Layoffs Gut Federal Education Research Agency
Posted by Inside Higher Ed on March 18, 2025
Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic first forced schools and colleges into remote learning, researchers, policymakers and higher education leaders may no longer have access to the federal data they need to gather a complete picture of how those disruptions have affected a generation of students long term—or hold states and colleges accountable for the interventions they deployed to address the fallout.
That’s because the National Center for Education Statistics, the Education Department’s data-collection arm that’s administered surveys and studies about the state of K-12, higher education and the workforce since 1867, is suddenly a shell of itself.
As of this week, the NCES is down to five employees after the department fired nearly half its staff earlier this week. The broader Institute of Education Sciences, which houses NCES, also lost more than 100 employees as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to eliminate alleged “waste, fraud and abuse” in federal funding.
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