Tag: cuts

  • University of California freezes hiring as it braces for funding cuts

    University of California freezes hiring as it braces for funding cuts

    Dive Brief:

    • The University of California is implementing a hiring freeze across its 10 campuses as it navigates potential funding cuts at both the federal and state levels, system President Michael Drake said in a message Wednesday. 
    • Drake also directed UC locations to roll out other cost-cutting measures, such as delaying maintenance and reducing travel expenses. 
    • “I recognize this is a time of great uncertainty for many in our UC community and in higher education across the country,” Drake said. “Throughout our history as an institution and as a nation, we have weathered struggles and found new ways to show up for the people we serve.”

    Dive Insight:

    UC joins an ever-growing cohort of higher education institutions taking preemptive steps to brace their budgets against a storm of funding cuts and financial attacks coming from the Trump administration. 

    Harvard University, the University of Notre Dame and Northwestern University are just a few of the major research universities that have also frozen hiring in recent weeks as they brace for federal funding cuts potentially coming from multiple directions. 

    Many institutions have cited the 15% cap on indirect research cost funding that the National Institutes of Health announced in February. Such a reduction would amount to billions of dollars collectively and could translate into funding shortfalls in the tens of millions of dollars for many universities. 

    NIH is the largest funder of UC research, having provided a total $2.6 billion to the system in the 2023-24 academic year, according to the system. Among the system’s campuses that could be hardest hit, UCLA stands to lose $65 million under the funding cap, UC San Francisco $121 million and UC San Diego $102 million, according to a New York Times analysis.  

    Faced with massive cuts to its research funding from the agency, UC filed a declaration in support of the lawsuit against NIH brought by the California attorney general and more than 20 other states.

    A judge overseeing multiple lawsuits against NIH has paused the funding cap, but uncertainty abounds among higher education leaders over the issue and other potential funding stoppages in Washington. 

    “The University’s legal team prepared for this moment and has been working diligently to protect the University and our mission through the courts,” Drake said. “These efforts have allowed us to stave off some of the immediate and projected financial impacts — but not all.”

    Even before President Donald Trump took office, UC faced potential future budget strains from state-level cuts. A fiscal 2025-26 budget proposal unveiled in January by Gov. Gavin Newsom would reduce UC’s funding by $271 million. At the time, Drake— who plans to step down as system leader at the end of the 2024-25 academic year —  expressed concern about how the cuts would affect UC students and services. 

    Prior to that, the system had been improving its financial trajectory, with the system’s overall total budget loss shrinking significantly in fiscal 2024 to $178 million, less than a tenth of the prior year’s shortfall. 

    In his message Wednesday, Drake said he asked the presidents of all UC locations to “prepare financial strategies and workforce management plans that address any potential shortfalls,” adding that “every action that impacts our University and our workforce will only be taken after serious and deliberative consideration.”

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  • Judge blocks cuts to Education Department teacher training grants

    Judge blocks cuts to Education Department teacher training grants

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    The U.S. Department of Education cannot terminate three educator training grant programs, a federal judge ordered on Monday.

    Specifically, the Education Department is enjoined from ending any grants provided through the three congressionally appropriated programs — the Supporting Effective Educator Development Grant Program, the Teacher Quality Partnership Program, and the Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program, according to the ruling from Judge Julie Rubin of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

    In addition to the injunction, the three plaintiffs — teacher preparation groups that sued the Education Department for making cuts to over 70 of these federal grant programs in February — must have their grant awards reinstated within five business days of the March 17 order.

    Rubin wrote that the cuts to the teacher training grant programs are “likely unlawful” under the Administrative Procedure Act.

    The plaintiffs in the case are the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, National Center for Teacher Residencies, and Maryland Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

    The order means that grantees affiliated with the plaintiff organizations can soon “draw down funds without any restrictions,” AACTE said in a Monday statement. 

    “We are thrilled that the court has ruled in favor of preserving funding for TQP, SEED, and TSL grants, which have a transformative impact on our nation’s education system,” said AACTE President and CEO Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy. 

    “I commend the unwavering dedication that led to this decision and remain hopeful that institutions, nonprofits, and partners across America can continue to strengthen our educator workforce, and address critical shortages while ensuring that every child in our nation has access to exceptional educators and a high-quality educational experience.”

    Last week, eight attorneys general had an initial victory in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts with a similar lawsuit over the Education Department’s cuts to millions of dollars in teacher training grants. That lawsuit only mentioned the SEED and TQP grants.

    When announcing the cuts on Feb. 17, the Education Department said the $600 million in withdrawn funds had been allocated to “divisive” teacher training grants. The department did not initially name the specific grants it slashed, but it later confirmed to K-12 Dive that the cuts included SEED and TQP.

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  • Democrats Blast McMahon Over Education Department Cuts

    Democrats Blast McMahon Over Education Department Cuts

    Sen. Bernie Sanders, ranking member of the Senate committee that oversees education policy, and 37 Democrats blasted Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a letter Monday, expressing “outrage” and arguing that the “reckless” cuts to her department’s staff last week will be “nothing short of devastating” for America’s students, schools and communities.

    “At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when 60 percent of people live paycheck to paycheck, millions of Americans cannot afford higher education, and 40 percent of our nation’s 4th graders and 33 percent of 8th graders read below basic proficiency, it is a national disgrace that the Trump Administration is attempting to illegally abolish the Department of Education and thus, undermine a high-quality education for our students,” Sanders wrote.

