Federal Education Data Capacity Collapsed Under Trump-Era Cuts; Experts Propose Overhaul

The useful part

Federal education data-gathering, like the Condition of Education report, includes baseline information on students and schools. Cuts to the Education Department's statistics wings and mounting criticism of how it operates raise questions about how it can best fulfill its mission. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics too unstable to adapt on its own.

How it works

• While a few staff positions have since been resurrected, many longstanding NCES data collections and partnerships have stopped.
• The most recent data for district enrollment, for example, dates to 2024, while data on teacher-student ratios and school crime and discipline have not been updated since 2022.
• ASA policy researchers Martinez and Stephen Provasnik, former NCES deputy commissioner, discussed with Education Week why simply restoring budget and staff would do little to fix national data systems that...
• Education data is infrastructure that people just take for granted that it normally works.
• For a long time, NCES has been the go-to place to fix problems like, "Oh, we don't have a consistent definition of this," or, "we don't have a way of handling this data-quality issue that we're seeing...

What to take from it

We think that connections to [other] statistical systems is key to this modernization because that's where you're going to get other experts in methodologies and improvements in techniques. We also recognize that those are the moments when sometimes innovations and things are more possible because … it's a good opportunity for some of the creative, innovative ideas to spring forth. "NCES is doing a valiant effort to keep all the oars in the water with a very tiny team right now," said Shelley Martinez, co-author of the ASA report and former executive director of the U.S.

Example or evidence

• How much of modernizing education statistics is dependent on Congress changing education research law?
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• Statistics are like roads and bridges that people drive on every day and don't think about much—unless there's a bridge collapse.

Details worth keeping

Education Data Collection Has Cratered Under Trump. Charlie Riedel/AP Share article Remove Save to favorites Save to favorites Print Email Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Copy URL The nation's education data agency needs major changes to meet rapidly changing information needs, but years of staff and budget cuts have left the U.S. around a common vision and strategy." The group has called for NCES to take more of a "curating" role in cleaning and maintaining data across federal, state, local, and private education sources, as well as ensuring that data is handled safely and ethically and is more useful to state and local practitioners.

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