Mass Layoffs at NCES: What Lies Ahead for the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the U.S.?

The Trump administration has nearly eliminated the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the statistical research agency within the U.S. Department of Education, leaving only a handful of employees who lack the departmental support needed to analyze education data. The action occurred during the mass layoffs on March 11, which reduced the Department of Education's overall workforce by nearly half.

An employee who worked at NCES for over a decade and requested anonymity for fear of affecting severance terms said: "They didn't just cut a few people; they essentially deleted the entire agency." The employee participated inthe mass layoffs on March 11。

The layoffs resulted in more than a hundred employees leaving the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), including nearly all NCES staff. NCES traces its history back to an 1867 law that established a federal statistical agency responsible for collecting, analyzing, and reporting education data. The center has long undertaken research and analysis on everything from graduation rates and student outcomes to teacher and principal development.

Overall, NCES research tracked the state of education across the nation, including gaps in academic achievement and resource access for disadvantaged students. During the pandemic, the agency conducted in-depth analyses of school resources and trends in the mental health of educators and students.

Critically, NCES oversaw and safeguarded the quality of the Nation's Report Card and other key studies of student outcomes. School and college leaders rely on these studies to improve student performance, and their findings often inform funding decisions by federal and state policymakers.

Now, those affected by the layoffs warn that the arbitrary nature of the cuts will lead to a decline in the quality of the assessments and data overseen by NCES. Several long-serving NCES employees reported being fired without notice and suddenly losing access to years or decades of work, with no instructions on how to hand over responsibilities to preserve and transmit critical information.

Another former NCES employee who had been closely involved in the Nation's Report Card said: "A vast amount of institutional knowledge will be lost." This employee and others interviewed requested anonymity, fearing that revealing their identities could affect their severance terms.

NAEP and international assessment staff affected

Although nearly all NCES employees have left, many of the functions the agency previously carried out are mandated by Congress and must still be performed, including parts of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card.

Statutorily required components include reading and mathematics assessments for fourth and eighth grades, long-term trend assessments for 9-, 13-, and 17-year-olds, and twelfth-grade reading and mathematics assessments. The long-term assessment for 17-year-olds was last administered in 2012, was canceled due to the pandemic, and was again not administered this spring due to what the Department of Education cited as funding issues.

Other parts of the federal tests, such as science, U.S. history, and civics, are optional.

This federally mandated assessment has long served as a benchmark for measuring student performance across subjects, especially in reading and mathematics. After the pandemic, it helped educators understand the subject areas where students struggled most during and after school closures.

"Despite spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars annually, IES has failed to effectively fulfill its mission of identifying best practices and new methods to improve educational outcomes and close student achievement gaps."

— Madi Biedermann, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications at the U.S. Department of Education

Congress also requires international comparisons of student performance, a requirement typically fulfilled by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The latest round of PISA testing was scheduled to begin by the end of March. Additionally, the main NAEP assessments for grades 4, 8, and 12 were scheduled to begin early next year, with preparation work supposed to start this summer, according to former NCES employees.

In an email statement sent to sister publication Higher Education Dive on March 13, the Department of Education said: "IES employees affected by the layoffs were not conducting any research related to NAEP, College Scorecard, and IPEDS." Madi Biedermann, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications at the Department of Education, said in the statement: "All of this work is done through contracts, which the Department continues to maintain."

Some laid-off employees said that aspart of the $900 million federal contract cutsNCES contracts that were terminated have been partially restored. Just before being fired, employees were busy rebuilding the contractual relationships and systems needed to carry out certain statutory assessments.

Laid-off employees disputed the Department's claim that those dismissed "were not conducting any NAEP-related research." They said employees were tasked with ensuring the quality of data collection and post-collection analysis. In other words, some statutory assessment contracts had been canceled and then restored, and NCES employees were in the process of rebuilding—when they were fired and blocked from accessing the technical systems they believed were necessary to transfer knowledge and maintain assessment quality.

One former employee interviewed described the current situation as "chaotic" and said the few remaining staff were "overwhelmed." An employee who had worked on NAEP said: "This is not sustainable. The Nation's Report Card will no longer be the gold standard it once was."

Department restructuring imminent

The administration sees things differently. Biedermann said in an email statement: "Despite spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars annually, IES has failed to effectively fulfill its mission of identifying best practices and new methods to improve educational outcomes and close student achievement gaps." She added that the administration plans to restructure IES in the coming months, "with input from existing leadership and expert stakeholders, to make the agency more useful to states in improving student outcomes while maintaining rigorous scientific integrity and cost-effectiveness."

Peggy Carr, one of NCES's long-time leaders, was appointed NCES Commissioner by the Biden administration in 2021, after serving as Deputy Commissioner for Assessment for over two decades. In recent years, Carr has been the primary spokesperson for the Nation's Report Card. In February, ahead of the Trump administration's layoffs, Carr was placed on administrative leave. According to an organizational chart provided by the Department of Education to AFGE Local 252, the union representing most laid-off employees, before the March 11 layoffs, her position remained within the department. The chart showed retained positions and closed divisions. The Department of Education and its human resources office did not respond to multiple inquiries from K-12 Dive about Carr's employment status.

Before the layoffs nearly emptied her division, Carr was leading efforts to modernize NAEP, including remote proctoring and administration accelerated by the pandemic. The Department of Education had field-tested online administration over the past few years and planned to implement remote administration of the assessment by 2026. Such a transition requires bridging studies (allowing comparisons between old assessment results and new test versions) and analysis, work that needed to be overseen by now-dismissed NCES employees, NCES assessment experts said.

An NCES employee familiar with NAEP said: "As far as I know, they've cut that part out because the new administration wants to do only the minimum. I think they want to simplify everything to the bare minimum."

"Everyone relies on NAEP data"

In a March 14 letter to education stakeholders, the Department of Education said: "These cuts are a strategic realignment of offices and programs that will not directly affect students and families, but rather empower states and localities." However, educators and researchers disagree and are shocked by the halving of the Department's workforce and the near-total elimination of NCES.

The National Council on Teacher Quality—whose members include district and state policymakers and former teachers—warned that due to the federal layoffs, states "may weaken or abandon commitments to maintaining high standards for student learning and outcome accountability." In a statement after the March 11 layoffs, the council said: "Without NAEP, we will not know whether children in Massachusetts are performing to the standards of children in Mississippi." The council also expressed concern about the loss of NCES research on the teacher workforce, which states rely on to identify supply and demand.

"Publishing objective data is our own quiet act of patriotism."

— Laid-off NCES employee

Before the March 11 layoffs, former Education Secretaries William Bennett (who served under President Ronald Reagan) and Chester Finn (who served as Assistant Secretary in the Reagan administration) emphasized the importance of NAEP in an open letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Both are conservatives who served under a Republican president who also sought to eliminate the Department of Education. They wrote that the assessment remains the Department's "single most important activity," serving as "our primary gauge of the condition of American education, both nationally and in the states to which you seek to return control." Nevertheless, they condemned any move to cancel the Nation's Report Card, NCES's flagship product. They told McMahon: "You cited NAEP data at your confirmation hearing," and Trump "often cites these data when referring to the shortcomings of American schools." Bennett and Finn said: "Everyone relies on NAEP data, and its governing board's standards have become the yardstick by which states measure whether their own standards are rigorous."

Part of the reason is that many—including NCES employees themselves—were surprised: the statistical center and its data have long been viewed as a nonpartisan, critical source of information that administrations of all stripes could use to measure whether their policies were working. One laid-off employee said: "No matter which side you're on, this is absolutely necessary. Publishing objective data is our own quiet act of patriotism."