    The letter noted that less than 24 hours after the reduction was announced, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid temporarily shut down; Education Department workers responsible for fixing it had reportedly been fired.

    Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann told the Associated Press that the layoffs didn’t affect employees working on the FAFSA or student loan servicing.

    “They are strategic, internal-facing cuts that will not directly impact students and families,” Biedermann said.

    But top Democratic appropriators, including Sen. Patty Murray of Washington State and ranking member of the House committee Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, disagreed. In their own letter Monday, they argued that the cuts would impact students’ daily lives and demanded to know how McMahon will uphold the law with a decimated staff.

    “Firing the people that ensure states, school districts, and institutions of higher education live up to their legal obligations is neither efficient nor accountable,” the lawmakers wrote. “The President’s disregard for appropriations and other laws and the need for stability and productivity in government creates an imperative for the Department to provide accurate, timely responses on its use and planned use of taxpayer resources provided by the laws passed by Congress.”

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  • Federal Cuts Deepen Tennessee State U’s Budget Woes

    Federal Cuts Deepen Tennessee State U’s Budget Woes

    President Trump’s assault on federal grants is making Tennessee State University’s ongoing financial troubles even worse.

    The Tennessean reported last week that the chronically underfunded historically Black university in Nashville is preparing to lose $14.4 million, the remainder of an $18 million grant it received from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. It’s one of hundreds of colleges and universities across the country facing financial uncertainty as the Trump administration moves to cut trillions of dollars from the federal budget.

    “This is going to impact our people,” Jim Grady, TSU’s chief financial officer, said at a finance committee meeting Wednesday evening. “We’ll continue to evaluate the volatility … and the potential impact to employees, students and university operations.”

    Grady said nothing would change for at least 90 days after receiving notice of the grant cancellation, and it’s not yet clear how many jobs will be eliminated as a result. And that’s not the only federal grant in question, according to The Tennessean.

    In February, the U.S. Department of Agriculture—which includes the National Institute of Food and Agriculture—canceled $45 million in federal grants to the cash-strapped university, which eliminated 114 positions last fall amid a looming budget shortfall.

    Earlier this month, the USDA restored about $23 million of those grants, though another $115 million could be suspended or frozen. TSU’s federal grants fully fund 62 employees and partially fund another 112.

    In the midst of the financial uncertainty, TSU has suspended its search for a permanent president, WKRN reported.

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  • Johns Hopkins to lay off 2,200 workers as it reels from Trump’s USAID cuts

    Johns Hopkins to lay off 2,200 workers as it reels from Trump’s USAID cuts

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    Dive Brief:

    • Johns Hopkins University is moving to cut over 2,200 jobs, the largest layoffs in its history, according to a university spokesperson.
    • The layoffs are tied directly to the Trump administration’s unilateral cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which brought an $800 million funding hit to Johns Hopkins.
    • The job cuts include 1,975 international positions across 44 countries as well as 247 in the U.S, the spokesperson said. Another 29 international and 78 domestic employees will be furloughed with a reduced schedule. 

    Dive Insight:

    Earlier in March, Johns Hopkins President Ron Daniels revealed the depth of the funding gap wrought by the Trump administration’s suspension of foreign aid via executive order and efforts to gut USAID without congressional approval. Daniels said then that the university would have to wind down its projects funded by USAID grants.

    Employees in USAID-funded positions at Johns Hopkins have worked to “care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water, and advance countless other critical, life-saving efforts around the world,” a university spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

    The affected jobs set for elimination are in its medical school; the Bloomberg School of Public Health, which includes the Center for Communication Programs; and Jhpiego, a nonprofit affiliate that provides medical care abroad. 

    The decimation of USAID has been challenged in court. On March 10, a federal judge issued a partial preliminary injunction in the case, saying the cuts likely violated the Constitution. 

    “The Executive not only claims his constitutional authority to determine how to spend appropriated funds, but usurps Congress’s exclusive authority to dictate whether the funds should be spent in the first place,” according to the decision from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

    Daniels previously told the campus community that federal funding cuts and the resulting chaos would likely bring reductions to the university’s personnel and budgets. 

    “Over the past six weeks, we have experienced a fast and far-reaching cascade of executive orders and agency actions affecting higher education and federally sponsored research,” Daniels said in early March. “What began as stop work orders or pauses in grant funding allocations has morphed into cancellations and terminations.”

    In addition to the USAID fallout, Johns Hopkins faces many millions in shortfalls from the National Institutes of Health’s move to cap funding for institutions’ indirect research costs at 15%. 

    The university is among those suing NIH to block the cap, which plaintiffs say violates federal law, regulation and agency authority. In court papers, Laurent Heller, Johns Hopkins’ executive vice president for finance and administration, said the institution received over $1 billion in funding from NIH in fiscal 2024. Of that, $281.4 million covers indirect costs, one of the largest of which is physical space. 

    The funding helps support clinical trials for treatments related to cancer, pediatrics, heart, lungs, brain, liver and other areas, as well as other research and services. 

    “The proposal to cap indirect cost rates at 15% could end, seriously jeopardize, or require significant scaling back of the projects and infrastructure described above, as well as hundreds more projects of importance for life-saving medical discoveries, treatments, cares, and cures,” Heller said.

    There again, a court has ruled that the administration likely overstepped its authority. A judge overseeing several cases against NIH issued an injunction in March compelling the agency to keep paying negotiated rates for indirect costs as the case continues. 

    The funding cuts represent a risk of “halting life-saving clinical trials, disrupting the development of innovative medical research and treatment, and shuttering of research facilities, without regard for current patient care,” the judge wrote.

