Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, speaks about the testing program known as “The Nation’s Report Card” during a 2022 interview.
Alex Brandon/AP
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Alex Brandon/AP
The federal official who leads one of the country’s most extensive student testing programs, known as The Nation’s Report Card, was placed on administrative leave by the Trump administration Monday.
Peggy Carr was appointed to her position as Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics in 2021 by President Joe Biden. Previously, she had been a career employee there for more than two decades. The Education Department’s press office confirmed her leave but did not provide any reason in a request for more information.
The NCES collects and reports data on many different elements of education, but is best known for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, the gold standard in assessments of student achievement. Known as The Nation’s Report Card, The data provides insights on how K-12 students are faring in core subjects including math and reading. The exam was mandated by Congress and is the largest nationally representative test of student learning, having first been administered in 1969.
The latest data from the NAEP tests, released in January, showed U.S. fourth and eighth graders in 2024 performing below pre-pandemic levels in reading and math.
NAEP classifies students at one of three skill levels: advanced, proficient, or the lowest, basic. According to the results, the share of eighth-graders reading below NAEP’s basic standard “was the largest in the assessment’s history.” Not only that, but the worst-performing readers in 2024 scored “lower than our lower performers did 30 years ago for fourth and eighth grade. That’s how low these scores historically have dropped,” Carr told NPR last month.
The White House told several media outlets, including NPR, that the results were unacceptable and a major cause for concern.
In February, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency essentially shut down the federal research agency that oversees NCES and other programs that track the progress of America’s students, canceling almost $900 million in ongoing research contracts.
However, according to Education Department employees NPR spoke with, NAEP was supposed to be preserved.