Elon Musk’s Doge guts nearly $1bn in US education department’s research office Total of 89 contracts ended, essentially wiping out agency’s research and statistics, the Institute of Education Sciences.
US senator Patty Murray, who sits on the senate’s education committee and is a former preschool teacher, called Musk in a statement an “unelected billionaire” who is “bulldozing the research arm of the Department of Education – taking a wrecking ball to high-quality research and basic data we need to improve our public schools.
Elon Musk and the Trump administration’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has terminated nearly $1bn in US Department of Education contracts, in effect eliminating a research office that tracks US students’ progress.
IES gathers and disseminates data and research on a variety of subjects, including but not limited to the state of US student achievement, school crime and safety, and high school science course completion; their research is used widely by educators, state and local departments of education, school districts, colleges and other researchers.
The study, which has been reportedly rolled out in multiple states, gave US students “high quality, adaptive digital tools” to help them improve in math; now, that study will be cut short and those tools could be removed from classrooms imminently, according to a source with extensive knowledge of many of these canceled education department contracts, who would not speak publicly for fear of retribution.