    Harvard University, Columbia University, Northwestern University and many other higher ed institutions have announced hiring freezes and cutbacks amid uncertainty over NIH and other federal funding sources.

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  • States File Lawsuit Challenging Education Department Cuts

    States File Lawsuit Challenging Education Department Cuts

    Twenty Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Trump administration for its massive job cuts at the Education Department, seeking to block what they say is “an effective dismantling” of the department. 

    The suit argues that by eliminating half the staff, the department is essentially abdicating its responsibility to deliver statutorily mandated programs, like federal student aid and civil rights investigations—many of which also affect state programs. 

    “This massive reduction in force is equivalent to incapacitating key, statutorily-mandated functions of the Department, causing immense damage to Plaintiff States and their educational systems,” the suit reads.

    The plaintiffs include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

    The lawsuit is at least the eighth to be filed against the Trump administration over its education policies in the past month. Follow Inside Higher Ed’s Trump Lawsuit Tracker for updates on the case.

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  • Trump’s Columbia Cuts Start Hitting Postdocs, Professors

    Trump’s Columbia Cuts Start Hitting Postdocs, Professors

    When the Trump administration announced Friday it was cutting about $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University, it didn’t specify what exactly it was slashing. But news of the scope of the cuts has begun trickling out of the institution over the past couple of days.

    So far, much of the information about the canceled grants has come via social media, as neither the Trump administration nor the university have provided a comprehensive accounting of what’s being cut. The National Institutes of Health did say earlier this week that it was pulling more than $250 million in grants from Columbia, though the agency wouldn’t share more details. And it’s hard to tell whether specific cuts are part of the $400 million or a continuation of the Trump administration’s general national reduction of federal funding to universities, such as axing grants it deems related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

    On Tuesday, Joshua A. Gordon, chair of the university’s psychiatry department, emailed colleagues to tell them the National Institutes of Health had terminated nearly 30 percent of grants to Columbia’s medical school—including many within his own department.

    “All of our training grants and many fellowships have been terminated,” Gordon wrote in the email, which a postdoctoral research fellow provided Inside Higher Ed.

    Gordon wrote that he’s still working with university administrators “to find out the full extent of these terminations” and that “the institution is committed to identifying the resources that can be brought to bear to support the people and projects affected by the terminations.” He added, “We remain dedicated to ensuring that our trainees and early-career scientists have the support needed to continue their work and achieve their career goals.”

    The Trump administration said this unprecedented $400 million cut was due to Columbia’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” More cuts at Columbia and other universities could follow as Trump follows through on his pledge to crack down on alleged antisemitism and punish elite universities. Columbia has more than $5 billion in federal grants and contracts.

    Columbia postdocs and faculty have taken to social media to announce canceled grants, fellowships and funding for Ph.D. students, showing some of the individual impacts on people and research wrought by the Trump administration’s actions. They include nixed training for researchers of depression and schizophrenia and a grant that would’ve provided free mental health resources to K-12 students.

    Sam Seidman, a postdoc and a steward for the Columbia Postdoctoral Workers union, told Inside Higher Ed that, “as a Jew,” it’s “particularly outrageous” to hear the Trump administration justifying the cuts by saying it’s fighting antisemitism.

    Seidman said he found out Monday that his T32 grant, an NIH training fellowship for new scientists, had been canceled. “I certainly don’t feel protected,” he said.

    He said it’s clear the Trump administration doesn’t have an issue with antisemitism or even with Columbia specifically. Its issue, Seidman said, is with “public funding of science and it’s with public funding, period,” adding that “Columbia makes a convenient scapegoat.”

    In an emailed statement, a Columbia Irving Medical Center spokesperson said, “Columbia is in the process of reviewing notices and cannot confirm how many grant cancellations have been received from federal agencies” since Friday.

    The spokesperson said, “We remain dedicated to our mission to advance lifesaving research and pledge to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding.”

    In a separate statement Wednesday, interim president Katrina Armstrong, herself a medical doctor, didn’t mention the cuts and instead said she stands by broad principles such as “intellectual freedom” and “personal responsibility.”

    “I have no doubt that the days and weeks ahead are going to be extremely difficult,” Armstrong said. “The best I can promise is that I will never stray from these principles and that I will work tirelessly to defend our remarkable, singular institution.”

    Marcel Agüeros, secretary of Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said, “It’s already looking very grim.”

    Agüeros said it’s a slow process to try to understand how the cuts are affecting such a large and decentralized university. But he said he has learned “it’s not just the kind of classic lab-based biomedical research that’s being impacted.”

    Like Seidman, he said the cuts don’t seem to be about the grants themselves or Columbia. Instead, Agüeros said, it’s “an assault on universities in general” and the concept of peer review that the grants went through.

    “It’s coming for you; it doesn’t really matter where you are or what you research,” Agüeros said

    Cut Off at the Knees

    In its Wednesday statement, the university medical center said that “from pioneering cancer treatments to innovative heart disease interventions and cutting-edge gene and cell therapies, research conducted by Columbia faculty has helped countless people live healthier, longer and more productive lives.”

    Seidman said his NIH grant was for research on family and biological risk factors that predispose kids to develop eating disorders, depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. He thinks university higher-ups are trying to find alternative funding but “haven’t been any more specific than ‘we’re looking.’”

    “It’s tragic, I mean these are lifesaving, potentially, interventions,” Seidman said. Yet the researchers developing them have been “cut off at the knees,” he said.

