A virtual wrecking ball took aim last Monday at the relatively small, wonky corner of the Department of Education that I write about every week: evaluation studies and data collection. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) posted on X that it had terminated 89 of these contracts worth $881 million.
These particular cuts stunned people involved in education research because they didn’t go after “woke” studies about equity, diversity or “culturally relevant pedagogy” — all more obvious targets of the new administration.
Instead, researchers described the canceled projects at the department’s Institute of Education Sciences as rigorous evaluations of how the federal government spends education dollars, efforts to improve the reading and math skills of U.S. students and guides for teachers on evidence-based methods of instruction. Many of the projects were near completion and had mostly been paid out, which means that the implied savings are likely much less than $881 million touted by DOGE.
DOGE also terminated masses of census-like data collections that are used to track student trends and help schools make informed decisions. U.S. participation in international assessments was also canceled. Without those data points and results, it may be impossible to tell how well students are doing.
The 89 cancelled contracts were signed with private research firms and nonprofits. The Institute of Education Sciences has a rather small in-house staff and relies on outside contractors to conduct much of its work. And unlike most agreements between private parties, the federal government can terminate these contracts for any reason, such as shifting policy priorities.
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The cuts kept coming. Late Thursday, the Education Department announced that it had terminated an additional 10 research and technical assistance contracts with its regional education laboratories totaling $336 million. In this case, the administration said it was targeting ideologically driven spending, such as a project advising schools in Ohio to conduct “equity audits.”
Federal grants to university researchers were largely unaffected in the cuts announced Monday, though some professors served as advisers or subcontractors on the terminated contracts with private research organizations. University of Texas education professor Sarah Powell said the American Institutes for Research told her to cease working on two guides for math teachers on evidence-based ways to teach STEM topics, referring to science, technology, engineering and math. Another guide for teachers on evidence-based ways to combat student absenteeism was also killed. Without these guides, it can be difficult for educators to know which research to trust.
In an interview with ProPublica, a Department of Education spokeswoman described the terminated contracts as examples of “waste, fraud and abuse.” On X, the Education Department shared three examples of wasteful expenses that had been cut: $3 million for a report to show that prior reports were not utilized, $4.6 million to coordinate Zoom and in-person meetings, and a $1.5 million contract to observe mailing and clerical operations. But neither DOGE, which claimed to be conducting its work with full transparency, nor the Education Department identified which contracts contained these expenses, nor did they release a complete list of the canceled contracts.
The scope of the cuts was unclear to many researchers. An unverified spreadsheet of the canceled contracts circulated on X. It was posted by a journalist at Crooked Media, founded by former speechwriters and communications officials in the Obama administration. The journalist, Matt Berg, said he had obtained it from a senior career employee at the Education Department and he believed the list was drafted by DOGE. Several former Education Department officials recognized the contracts and told me the list, if not the dollar totals, appears to be accurate.
Rachel Dinkes, head of the Knowledge Alliance, which advocates for research organizations that receive federal funding such as Mathematica and American Institutes for Research, said her organization had verified from its members that at least 56 of the 89 contracts on the spreadsheet had indeed been canceled. As of late last week, she was still working to confirm the remainder of the list.
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Among the cancellations was an 11-year study of youths with disabilities, which Dinkes said was halfway finished. It was supposed to identify which programs were effective in improving employment and educational outcomes for these students after high school. More than 1,000 youths with disabilities were supposed to receive special instruction and support in 2025 and 2026 through this study, which has now been terminated.
During confirmation hearings last week for secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said her office heard from a former teacher in her state who had been using one of the terminated grants to develop a tutoring program. “Considering the poor reading and math scores … shouldn’t the Department of Education continue to collect the data and evaluate outcomes rather than to halt these activities so that you can help states know what works well?” McMahon sidestepped the question, saying she will “assess these programs” if she is confirmed.
Contracts to administer the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a test mandated by Congress that tracks student achievement, were not directly terminated. But Mark Schneider, a former director of the Institute of Education Sciences that oversees these research and data contracts, explained that other K-12 data collections that NAEP relies on were cut. Statisticians cannot create nationally representative samples of students to take the NAEP test without data on student demographics.
A separate collection of data from colleges and universities, called the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, was spared from the cuts, Dinkes said, as was the College Scorecard, which tracks whether students are finding good paying jobs after graduation.
I talked with more than 20 researchers, most of whom asked me to keep their identity anonymous for fear of retribution from the Trump administration. Some only communicated with me through encrypted channels and refused to email or talk by phone.
Based on these interviews, it seems unlikely that taxpayers will reap $881 million in savings from the cancellations. Multiyear contracts are paid out over time and in many cases, much of the money has already been disbursed. When I looked up the contract numbers online, they were sometimes much smaller than what the unverified DOGE spreadsheet listed. For example, one contract listed for $19 million was actually $14 million. Six years of the seven-year contract have already elapsed and most of the contract amount has presumably been paid out.
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Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office last week, DOGE head Elon Musk admitted that his team would make mistakes. “We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we’ll also fix the mistakes very quickly,” Musk said.
However, researchers explained to me that it would not be easy to restart any of these contracts. Some said the government would have to launch a new competitive bidding process and sign fresh contracts. Moreover, student privacy protections might prevent researchers from preserving the years of research work that has already been completed.
“A lot of these contracts have data deletion clauses,” a researcher told me. “The fact is that they won’t be able to reopen them if they change their mind. They’re not just paused. They’re terminated and we’re losing the information.”
The clock is now ticking. Researchers said they have 30 days from the date of cancellation to wind down projects. As they scramble to complete that unexpected task, they also described another time-consuming chore: replacing the word “gender” with “sex” in every one of their government contracts that have not been canceled, as per a White House directive. The modification requires legal review and is adding to overhead expenses. “It’s ironic,” one researcher said. “They’re calling themselves the Department of Government Efficiency. But they’re just wasting money.”
Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
This story about DOGE’s cuts to education research was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.