Trump administration proposes eliminating the Institute of Education Sciences and Education Statistics infrastructure

The Trump administration's budget proposal included the elimination of the Institute of Education Sciences and its National Center for Education Statistics, which have for decades collected and published authoritative data on US student achievement, school financing, teacher demographics, and educational attainment. IES data is the primary source for the research that informs education policy at the federal, state, and local level. It is cited in litigation over school funding equity, used by states to allocate resources, and relied on by journalists, policymakers, and advocates to assess the effects of education policy changes. The proposal to eliminate IES was read by education researchers as an attempt to defund the statistical infrastructure that makes independent analysis of education policy possible.