    Gordon Petty, a postdoc in Columbia’s psychiatry department, said his T32 training grant, which has also been canceled, was to study schizophrenia. He said he heard that the department is still dedicated to supporting him, “but it’s unclear where that money’s coming from.”

    Trump’s cuts appear to have also hit Teachers College of Columbia University, which is a separate higher education institution from Columbia with its own board. But it’s unclear if that’s part of the $400 million cut for allegedly not properly addressing antisemitism or part of nationwide cuts to grants perceived as being related to diversity, equity and inclusion. A Teachers College spokesperson said, “We are still sorting through the full impact on the college and will be in touch when we have more to say.”

    Prerna Arora, an associate professor of psychology and education at Teachers College, said she got an email Friday from a deputy assistant U.S. education secretary announcing the cancellation of a five-year Education Department grant. Arora said most of the funds went directly to graduate students training to become K-12 school psychologists serving children in New York City.

    The email, according to Arora, alleged that the grant funded “programs that promote or take part in initiatives that unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin or another protected characteristic” or that “violate either the letter or purpose of federal civil rights law” or “conflict with the department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness and excellence in education.”

    “We already have students that are funded under this, and they are at the university and we are in the middle of our admissions cycle for next year,” Arora said. She said, “I’ve spoken to very scared and tearful students” who are afraid of what this means for their training and “for their future.”

    And, beyond the impact on college students, Arora lamented the loss of the grant’s free help to K-12 students and families. “We could’ve helped many children who need this,” she said.

    It’s unclear whether the Trump administration will restore the grants. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said after the announcement Friday that she had a “productive” meeting with Armstrong. Meanwhile, Columbia said in a statement that it’s “committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns.”

    Agüeros, with the AAUP, said Columbia has already “gone overboard in an attempt to silence any kind of dissent.” Its previous president called in the New York Police Department to remove a pro-Palestinian protest encampment last spring and publicly criticized and revealed investigations into her own faculty in front of Congress.

    “There’s this assumption that if we just go along with things we’ll escape somehow unscathed,” Agüeros said. But he noted the cuts still arrived.

    “What did all of that get us—all of the sort of compliance that was put in place? It got us nothing.”

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  • DOGE Education Cuts Hit Students with Disabilities, Literacy Research – The 74

    DOGE Education Cuts Hit Students with Disabilities, Literacy Research – The 74


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    When teens and young adults with disabilities in California’s Poway Unified School District heard about a new opportunity to get extra help planning for life after high school, nearly every eligible student signed up.

    The program, known as Charting My Path for Future Success, aimed to fill a major gap in education research about what kinds of support give students nearing graduation the best shot at living independently, finding work, or continuing their studies.

    Students with disabilities finish college at much lower rates than their non-disabled peers, and often struggle to tap into state employment programs for adults with disabilities, said Stacey McCrath-Smith, a director of special education at Poway Unified, which had 135 students participating in the program. So the extra help, which included learning how to track goals on a tool designed for high schoolers with disabilities, was much needed.

    Charting My Path launched earlier this school year in Poway Unified and 12 other school districts. The salaries of 61 school staff nationwide, and the training they received to work with nearly 1,100 high schoolers with disabilities for a year and a half, was paid for by the U.S. Department of Education.

    Jessie Damroth’s 17-year-old son Logan, who has autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other medical needs, had attended classes and met with his mentor through the program at Newton Public Schools in Massachusetts for a month. For the first time, he was talking excitedly about career options in science and what he might study at college.

    “He was starting to talk about what his path would look like,” Damroth said. “It was exciting to hear him get really excited about these opportunities. … He needed that extra support to really reinforce that he could do this.”

    Then the Trump administration pulled the plug.

    Charting My Path was among more than 200 Education Department contracts and grants terminated over the last two weeks by the Trump administration’s U.S. DOGE Service. DOGE has slashed spending it deemed to be wasteful, fraudulent, or in service of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility goals that President Donald Trump has sought to ban. But in several instances, the decision to cancel contracts affected more than researchers analyzing data in their offices — it affected students.

    Many projects, like Charting My Path, involved training teachers in new methods, testing learning materials in actual classrooms, and helping school systems use data more effectively.

    “Students were going to learn really how to set goals and track progress themselves, rather than having it be done for them,” McCrath-Smith said. “That is the skill that they will need post-high school when there’s not a teacher around.”

    All of that work was abruptly halted — in some cases with nearly finished results that now cannot be distributed.

    Every administration is entitled to set its own priorities, and contracts can be canceled or changed, said Steven Fleischman, an education consultant who for many years ran one of the regional research programs that was terminated. He compared it to a homeowner deciding they no longer want a deck as part of their remodel.

    But the current approach reminds him more of construction projects started and then abandoned during the Great Recession, in some cases leaving giant holes that sat for years.

    “You can walk around and say, ‘Oh, that was a building we never finished because the funds got cut off,’” he said.

    DOGE drives cuts to education research contracts, grants

    The Education Department has been a prime target of DOGE, the chaotic cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk, now a senior adviser to Trump.

    So far, DOGE has halted 89 education projects, many of which were under the purview of the Institute of Education Sciences, the ostensibly independent research arm of the Education Department. The administration said those cuts, which included multi-year contracts, totaled $881 million. In recent years, the federal government has spent just over $800 million on the entire IES budget.

