The cuts continued to come. Late Thursday, the Department of Education announced that it had ended 10 additional research and technical assistance contracts with its regional education laboratories totaling $ 336 million. In this case, the administration said that it was aimed at ideologically motivated expenses, such as a project advising Ohio schools to carry out “action audits”.
Federal subsidies to university researchers were not affected in the cuts announced on Monday, although some teachers served as advisers or subcontractors on contracts licensed with private research organizations. Texas University Education Professor Sarah Powell said the American Institutes For Research had told her to stop working on two guides for mathematics teachers on means based on evidence to teach STEM subjects , referring to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Another guide for teachers on means based on evidence to combat students’ absenteeism was also killed. Without these guides, it can be difficult for educators to know which research to trust.
In a interview With Propublica, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Education described the licensed contracts as examples of “waste, fraud and abuse”. On X, the Department of Education common Three examples of waste expenditure that had been reduced: $ 3 million for a report to show that previous reports have not been used, $ 4.6 million to coordinate the zoom and meetings in person, and a contract $ 1.5 million to observe shipping and office operations. But neither Doge, who pretended to do his work with total transparency nor the education service identified which contracts contained these expenses, and they did not publish a full list of canceled contracts.
The scope of the cuts was not clear for many researchers. A Noted calculation sheet Cased contracts circulated on X. It was published by a journalist from Crooked Media, founded by former editors and communications managers in the Obama administration. The journalist, Matt Berg, said that he had obtained him from a career employee superior to the education department and that he thought that the list had been written by Doge. Several former officials of the education department recognized the contracts and told me that the list, if not the Dollar totals, seems to be exact.
Rachel Dinkes, Head of Knowledge of Knowledge, who defends research organizations that receive federal funding such as Mathematica and American Institutes for Research, said his organization had verified to its members only at least 56 of the 89 contracts On the spreadsheet had been canceled. At the end of last week, she was still working to confirm the rest of the list.
Among the cancellations, there was an 11-year study on young people with disabilities, which, according to Dinkes, was finished halfway. It was supposed to identify effective programs to improve employment and educational results for these students after high school. More than 1,000 young disabled people were supposed to receive instructions and special support in 2025 and 2026 through this study, which is now terminated.
During confirmation hearings last week for the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, the Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine said that her office had heard a former teacher from her state who had used one of the licensed subsidies for Develop a tutoring program. “Given the reading scores and mediocre mathematics … should the Ministry of Education not continue to collect data and assess the results rather than to stop these activities so that you can help states to know what works well? ” McMahon has circumvented the question, saying that it “will assess these programs” if it is confirmed.
Contracts to administer the national evaluation of educational progress (NAEP), a test mandated by the congress which follows the results of the students, were not directly terminated. But Mark Schneider, former director of the Institute of Education Sciences who oversees these research and data contracts, explained that other K-12 data collections on which NAEP are based have been cut. Statisticians cannot create samples of representative students at the national level to pass the NAEP test without data on the demography of students.
A separate collection of data from colleges and universities, known as post -secondary education system, was spared cuts, said Dinkes, as it was the dashboard of the college, which follows if the students find jobs Well paid after graduation.
I spoke with more than 20 researchers, most of whom asked me to keep their anonymous identity for fear of the Trump administration. Some only communicated with me via encrypted channels and refused to send an email or speak by phone.
On the basis of these interviews, it seems unlikely that taxpayers are raising $ 881 million in cancellation savings. Multi -year contracts are paid over time and in many cases, a large part of the money has already been spent. When I looked for the online contract numbers, they were sometimes much smaller than the non -verified DOGE calculation sheet listed. For example, a contract listed for $ 19 million was in fact $ 14 million. Six years of the seven -year contract have already passed and most of the amount of the contract was probably paid.
Addressing journalists from the Oval Office last week, Chef Doge Elon Musk admitted that his team would make mistakes. “We are going quickly, so we will make mistakes, but we will also repair errors very quickly,” said Musk.
However, the researchers explained to me that it would not be easy to restart any of these contracts. Some have said that the government should launch a new competitive tender process and sign new contracts. In addition, students’ privacy protections could prevent researchers from preserving the years of research that have already been completed.
“Many of these contracts have data deletion clauses,” said a researcher. “The fact is that they will not be able to reopen them if they change their mind. They are not only interrupted. They are finished and we lose the information. »»
The clock is running now. The researchers said they had 30 days from the date of cancellation to reduce projects. As they jostle to accomplish this unexpected task, they also described another chronometric chore: replace the word “genre” with “sex” in each of their government contracts which have not been canceled, in accordance with a directive of The White House. The modification requires legal examination and adds to the general costs. “It’s ironic,” said a researcher. “They are called the Government Ministry of Effectiveness. But they just waste money.
