The Education Department is facing nearly $900 million in funding cuts after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) asserted that much of the agency’s work was unnecessary; a move seemingly targeting the research efforts of its Institute of Education Sciences (IES).
Kim Weeden, a Cornell University professor of sociology and the director of the Center for the Study of Inequality, says the real economic and social value of this agency’s research won’t show up in DOGE’s metrics.
Weeden says: “The IES and its programs, including the National Center for Education Statistics, provide irreplaceable data on schools and on students. These data help us to understand which features of schools best support different types of students; which social factors affect students’ educational trajectories and why; and which educational inequalities have faded away and which are more persistent.
“The IES was created by a Republican-led Congress that understood the value of evidence-based policy. Without IES data and research, it’s impossible to develop evidence-based policies that will improve educational outcomes for all students and reduce differences in educational opportunities and attainment between students.
“Critically, IES makes high-quality, anonymized data available for public use. This means that external researchers and policy makers can analyze the data without direct IES or other agency funding.”
For interviews contact Ellen Leventry: (607) 882-5833, eel2@cornell.edu.