    DOGE has also shut down 10 regional labs that conduct research for states and local schools and shuttered four equity assistance centers that help with teacher training. The Trump administration also cut off funding for nearly 100 teacher training grants and 18 grants for centers that often work to improve instruction for struggling students.

    The total savings is up for debate. The Trump administration said the terminated Education Department contracts and grants were worth $2 billion. But some were near completion with most of the money already spent.

    An NPR analysis of all of DOGE’s reported savings found that it likely was around $2 billion for the entire federal government — though the Education Department is a top contributor.

    On Friday, a federal judge issued an injunction that temporarily blocks the Trump administration from canceling additional contracts and grants that might violate the anti-DEIA executive order. It’s not clear whether the injunction would prevent more contracts from being canceled “for convenience.”

    Mark Schneider, the recent past IES director, said the sweeping cuts represent an opportunity to overhaul a bloated education research establishment. But even many conservative critics have expressed alarm at how wide-ranging and indiscriminate the cuts have been. Congress mandated many of the terminated programs, which also indirectly support state and privately funded research.

    The canceled projects include contracts that support maintenance of the Common Core of Data, a major database used by policymakers, researchers, and journalists, as well as work that supports updates to the What Works Clearinghouse, a huge repository of evidence-based practices available to educators for free.

    And after promising not to make any cuts to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, the department canceled an upcoming test for 17-year-olds that helps researchers understand long-term trends. On Monday, Peggy Carr, the head of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees NAEP, was placed on leave.

    The Education Department did not respond to questions about who decided which programs to cut and what criteria were used. Nor did the department respond to a specific question about why Charting My Path was eliminated. DOGE records estimate the administration saved $22 million by terminating the program early, less than half the $54 million in the original contract.

    The decision has caused mid-year disruptions and uncertainty.

    In Utah, the Canyons School District is trying to reassign the school counselor and three teachers whose salaries were covered by the Charting My Path contract.

    The district, which had 88 high schoolers participating in the program, is hoping to keep using the curriculum to boost its usual services, said Kirsten Stewart, a district spokesperson.

    Officials in Poway Unified, too, hope schools can use the curriculum and tools to keep up a version of the program. But that will take time and work because the program’s four teachers had to be reassigned to other jobs.

    “They dedicated that time and got really important training,” McCrath-Smith said. “We don’t want to see that squandered.”

    For Damroth, the loss of parent support meetings through Charting My Path was especially devastating. Logan has a rare genetic mutation that causes him to fall asleep easily during the day, so Damroth wanted help navigating which colleges might be able to offer extra scheduling support.

    “I have a million questions about this. Instead of just hearing ‘I don’t know’ I was really looking forward to working with Joe and the program,” she said, referring to Logan’s former mentor. “It’s just heartbreaking. I feel like this wasn’t well thought out. … My child wants to do things in life, but he needs to be given the tools to achieve those goals and those dreams that he has.”

    DOGE cuts labs that helped ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in reading

    The dramatic improvement in reading proficiency that Carey Wright oversaw as state superintendent in one the nation’s poorest states became known as the “Mississippi Miracle.”

    Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, based out of the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University, was a key partner in that work, Wright said.

    When Wright wondered if state-funded instructional coaches were really making a difference, REL Southeast dispatched a team to observe, videotape, and analyze the instruction delivered by hundreds of elementary teachers across the state. Researchers reported that teachers’ instructional practices aligned well with the science of reading and that teachers themselves said they felt far more knowledgeable about teaching reading.

    “That solidified for me that the money that we were putting into professional learning was working,” Wright said.

    The study, she noted, arose from a casual conversation with researchers at REL Southeast: “That’s the kind of give and take that the RELs had with the states.”

    Wright, now Maryland state superintendent, said she was looking forward to partnering with REL Mid-Atlantic on a math initiative and on an overhaul of the school accountability system.

    But this month, termination letters went out to the universities and research organizations that run the 10 Regional Educational Laboratories, which were established by Congress in 1965 to serve states and school districts. The letters said the contracts were being terminated “for convenience.”

    The press release that went to news organizations cited “wasteful and ideologically driven spending” and named a single project in Ohio that involved equity audits as a part of an effort to reduce suspensions. Most of the REL projects on the IES website involve reading, math, career connections, and teacher retention.

    Jannelle Kubinec, CEO of WestEd, an education research organization that held the contracts for REL West and REL Northwest, said she never received a complaint or a request to review the contracts before receiving termination letters. Her team had to abruptly cancel meetings to go over results with school districts. In other cases, reports are nearly finished but cannot be distributed because they haven’t gone through the review process.

    REL West was also working with the Utah State Board of Education to figure out if the legislature’s investment in programs to keep early career teachers from leaving the classroom was making a difference, among several other projects.

    “This is good work and we are trying to think through our options,” she said. “But the cancellation does limit our ability to finish the work.”

    Given enough time, Utah should be able to find a staffer to analyze the data collected by REL West, said Sharon Turner, a spokesperson for the Utah State Board of Education. But the findings are much less likely to be shared with other states.

    The most recent contracts started in 2022 and were set to run through 2027.

    The Trump administration said it planned to enter into new contracts for the RELs to satisfy “statutory requirements” and better serve schools and states, though it’s unclear what that will entail.

    “The states drive the research agendas of the RELs,” said Sara Schapiro, the executive director of the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition that advocates for more effective education research. If the federal government dictates what RELs can do, “it runs counter to the whole argument that they want the states to be leading the way on education.”

    Some terminated federal education research was nearly complete

    Some research efforts were nearly complete when they got shut down, raising questions about how efficient these cuts were.

