Can federal education research be "reimagined"?

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It was a move that stunned many in the world of education research. Nearly a year ago, the sleepy, wonky, somewhat obscure research arm of the Education Department was rapidly decimated by Elon Musk’s DOGE. The Institute of Education Sciences, or IES, saw a slew of research contracts canceled and most of its staff laid off.

IES had for two decades funded research, collected basic data on schools, produced guides on “what works” in education, and run the national testing program. You may not know much about IES, but you’ve likely encountered its data. 

In the year since the DOGE decimation, parts of IES have been restored and recently the administration released a report with recommendations on “reimagining” its work. The report was authored by Amber Northern, who took on a temporary role with the Education Department and whose day job is as vice president for research at the Fordham Institute, a center-right education think tank. 

The lengthy report features a combination of high-level ideas (like making research more accessible and actionable) and wonkily detailed recommendations (like improving procurement processes). It also offered a staunch defense of the value of federally funded research. 

Northern’s analysis has drawn a range of reactions. “The problem isn’t the report’s recommendations. Many are sensible,” wrote Betsy Wolf, who lost her job at IES in last year’s cuts. “The problem is the suggestion that dismantling IES was necessary to implement them.” Some of these ideas were already being put in place, she said.

For its part, the Trump administration has greeted the report somewhat guardedly. A press release said “the Department looks forward to considering the recommendations.” Ellen Keast, a spokesperson, added that while previously IES had “failed to effectively fulfill its mandate … the Department is working to ensure that the Institute is providing states with useful data.”

Important context, of course, is that the Trump administration is currently dismantling the Education Department, although it has promised to preserve many of its programs. 

I wanted to speak with Northern — who still is on a part-time contract with the Education Department — about her thoughts on the value of IES, her ideas for making it stronger, and whether that’s likely to happen in the current environment.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Did the department leadership put any constraints on what you could write or recommend? 

No. When I was originally approached about this I wanted to be assured that the administration was really serious about rebuilding IES. I even asked if I could have a conversation with the secretary, and I was able to speak to her to get that assurance.

After the DOGE cuts, there was some discussion of whether IES has been producing anything of meaningful value. What was your takeaway on that?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, my goodness, a lot of the science of reading that we've come to know and love has its roots in the work that IES has been funding for over 20 years. Same can be said for CTE and pathways. It's been around so long, and it's been funding so many good, rigorous research studies.

You have a recommendation that IES should prioritize multi-state research awards to “help scale the most promising” policies and practices. What does that mean?

We have a scaling problem in the country. Even with the “Mississippi miracle” you can't just carry it into another state. Every state, every district, no matter if something is found to “work” somewhere else, it just can't be easily imported because of the number of contextual variables. So I really see a number of states coming together: We're all studying the same big idea, and we're going to share data, and we're going to try to learn from each other.

You recommend directing the focus of research work toward “practicality, innovation and relevance.” What does that mean in practice? 

I'm so sick of hearing about how terrible the education field is at dissemination of research, but it's true. Let's actually make grantees come up with one-pagers. Let's make them actually develop bar charts and graphs, instead of these more complicated visuals that we see in peer-reviewed journals. Let's actually incentivize them to go on teacher webinars and podcasts where teachers are already convening and exchanging ideas. 

I don't think we can expect educators and practitioners to come to the researchers. I think that the researchers have to go to them, and they need to speak to them in a way that resonates. 

We also need to think much more concretely about relevance, because I do feel like sometimes IES has conducted research for researchers and not for practitioners.

When I want to look up basic facts about American education, like average teacher salary, there's been a decay since last year’s cuts, it seems. [Teacher salary data has not been updated since 2022.] 

I imagine there are a lot of other examples of basic facts that we used to know, admittedly on a delay, that we don't know anymore.

I would have to go contract by contract, data collection by data collection, to say, but I definitely agree with you on the delay. That was even before DOGE blew through, in terms of the amount of time that it was taking to get basic statistics out the door.

What reaction have you gotten from folks in the Trump administration to this report?

I've gotten some positive feedback. When I presented it to the secretary and to policy leadership, it was very well received. 

It wasn't just written for the administration and wasn't just written for researchers. It was actually written for the next generation of IES employees, frankly, who are going to have to be hired anew. 

You haven't gotten a firm commitment from political leadership at the department about which of your recommendations, if any, they want to implement — is that fair?

I think that's fair. I would say I wasn't expecting it either. I would also say there is an awareness there that IES is unique and it needs to be handled differently and more thoughtfully.

There are some people who have said that the DOGE cuts will have long-lasting and harmful effects, including driving away talented people from education research. Do you worry about that?

I guess I'm more of an optimist at heart. I'm not going to sit here and say that it wasn't devastating. I'm not going to say that it couldn't have happened otherwise. But what I can say is I see an opportunity to get a lot of things right.

Reach me at [email protected].