Department of Education contract cuts spur 'chaos and confusion'
More than a billion dollars of government contracts at the Department of Education has been cut, a move the Trump administration argues gets rid of “woke” wasteful spending as others sound the alarm on educational research and learning outcomes for students.
Most of the cuts happened to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which focuses on research and how schools can operate and teach kids better. In addition, on Monday, the department announced $600 million in cuts to what it called “divisive” teacher training grants.
“It's devastating for, well, certainly the education research and development community. In my work, we do a fair amount of projects with education researchers, people who innovate and create new educational tools, and we are hearing from that community that this is just chaos and confusion,” said Tasha Hensley, policy director for the Learning Agency, an education research group.
The cuts began on Feb. 11 at the IES, which administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress and focuses on education research.
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said on social media platform X the Education Department cancelled “89 contracts worth $881mm” and “29 DEI training grants totaling $101mm.”
Another round of more than $350 million of cuts to the IES came on Thursday with 10 contracts terminated to several Regional Educational Laboratories and Equity Assistance Centers.
The department said while the programs were suppose to be for education research a “review of the contracts uncovered wasteful and ideologically driven spending not in the interest of students and taxpayers.”
“For example, the Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest has been advising schools in Ohio to undertake 'equity audits' and equity conversations,” the department said.
But advocates say babies are getting thrown out with the bathwater.
“The federal contracts that we're seeing cut often fund large-scale studies, some of which are longitudinal, that really allow for researchers like myself and colleagues that I know to examine how our schools and districts are doing and supporting students,” said Alyn Turner, senior research director of Research for Action.
“So cutting funding for those studies directly impacts our ability to understand what works for schools and students,” she added.
The concerns come as the recent Nation’s Report Card showed fourth and eighth graders are still struggling in reading and math, with the gaps between high achieving and low achieving students growing.
A local report from FXBG Advance in Virginia found funding cuts have affected programs such as Charting My Path for Future Success, which help students with disabilities.
The report says Spotsylvania County Public Schools had to stop work with the program due to the cuts, which the superintendent said will affect 91 students and cut the salaries of five teachers.
“Education research and the work undertaken by these contracts is essential to the success and well being of students, families and educators. The impact is not abstract of what was canceled. It has real life impacts today in the classroom, for students right now and for teachers. This wasn't waste — this was really important work to help American students and families,” said Rachel Dinkes, president and CEO of Knowledge Alliance.
It is difficult to tract what all is affected by the cancellations due to what critics call a lack of transparency from the department, as well as the general flood of actions from the Trump administration.
“It's been a piece-together process,” said Felice Levine, executive director of American Education Research Association, adding her group discovered contract cuts relating to data collection for Common Core and private school surveys. “It's hard to get a grip on what is proceeding and what isn't.”
The Hill has reached out to the Department of Education for comment.
The higher education community is also unsure how to move forward and what President Trump's moves mean for their institutions.
"It's challenging for institutions to be able to figure out what this truly all means for them as it relates to compliance, because at the end of the day, they simply want to make sure that they are in compliance. That's what they want to make sure that they are because they're in a business of educating students,” said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education.
After the cuts to the Regional Education Laboratories, the Education Department said it “plans to enter into new contracts that will satisfy the statutory requirements, improve student learning, and better serve school districts, State Departments of Education, and other education stakeholders.”
Mark Schneider, former director of IES and longtime education official, believes some of the cuts were necessary and that many of the contracts will eventually be renewed, he said in a conversation with organization Bellwether.
Schneider, who started under the first Trump administration and stayed for most of former President Biden’s term, said with all the work he put into trying to get reforms through he is a “little envious” of the quick changes.
But while some of these cancellations may only be temporary, others fear that the longer it takes to renew the contracts, the bigger the consequences will be.
“It's loss of information that is routinely” gathered, Levine said. “The longer that this goes on, the higher the casualty” and “disruption of essentially the data infrastructure in education, from early child care through including some workforce data and certainly higher education.”
Schools will have to be vigilant over not just in cuts at the Education Department but other agencies that have been targeted by DOGE.
The National Institutes of Health made cuts to research institutions the agency says will save about $4 billion every year.
In a post on X, NIH said schools were allowed to use some funding from the group to cover administrative overhead, which was referred to as “indirect costs.” Harvard University had an indirect rate of 69 percent, it said, while Yale had a 67.5 percent indirect rate.
NIH said for all schools now only 15 percent can go to indirect rates, or administrative overhead.
“The administration's proposal, which targets the facilities and administrative costs component of funding for research, would have widespread impact because of the funding or because of the way that the facilities and administrative costs are used,” said Elena Fuentes-Afflick, chief scientific officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges.
“Institutions have created the necessary infrastructure or research over decades by partnering with NIH to support all the various elements that are needed,” such as hazardous waste management, Fuentes-Afflick said.
“You don't build that resource for an individual project. It is an institutional resource, and so each project supports a component of that through the facilities and administrative costs. This is the structure that the NIH has used for decades, and we know that the impact of NIH funded research has touched virtually every American families by advances in cancer treatment in Alzheimer's childhood diseases, the impact of what NIH has funded is truly magnificent and impactful, and that is why we are concerned about the proposed reduction in the facilities and administrative cost component,” she added.
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