    The American Institutes for Research, for example, was almost done evaluating the impact of the Comprehensive Literacy State Development program, which aims to improve literacy instruction through investments like new curriculum and teacher training.

    AIR’s research spanned 114 elementary schools across 11 states and involved more than 23,000 third, fourth, and fifth graders and their nearly 900 reading teachers.

    Researchers had collected and analyzed a massive trove of data from the randomized trial and presented their findings to federal education officials just three days before the study was terminated.

    “It was a very exciting meeting,” said Mike Garet, a vice president and institute fellow at AIR who oversaw the study. “People were very enthusiastic about the report.”

    Another AIR study that was nearing completion looked at the use of multi-tiered systems of support for reading among first and second graders. It’s a strategy that helps schools identify and provide support to struggling readers, with the most intensive help going to kids with the highest needs. It’s widely used by schools, but its effectiveness hasn’t been tested on a larger scale.

    The research took place in 106 schools and involved over 1,200 educators and 5,700 children who started first grade in 2021 and 2022. Much of the funding for the study went toward paying for teacher training and coaching to roll out the program over three years. All of the data was collected and nearly done being analyzed when DOGE made its cuts.

    Garet doesn’t think he and his team should simply walk away from unfinished work.

    “If we can’t report results, that would violate our covenant with the districts, the teachers, the parents, and the students who devoted a lot of time in the hope of generating knowledge about what works,” Garet said. “Now that we have the data and have the results, I think we’re duty-bound to report them.”

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.


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  • Education Department staff anxiously await sweeping cuts

    Education Department staff anxiously await sweeping cuts

    It’s been a whirlwind week at the Department of Education, and some career staffers are anguished over its bleak, uncertain future.

    On Monday, the Senate confirmed Linda McMahon as the new secretary of education, and shortly afterward, she released a memo laying out department personnel’s “final mission”: “the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education.”

    The next day, department leaders scheduled a meeting to announce a major reduction in force, which current staffers say is rumored to include layoffs of nearly 50 percent of the workforce—but the meeting was canceled at the last minute, according to a department employee.

    Then, on Wednesday, media outlets, citing sources in the administration, reported that President Trump would sign an executive order to abolish the Education Department as soon as Thursday, sending frenzied staffers scrambling to prepare.

    When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Thursday morning on X that Trump wouldn’t be signing the order that day after all, one staffer said it felt like cruel misdirection.

    “It’s definitely feeling like whiplash,” they said. “Folks had steeled themselves for today … Everyone seems ready to rip off the Band-Aid, and the delay feels like a game to torture people.”

    Several current department employees, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on background and on the condition of anonymity, offered a chaotic picture of upheaval and uncertainty within the department, with staff scrambling to prepare for the dissolution of their offices, even as the administration’s plans and timeline remain unclear.

    One current employee told Inside Higher Ed that McMahon’s memo announcing the administration’s plan to downsize the department was “insulting and antagonizing.”

    “The notion that we should be honored to undertake this ‘final mission’ is absurd,” they said. “It’s basically saying, ‘You should thank us for firing you.’”

    One career staffer who’s been with the department for more than a decade said most employees are anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. Over the past few weeks, they said, anger and indignation have turned to heartbreak.

    “Reality is sinking in everywhere … Folks are seriously depressed,” they said. “And yet, working to advance the goals of this administration may actually be worse than not having a job.”

    ‘Slash and Burn’

    Trump has advocated for eliminating the 45-year-old Education Department since the early days of his campaign. When he nominated McMahon as secretary, he said he hoped she would “put herself out of a job.” Still, many department employees were taken aback by the sudden escalation.

    The longtime staffer said that when Trump was inaugurated, they anticipated some serious changes at the department. But the speed and wantonness of the move to abolish it has surprised them.

    “I foolishly believed they’d try to take a studied approach to any changes, consult with seasoned career staffers with institutional knowledge and expertise,” they said. “Instead it’s slash and burn.”

    Last week, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management directed all federal agencies to prepare for “large-scale reductions in force” and the elimination of “non-statutorily mandated functions,” which could be a precursor to the Trump administration’s plans to heavily reduce the head count at Education Department as much as possible without congressional approval.

    A draft of Trump’s forthcoming executive order, obtained by Inside Higher Ed, includes a two-paragraph guideline for winding down department activity and little else. James Kvaal, who served as under secretary of education under President Joe Biden, said the absence of a plan is revealing and concerning.

    “[The document] reflects a lack of clarity within the Trump administration about what they’re trying to do, or even disagreement among certain elements,” Kvaal said.

    Department staffers are concerned about the administration’s strategy for implementing its ambitious spending cuts. One employee who spoke with Inside Higher Ed was placed on administrative leave last month and said their experience was “chaotic and haphazard.” The staffer said cuts to programs, contracts and personnel have been largely left up to a small group of young Department of Government Efficiency employees, whose approach has been “like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what they can get away with.”

    They said that if the Trump administration’s approach to cuts at the department so far is any indication how they will handle plans to gut the department, it could exacerbate the impact on students and educational institutions.

    “Nobody is going to know what’s happening, which means zero accountability,” they said. “It’s going to be a mess.”

    DOGE has already canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in department contracts, including some that are essential to the operation of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. And sources within the department say that hundreds of Federal Student Aid staff have either taken a buyout or been placed on leave.

    A current department employee who specializes in higher education said they fear that the department’s closure—or the major cuts that precipitate it—will have a devastating impact on the sector, and on affordability and access in particular.

