Federal data collection and reporting provide essential insights into student performance and the practices that drive student success, enabling educators and policymakers to make informed decisions. As the federal government’s longest-running education functions, these efforts are widely recognized as an appropriate and valuable use of national resources, even by those most skeptical of a federal role in K-12 education.

Yet they were not spared in the “final mission” to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Administration officials cut almost $1 billion in research mandated by Congress and laid off 90% of the staff at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the office in charge of overseeing this important work, in just its first year. These reductions were not tweaks around the margins. They’ve left IES unable to carry out much of its critical work.

In late February, the department released a long-awaited report, “Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences,” which outlines a series of largely recycled recommendations to improve the Department of Education’s data and research functions. Given the scale and pace of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education, many feared these proposals would go far beyond what is necessary — or even legal. There was also real concern that the administration would propose selling IES for parts, as it is illegally doing with other areas of the Department. Instead, the report acknowledges that while IES has its flaws (which is not surprising), it should be preserved with a narrower, more focused mission.

However, the president’s FY27 budget request — which is a statement of values — tells a different story. The proposal, like last year’s, would fund IES at $261 million — roughly one-third of its historical funding level. These repeated proposals to underinvest in IES make clear that the administration does not value education data and research, despite its own report advocating to mend, not end, IES. The president’s budget request raises serious questions about whether “reimagining” IES is truly a priority for the administration. It also comes at a time when the administration is freely spending billions on other priorities while stripping essential resources from public education in the U.S.

A closer look at the FY27 request shows that it does not support an IES capable of producing more relevant, timely, or useful data and evidence. Instead, it enshrines dysfunction and undermines areas of work that Congress has long deemed essential — work that improves educational opportunities, experiences, and outcomes for all students in the U.S., especially underserved students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, and multilingual learners. So, what does President Trump’s FY27 budget request tell us about how much — or how little — this administration values IES and our nation’s students?

• Research, development, and dissemination — one of IES’s core functions — would receive just $40 million, about 16% of historical funding levels. A cut of this magnitude cannot support a strategic shift to “a more efficient, effective, and useful IES.” It undermines it. This level of disinvestment jeopardizes the kind of rigorous research that enabled the “Mississippi Miracle,” makes sustained long-term research agendas impossible, and deepens the chaos the administration has already brought to IES. No other entity — federal or state agency, higher education institution, or private foundation — has the capacity to support and conduct education research, evaluation, and dissemination at this scale.
• Collecting and reporting statistics, the federal government’s longest-standing role in education, would be funded at $42 million, about one-third of historical levels. This request for such a deep cut is concerning, especially since, in 2025, it failed to issue its annual “Report on the Condition of Education” by the June 1st deadline — one of the few formal reporting deadlines it must meet. With such diminished capacity, these kinds of delays and other data quality concerns are likely to become the norm rather than the exception.
• Regional educational laboratories (RELs) and Comprehensive Centers (CCs) would be eliminated in the president’s budget, dismantling core federal infrastructure that helps states and districts identify and implement evidence-based practices to improve student outcomes. This proposal not only ignores federal law requiring the Department of Education to maintain the REL and CC systems, but also contradicts the “Reimaging IES” report, which calls for strengthening, not eliminating, these functions through clearer roles and closer collaboration.
• Special education research and evaluation would be funded at $12 million, about 15% of historical funding levels. This sharp reduction stands in stark contrast to the “Reimagining IES” report’s recognition that federal special education research has helped to dramatically improve outcomes for students with disabilities over the past 20 years. It also contradicts key recommendations from the report to (1) develop ways to evaluate the quality of AI tools that support students with disabilities and (2) strengthen cross-agency collaboration among education, health, and social service agencies to better address the needs of children with disabilities.
• The Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) grant program would be eliminated, ending 20 years of federal support for state data infrastructure that informs decision-making. Without this funding, states would lose the capacity to track critical outcomes over time, such as whether students reading on grade level in third grade go on to graduate high school. This proposal runs counter to the “Reimagining IES” report recommendations to upgrade and modernize states’ SLDS infrastructure, improve interoperability among states, and enhance technical assistance for SLDS grantees.
• The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the system of national exams that provides crucial data for the biennial “Nation’s Report Card,” faced the least severe cuts among major IES activities. Still, the proposed $137 million funding level represents just 71% of historical levels, despite the “Reimagining IES” report acknowledging that NAEP is IES’s most important activity.

Across many line items, the pattern is the same: rhetorical support for more useful research and data is paired with budgets that slash the funding needed to produce it. Even if federal policymakers were inclined to adopt the administration’s vision for IES reform, the agency no longer has the staffing capacity required to implement it.

What is at stake is not merely the future of a single federal office. The ongoing dismantling of IES jeopardizes the nation’s ability to answer basic questions about how students are faring, which policies are effective, and how educators can improve outcomes — especially for students historically underserved by the education system. Reimagining IES without rebuilding its capacity is not reform. It is abdication.

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