NCES Layoff Storm: What Lies Ahead for the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the United States?

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, and those who remain have no departmental colleagues left to help analyze education data.

"They didn't just cut a few people; they essentially deleted the entire agency," said one employee who worked at NCES for over a decade and was among those laid off in the mass reduction on March 11.

The cuts involved more than 100 employees at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), including nearly all NCES staff, as part of a broader effort to reduce the Department of Education to half its original workforce. NCES traces its history back to an 1867 law that established a federal statistical agency to collect, analyze, and report education data, covering research and analysis on everything from graduation rates and student outcomes to teacher and principal development.

Overall, NCES research tracked the condition of education nationwide, including gaps in academic achievement and resources for disadvantaged students. During the pandemic, the agency closely analyzed trends in school resources and the mental health of educators and students.

Critically, NCES oversaw and safeguarded the quality of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, commonly known as the "Nation's Report Card") and other key studies of student outcomes. School and college leaders rely on such research to improve student performance, and its findings often inform federal and state policymakers' funding decisions.

Now, those affected by the latest round of government cuts warn that the disorderly nature of the layoffs will lead to a decline in the quality of the assessments and data overseen by NCES. Long-serving NCES employees report being fired without notice and suddenly losing access to years or even decades of work, with no communication from the government on how to transition to preserve and pass on critical information.

"A tremendous amount of institutional knowledge will be lost," said another former NCES employee who had been closely involved in the Nation's Report Card work. This employee and others interviewed by K-12 Dive spoke on condition of 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 functions previously carried out by NCES are mandated by Congress and must still be performed, including parts of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Statutorily required components include: reading and mathematics assessments for grades 4 and 8, long-term trend assessments for students ages 9, 13, and 17, and reading and mathematics assessments for grade 12. The long-term assessment for 17-year-olds was last administered in 2012, was canceled due to the pandemic, and was not conducted this spring due to what the Department of Education cited as funding issues.

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

This federally mandated assessment is often used as a yardstick to measure student performance across subjects, especially 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 carry out its mission of identifying best practices and new approaches 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 comparing student performance internationally, a requirement typically met through the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The latest round of PISA testing was scheduled to begin at 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 originally slated to start this summer, according to former NCES employees.

In an email statement sent to sister publication Higher Ed Dive on March 13, the Department of Education said: "IES employees affected by the reductions were not conducting any research related to NAEP, College Scorecard, and IPEDS." Madi Biedermann, the department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications, said in the statement: "This work is all done through contracts, and those contracts remain in place with the Department of Education."

Some laid-off employees revealed that NCES contracts terminated as part of a $900 million cut to federal contracts have been partially restored. Just before they were fired, employees were busy rebuilding contract relationships and systems to carry out some congressionally mandated assessments.

Laid-off employees disputed the Department of Education's claim that those cut were "not conducting any research related to NAEP." They said employees were responsible for ensuring the quality of research collection and post-collection analysis.

This means: contracts for some necessary assessments were canceled, then restored, and then re-established by NCES employees—who were subsequently laid off and blocked from accessing the technical systems they believed they needed to transfer knowledge to maintain assessment quality.

One former employee who spoke with K-12 Dive described the situation as "chaotic" and said the few remaining staff are "overwhelmed." "It cannot operate in its current state," said this employee, who had worked on NAEP. "The Nation's Report Card will no longer be the gold standard it once was."

Department restructuring ahead

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 carry out its mission of identifying best practices and new approaches to improve educational outcomes and close student achievement gaps."

Biedermann said the administration plans to restructure IES in the coming months, "with input from existing leadership and expert stakeholders, to make the institute more useful to states in providing data to improve 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, having previously served as Deputy Commissioner for Assessment for over two decades. In recent years, Carr has been the primary spokesperson for the Nation's Report Card.

Ahead of the Trump administration's layoffs, Carr was placed on administrative leave in February. According to an organizational chart provided by the Department of Education on March 11 (the eve of the layoffs) to AFGE Local 252, the union representing most laid-off employees, her position remained within the department. The chart showed retained positions and closed offices.

The Department of Education and its human resources office did not respond to K-12 Dive's multiple inquiries about Carr's employment status.

Following Linda McMahon's Senate confirmation on March 3, the Department of Education experienced massive staff and contract cuts, including pushing the National Center for Education Statistics to near extinction.

Image credit: Win McNamee via Getty Images

Before the layoffs that affected nearly the entire department, Carr was leading the modernization of 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 remotely administer the assessment by 2026.

NCES assessment experts had said this transition would require bridging studies (allowing comparisons between older assessment results and newer versions) and analysis, work overseen by the now-laid-off NCES employees.

"From what I understand, they cut these because the new administration wants to do the bare minimum," said the NCES employee familiar with NAEP. "I think they want to simplify everything to the extreme."

"Everyone relies on NAEP data"

In a March 14 letter to education stakeholders, the Department of Education said: "These reductions are a strategic realignment of offices and programs that will not directly impact students and families, but rather empower states and localities."

However, educators and researchers disagree with the Department of Education and are shocked by the halving of the department's staff 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 federal layoffs, states "may weaken or abandon commitments to high standards for student learning and outcomes accountability." "Without NAEP, we will have no way of knowing whether a child in Massachusetts is meeting the same performance standards as a child in Mississippi," the council said in a statement after the March 11 layoffs. 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 Secretary William Bennett (who served under President Ronald Reagan) and Chester Finn (who served as assistant secretary under Reagan) highlighted the importance of NAEP in an open letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Both are conservatives who served under a Republican president who also wanted to eliminate the Department of Education.

They wrote that the assessment remains "the single most important activity of the department," serving as "our primary yardstick for understanding the condition of American education, both nationally and in the states to which you seek to return control." Nevertheless, they condemned any move to abolish NCES's flagship product, the Nation's Report Card. "You mentioned NAEP data at your confirmation hearing," they said to McMahon, and Trump "often cites these data when referring to the shortcomings of American schools." "Everyone relies on NAEP data, and the standards of its governing board have become the benchmark by which states measure whether their own standards are rigorous," Bennett and Finn said.

This has, to some extent, surprised many—including NCES employees themselves: the statistical center and its data have long been viewed as a nonpartisan source of critical information that administrations can use to measure whether their policies are working. "No matter which side you're on, this is absolutely essential," said one laid-off employee. "Publishing objective data is our own quiet act of patriotism."