    “There’s going to be a huge setback in the progress we’ve made even just in terms of who gets to go to college,” they said. “Universities are being put on such a high alert on every front … it’s a wholesale attack on the sector.”

    Kvaal said that even under Biden, the department in general—and the student aid office in particular—were severely understaffed, a problem that he has said contributed to the bungled rollout of the new FAFSA last year. He added that further reductions could hobble agencies’ capacity to perform essential duties like student loan and aid disbursement.

    “The department was thinly staffed even prior to these cuts, and as a result it was difficult to run programs smoothly and deliver benefits that students needed,” he said. “If there are, in fact, hundreds of people leaving FSA, that could put our progress with FAFSA at risk and upend our efforts to prevent student loan defaults. If nothing else, asking senior managers to focus on nudging their staff out the door and preparing for legislation that will never come is a real distraction.”

    Both Kvaal and current employees are concerned that when the Trump administration does release concrete plans for distributing the department’s responsibilities, they will welcome the private sector into administering services like student loans and financial aid.

    “It seems like the longer-term goal here would be to privatize the FSA, like they’re doing with Social Security,” one staffer said. “That’s a mess waiting to happen and would take way longer than four years. In the interim, the damage could be enormous.”

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  • DOGE fails to accurately disclose contract and program cuts

    DOGE fails to accurately disclose contract and program cuts

    As part of his administration’s broad push for government transparency, on Feb. 18 President Donald Trump ordered all federal agencies to publicize “to the maximum extent permitted by law” the complete details of every program, contract or grant they terminated.

    “The American people have seen their tax dollars used to fund the passion projects of unelected bureaucrats rather than to advance the national interest,” Trump wrote in the memo, tilted “Radical Transparency About Wasteful Spending.” “[They] have a right to see how the Federal Government has wasted their hard-earned wages.”

    Immediately after receiving a copy of the order, Inside Higher Ed reached out to the Department of Education and requested a comprehensive list of any and all such cuts, as well as explanations for why each contract was terminated. But two weeks later, the Education Department has yet to respond, and neither the department nor the staff it has partnered with from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have publicly released any more information about the terminated contracts and grants.

    In fact, DOGE—the agency leading the crusade of cuts—has continuously made edits to the “Wall of Receipts,” where it was supposedly outlining the cuts that have been made. Late Sunday night, the group deleted hundreds of contracts it had previously claimed to cancel, The New York Times first reported and Inside Higher Ed confirmed.

    “It’s absolutely hypocrisy,” said Antoinette Flores, director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “It feels like we’re all being gaslit. I don’t know why they are saying they want to be transparent without being transparent.”

    For weeks, higher education leaders, policy experts and advocates have raised concerns as the department terminated more than 100 assorted grants and research contracts. Combined, the cuts are purportedly valued at nearly $1.9 billion, according to the department, and will affect a swath of institutions, including the department’s largest research arm as well as regional labs and external nonprofits that collaborated with local officials to improve learner outcomes. Combined, the cuts will dramatically impact the data available to researchers and policymakers focused on improving teaching and learning strategies, experts say.

    Education scholars are worried that the cuts will leave state officials and college administrators with little evidence on which to base their strategies for student success and academic return on investment. One professor went as far as to say that the cuts are “an assault on the U.S.’s education data infrastructure.”

    And though the Trump administration has flaunted its transparency and glorified DOGE’s website as a prime example of their success in providing public records, policy experts on both sides of the political aisle say the collective contract value displayed is an overestimate. Calculating savings is more nuanced than just listing a contract’s maximum potential value, they say—and even if they saved money, some of the terminated programs were congressionally mandated.

    Over all, the sudden nature of the cuts, combined with the questionable accuracy of reported savings and a lack of further transparency, have left higher education advocacy groups deeply concerned.

    “The cuts that happened recently are going to have far-reaching impacts, and those impacts could really be long term unless some rapid action is taken,” said Mamie Voight, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a national nonprofit that campaigns for college access and student success. “This information is useful and essential to help policymakers steward taxpayer dollars responsibly.”

    “To eliminate data, evidence and research is working in opposition to efficiency,” she later added.

    The department did not respond to requests for comment on Voight’s and Flores’s criticisms.

    A Data ‘Mismatch’

    For many in higher ed, the executive actions Trump has taken since January raise questions about executive overreach and government transparency. But Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, said, “It’s not a matter of deception” or even simply a question of transparency.

    Instead, he said, “The question is, what’s the quality of the transparency? And what can we make of it?”

    In a recent analysis, titled “Running Down DOGE’s Department of Education Receipts,” Malkus compared a leaked list of the 89 terminated Institute of Education Sciences contracts, along with detailed data from USASpending.gov, to those DOGE had posted on its website. He said he found major inconsistencies, or a “mismatch” in how they defined the purported contract value.

    He also noted that though the “Wall of Receipts” has two separate tabs, one listing a contract’s value and another listing its savings, it displays the overall contract value first. The agency also declines to explain the difference between value and savings or how it calculates either.

    As is the case with contract values, DOGE has been inconsistent in how it calculates savings. But what the agency most often displays to the public is how much a contract could theoretically cost if all options and add-ons are utilized—known as the potential total—minus the amount the government had currently agreed to spend by the end of the contract, or the total obligation. So in other words, Malkus said, DOGE is sharing how much the government could save if it were to continue the contract and receive the promised deliverables without adding any extra bells and whistles.

    But that’s not what DOGE has done. Instead, it has terminated the contracts, and the Education Department won’t receive the final product it was paying for.

