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Education: NEWS ALERT! (January, 2025 on) Cuts to the U.S. Department of Education & its information...

Massive cuts to the U.S. Department of Education has radically altered their ability to continue on delivering these high quality - and highly depended upon - education resources:

  • the ERIC database
  • the What Works Clearinghouse
  • the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) 

[1] What happened…

In February, 2025, the newly minted U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), spearheaded by Elon Musk, announced that nearly $900 million in cuts would come to contracts with the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The Institute funds research on how to improve education at all levels, in both the United States and around the world. 

(For more information, please visit “What is IES and what does it do?”)

In order to mitigate the loss of funding and to subscribe to Trump’s February 26th Executive Order EO14222 (“Implementing the President’s ‘‘Department of Government Efficiency’’ Cost Efficiency Initiative”), a permanent layoff of almost 50% of Department of Education’s staff ensued, disabling the 158 year old agency from fully continuing its research and data collection programs.

[2] Effects of the cuts on making federally-funded data-collection & research freely accessible to the public…

(a) The ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) database:

The Institute of Education Sciences' database, ERIC,is heavily used in many post-secondary institutions around the world. Started in 1966, it now contains citations to over 1.6 million education resources, including peer-reviewed journal articles, research reports, fact sheets, conference papers & books and a few other types of materials; over 400,000 of these items are full-text, downloadable and free. Over 1,000 academic journals are indexed in ERIC, with over 600 of those journals displaying the full text of the articles that have received research funding from the IES*.  Laurier users can access ERIC through the U.S. government website, and through our subscription-based database platforms from ProQuest and EbscoHost. 

*From 2011, on, researchers funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) had to submit the full-text of their research articles to ERIC, no more than 1 year after publication.  (See “Public Access to Research Policy: IES Policy Regarding Public Access to Research” & “U.S. Department of Education Plan for Public Access: Improving Access to Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research" for a full explanation.) 

But with the 2025 reductions in the Department of Education's workforce, funding, programs and services, ERIC will undergo a major change. In early March, 2025, journal publishers began to receive this message from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES):

“…The Department of Education is working with the Department of Government Efficiency to “reduce overall Federal spending” and “reallocate spending to promote efficiency” (EO 14222). As a result, ERIC will be significantly reducing the number of records we index going forward. We expect to be reducing the collection by approximately 45% starting April 24, 2025…”

However, all records currently in ERIC (up until at least April 24, 2025) are supposed to remain available & findable in searches.

Implications for doing evidence syntheses: 

With the regular volume of added content, going forward, will be reduced by 45% come April, efforts are underway to study what journal titles may be cut, and what other available academic databases may contain the same journals, such as EbscoHost’s Education Source.  This website will be updated if more information comes forward.

For further information about any upcoming changes in ERIC:

(b) The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) database:

Started in 2002, the Institute of Education Sciences' What Works Clearinghouse, is a database of "evidence-based recommendations for educators to improve student outcomes", from pre-school to post-secondary.  The database holds a searchable collection of "Practice Guides", "Intervention Reports" ("summaries of findings of the highest-quality research on a given intervention or practice in education"), "Reviews of Individual Studies" & downloadable data from WWC study reviews.  There is also a collection of resources for training educators, with videos, webinars, and other helpful materials.

Many of the WWC resources have been downloaded & preserved in the Internet Archive, but it is uncertain if it will be updated &/or properly maintained on Institute of Education Sciences' website, post-April 24, 2025.

(c) The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and its collected data:

The Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) oversees the National Center for Education Statistics, which collects & analyzes education data on such topics as evaluating federal programs for effectiveness and reporting how well the United States is doing in educating its students.  

However, many fear, cuts to funding research and employing people to run the programs will result in a loss of access to data and issues in data collection and preservation accountability.  For more information on potential outcomes and concerns, please visit:

  1. Layoffs Gut Federal Education Research Agency. By Kathryn Palmer / Insider Higher Ed (March 14, 2025) “…It’s not clear how many of the department’s dozens of data-collection programs—including those related to early childhood education, college student outcomes and workforce readiness—will be downsized or ended as a result of the cuts. The department did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for clarity on exactly which contracts were canceled. (It did confirm, however, that it still maintains contracts for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the College Scorecard and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.)…”
  2. $900 Million in Institute of Education Sciences Contracts Axed. By  Ryan Quinn and Katherine Knott / Insider Higher Ed (February 12, 2025) "... cuts essentially decimated the agency, hindering its ability to collect and process data and release congressionally mandated reports. …(researchers)… will lose their online access to restricted education data sets in June, … (and) anticipate having to go through an onerous regulatory process to set up private rooms with computers disconnected from the internet in order to review the data on physical discs that the Education Department (will) mail to them….instead of stored securely in an online data platform…”
  3. AERA (American Educational Research Association) and Other Education Research Associations Issue Joint Letter to Congress (March 25, 2025) “In a March 25 letter, AERA and other education research leaders call on Congress to protect the nation’s education data, research infrastructure, and knowledge base, by safeguarding the IES and broader Education Department staff, leadership, and mission,…the Administration’s sudden, arbitrary termination of more than 1,300 employees across the U.S. Department of Education…has resulted in barely a skeletal staff at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), leaving only three staff remaining at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and just slightly over 20 staff to execute the vital functions of the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), the National Center for Education Research (NCER), and at the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER)…”

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