Education Department Reinstates Some Research and Data Activities

Education researchers, who are suing the Trump administration to restore all of its previous research and statistical activities, were not satisfied.

Elizabeth Tipton, president of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) said the limited reinstatement is “upsetting.” “They’re trying to make IES as small as they possibly can,” she said, referring to the Institute of Education Sciences, the department’s research and data arm. 

SREE and the American Educational Research Association (AERA) are suing McMahon and the Education Department in the Maryland case. The suit asks for a temporary reinstatement of all the contracts and the rehiring of IES employees while the courts adjudicate the broader constitutional issue of whether the Trump administration violated congressional statutes and exceeded its executive authority.

The 20 reinstatements were not ordered by the court, and in some instances, the Education Department is voluntarily restarting only a small slice of a research activity, making it impossible to produce anything meaningful for the public. For example, the department said it is reinstating a contract for operating the What Works Clearinghouse, a website that informs schools about evidence-based teaching practices. But, in the legal brief, the department disclosed that it is not planning to reinstate any of the contracts to produce new content for the site. 

In the brief, the administration admitted that congressional statues mention a range of research and data collection activities. But the lawyers argued that the legislative language often uses the word may instead of must, or notes that evaluations of education programs should be done “as time and resources allow.” 

“Read together, the Department has wide discretion in whether and which evaluations to undertake,” the administration lawyers wrote. 

The Trump administration argued that as long as it has at least one contract in place, it is technically fulfilling a congressional mandate. For example, Congress requires that the Education Department participate in international assessments. That is why it is now restarting the contract to administer the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), but not other international assessments that the country has participated in, such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

The administration argued that researchers didn’t make a compelling case that they would be irreparably harmed if many contracts were not restarted. “There is no harm alleged from not having access to as-yet uncreated data,” the lawyers wrote.

One of the terminated contracts was supposed to help state education agencies create longitudinal data systems for tracking students from pre-K to the workforce. The department’s brief says that states, not professional associations of researchers, should sue to restore those contracts. 

In six instances, the administration said it was evaluating whether to restart a study. For example, the legal brief says that because Congress requires the evaluation of literacy programs, the department is considering a reinstatement of a study of the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program. But lawyers said there was no urgency to restart it because there is no deadline for evaluations in the legislative language.

In four other instances, the Trump administration said it wasn’t feasible to restart a study, despite congressional requirements. For example, Congress mandates that the Education Department identify and evaluate promising adult education strategies. But after terminating such a study in February, the Education Department admitted that it is now too difficult to restart it. The department also said it could not easily restart two studies of math curricula in low-performing schools. One of the studies called for the math program to be implemented in the first year and studied in the second year, which made it especially difficult to restart. A fourth study the department said it could not restart would have evaluated the effectiveness of extra services to help teens with disabilities transition from high school to college or work. When DOGE pulled the plug on that study, those teens lost those services too.