    To best represent savings in that scenario, Malkus said, DOGE would calculate the difference between how much the government had agreed to spend by the end of the contract—the total obligation—and how much the government has already spent, or the total outlay.

    “It’s weird because DOGE is publishing one set of savings that I don’t think actually makes sense to anybody, and they’re ignoring savings that they actually are conceivably getting,” Malkus said. “There are some good reasons that they might choose to do that. But DOGE would do well to explain what these dollars are, because right now, no one can tell.”

    Malkus first spoke with Inside Higher Ed on Friday. But since then, the DOGE database has changed. Malkus said Tuesday that some of the initial trends in the way DOGE appeared to be calculating savings are no longer present and he has yet to find a new, even semiconsistent formula for how DOGE is calculating savings.

    “The pace of change on DOGE’s numbers is dizzying even for someone like me who works at analyzing these receipts,” Malkus said. “Each week there have been changes to the number of contracts and within contracts the values and savings that DOGE is publishing. It’s hard to know if they are trying to get this right, because it’s impossible to find a consistent trail.”

    I don’t attribute it to a desire to falsely advertise transparency and not deliver on it. I just think they need to do a much better job in the execution.”

    —Nat Malkus

    And even if there were a consistent, uniform formula for how DOGE officials are calculating efficiency, in some cases they still choose to highlight overall contract value rather than the direct savings. For example, a DOGE social media post about the Institute of Education Sciences cuts noted the contracts were worth $881 million in total.

    “So are the actual savings equal to that implied? No, they are not,” Malkus said. “They are far, far less than that amount, somewhere around 25 percent of the total.”

    The agency’s website doesn’t detail the team’s methodology or offer any explanation about why the cuts were made. Malkus believes this lack of clarification reflects the Trump administration’s effort to make notable cuts quickly. He added that while he doesn’t agree with every cut made, he understands and supports the “aggressiveness” of Trump and Musk’s approach.

    “If they don’t move quickly, then there’s commissions, and then you have to go to the secretary, and they have interminable meetings and everything gets slowed down,” he said. “So one of their priorities is to move fast, and they don’t mind breaking things in the process.”

    From Malkus’s perspective, the inconsistencies in how each cut is documented, the many edits that have been made to the DOGE database and the lack of explanation for each cut isn’t a matter of “malice or dishonesty,” but rather “mistakes.”

    “I don’t think their savings are a clear estimation of what taxpayers are actually saving. But I don’t attribute it to a desire to falsely advertise transparency and not deliver on it. I just think they need to do a much better job in the execution,” he said.

    A ‘Disregard for the Law’

    Flores from New America conducted similar research and, like Malkus, found that the DOGE data doesn’t add up and exaggerates the savings. However, she had different views on the cause and effects of the agency’s aggressive, mistake-riddled approach.

    “It’s like taking a wrecking ball to important government services,” she said. “If you’re trying to be efficient, you should take into consideration how far along is a contract? How much have we spent on this? Are we getting anything for the investment we’ve made?”

    The Trump administration has broadly explained its cuts as a response to the “liberal ideology” of diversity, equity and inclusion and an effort to increase efficiency. But to Flores, they target anything but “waste, fraud and abuse.”

    “The reason why the Trump administration says it wants to eliminate the Department of Education is because you don’t see improvement in student performance,” she said. “But if you want to improve student performance, you need to understand what is happening on the ground with students and evidence-based research on how to help students improve.”

    And many of the studies affected by the contract cuts were nearly completed, she said. They were projects on which the agency had already spent hundreds of millions of dollars. So by cutting them now, the department loses the data and wastes taxpayer funds.

    It’s absolutely hypocrisy. It feels like we’re all being gaslit.”

    —Antoinette Flores

    “I’ve talked to some researchers who worked at one of the organizations that had their contracts cut, and they said all work has to stop,” she said. “No matter how close it was to being finished, it just has to stop.”

    Flores also noted that some of the studies terminated via contract cuts—particularly the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study—are congressionally mandated, so ending them is unconstitutional.

    “The people making these cuts don’t necessarily understand the math. They don’t necessarily understand the contracts or the purpose of them, and there’s a disregard for the law,” she said.

    Voight from IHEP agreed, describing projects like NPSAS as “core data sets that the field relies upon.”

    “Lawmakers often turn to these types of longitudinal and sample studies to answer questions that they have as they’re trying to build policies. And states turn to this type of information to help them benchmark how they’re faring against national numbers,” she said. “So these studies themselves are a really, really devastating loss.”

    Even some contracts that weren’t cut will suffer consequences, Voight noted. For example, though the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems grant program has so far been shielded from outright termination, she said, it didn’t come away entirely unscathed. The data systems rely on key information from a program called Common Education Data Standards, which was slashed; without CEDS, the grant program won’t be nearly as effective.

    “The cuts have actually been misunderstanding the interrelationships between many of these different products,” Voight said.

    Over all, she believes the Department of Education, and specifically IES, are not the best places for efficiency cuts. The $807.6 million budget for the Institute of Education Sciences in fiscal year 2024 is just “a drop in the bucket” compared with the amount spent on other research and development groups, like the $4.1 billion given to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency the same year.

    “To think about how to build efficiencies is certainly not a bad question to ask. But IES is already such a lean operation, and the way that they are trying to build evidence is critical,” she said. “So we should really be focusing on investment in our education research infrastructure and taking a strategic approach to any changes that are going to be made.”

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