, he said, “is arguably the oldest and most central function of the federal government in education.”

Senator Patty Murray, Democrat in Washington, condemned the cuts.

“A non-selected billionaire bulldoser 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,” Murray said in a statement Monday. “To cut off these investments after the contract is already ink is the definition of wasted.”

Separately on Tuesday, a federal judge in Washington temporarily limited members of Mr. Musk’s team from accessing more than a dozen systems that store sensitive data in the department until Monday.

Two legal groups representing the University of California Student Association had brought a lawsuit trying to prevent Mr. Musk’s employees in fighting through the education department’s data due to concerns about privacy in connection with the personal identifying information that students routinely reveal when applying for federal assistance.

During a hearing on Tuesday morning, lawyers from the government seemed unable to speak to what extent Mr. Musk’s engineers and analysts had been bored with the department’s databases. Both parties later agreed that the Musk team would refrain from entering the systems until Monday, giving the government more time to prepare its case.

The judge in the case, Randolph D. Moss, also expressed some doubt as to whether lawyers representing the students could show that Mr. Musk’s team had injured students by wrongly accessing their data because it was unclear if someone on Mr. Musk’s team was a worker as an employee of the department.

“Here you are dealing with people who at least seem to be in some form, even though I don’t really know, and I don’t have an administrative listing,” said Judge Moss.

Mr. Musk’s team, part of the so -called Department of Government Efficiency, has been working in the education department for more than a week. Team members were added to the agency’s staff catalog and have worked from the top floor of its main building in Washington.

President Trump’s appointed has told the employees of the education department that Mr. Musk’s team will investigate the agency’s budget and operation. They warned various offices in the education department to expect some upheaval in connection with the review, according to recordings obtained by the New York Times.

A lawyer for the Ministry of Justice said on Tuesday that the team, litigation case, had not been informed of whether members of Mr. Musk’s team had “actual access” to sensitive students’ information, such as tax return information, social security number or income data.

“What are they doing in that system? Why should they be in this system? “Judge Moss said. “There is not much clarity about what the DODE employees are doing.”