The Sacking Of IES. Plus, Live WonkyFolk In DC Next Week. Former IES Director Mark Schneider Discussion *Today*.
What did you think was going to happen?
Today, at 2:30 pm ET I will talk with former IES Director Mark Schneider about the DOGE cuts to education research. You can join and ask questions here. Mark was deputy at IES when it was founded in the George W. Bush administration, he led the agency from 2018-2024, and he's steeped in federal education research so there is no one better to shed some light on what's happening, how and why, and what to expect. Join us today (recording will be available afterwards at same link).
Coming Attractions:
Drinks on us. WonkyFolk live. Next Tuesday, join me and Jed Wallace at Crimson Whiskey Bar in DC for a live recording of WonkyFolk. We'll discuss the upcoming SCOTUS case on religious charters, the craziness in federal ed policy, your questions, and more. Drinks and apps on us. 4 p.m. doors, 4:30 show. RSVP and learn more here.
ICYMI:
Rick Hess and I talked about navigating polarized times for Ed Week.
Jed Wallace and I talked with Karim Ani, founder of Citizen Math, about his work, math, and why he's leaving the education sector. Interesting discussion whether or not you are into math. He was in Morocco, in the desert, when we did the interview...he's really leaving. Karim's book is here. You can see Karim and the desert here. Listen below, through the links, or wherever you get podcasts.
Tim Daly, Denise Forte, and I talked about the NAEP scores and the larger implications there for kids, schools, and policy.
Last week, I talked with parent, advocate, and writer Laura McKenna about special education on LinkedIn.
The Sacking Of DC
Well, I hope all the f**king around was fun, because we're in the find out phase. And it's not.
I don't like a lot of what's happening, but if you don't say anything when $190 billion is being thrown at schools with little effect, or kids are kept out of school for inordinate amounts of time, or educational chaos and batshit crazy ideas (having non-college Americans pay for relatively well-off people's fancy college degrees, having schools make life decisions about young people in lieu of their parents, capping access to advanced classes in the name of equity, math is racist, etc..etc...) are normalized, then save the tears on $881 million in Institute for Education Sciences contracts being cut. Not because some of those contracts don't support useful work, they do. Research is the oldest sustained federal education role and one we should be smartly expanding not cutting. Rather, because this was entirely avoidable. Donald Trump is not the weather, he's a phenomenon that was enabled in no small part by the absolute fecklessness of this sector and too many of its "leaders." I sure hope it was fun during the salad days to argue about what to call "learning loss" and if it even mattered, or whether saying "achievement gap" or "American dream" was a racist microaggression. Good times.
Anyhow, a few thoughts on what's happening:
Government reform is important. And just because they work for the public, government workers should not be shielded from reform or efficiency measures. But government workers are public employees, civil servants, they are due some respect, process, and, yes, care. Bill Clinton and Al Gore shuttered agencies and offices, cut or consolidated more than 100 programs, offered buyouts, and shrank the federal workforce by a quarter-million employees. (Coupled with broader budget and economic policy we ran a federal surplus for a moment there, you might recall). Everyone didn't love it, but it happened without this kind of chaos. As Robert Gordon noted with regard to the spending freeze proposal there are effective ways to do these kinds of things in keeping with the basic idea that government operations should be predictable.
If the game here is to cut but also rebuild, then there is some promise to that. But cuts and chaos are not a governing strategy. While the President was a developer in his previous career, he doesn't seem like a builder when it comes to policy. So while this crowd isn't wrong about everything, in my view, my optimism is pretty tempered. There certainly is plenty of deadwood to be cut, but baby/bathwater and all that. And bear in mind this is small beer. Entitlements and debt are the big government expenditures, and addressing those, without breaking promises to Americans, enacting cuts that harm people, or both is a difficult political task. The absolute explosion in federal spending and debt since 2017 is bipartisan and astounding.
The Trump Administration has two big political problems all this chaos is obscuring. First, they need Congress to act in order to actually enact much of what they want to do. Absent a legitimate constitutional crisis the courts will roll back a lot of what's happening because we have laws about how changes like this happen, even if Elon Musk and his team of Zyn'd-up incels are ignorant of them. (Please, stick to space.) There is a reason they are focused on the contract side of things in education, they have limited authority with congressionally mandated activities, that's why the labs, NAEP, and so forth appear to be spared. Meanwhile, all this chaos is not making things easier with Congress, which still has yet to land on a strategy. You want to cut indirect rates for R1s? OK, but bear in mind they exist in red states as well as blue ones and you're already hearing some calls for restraint from Republicans. Rinse and repeat across a suite of things. All this stuff that's getting cut, Republicans voted for it, too. Long term, all this energy would be better spent wooing Congress. Shock and awe isn't sustainable.
Second, a lot of what Trump wants to do is at odds with the coalition that put him in office. Trump may not care about that, but regular line Republicans will - they want to win future elections and the backlash to this backlash could be intense and career ending for a lot of politicians. People don't like paying $6 or $7 for eggs and underneath Trump's approval ratings you can already see some signs of discontent. All these high-profile stunts will at some point serve to remind people you were not focused on the economy, which ultimately matters more to voters than some DEI grant from the Department of Education. And you only get to cut those grants once, the economy is here every day.
It's hard to miss that the Dems are letting the Rs do some of their dirty work for them. The silence around some of the Eos on DEI, sports, etc...is deafening. There is an old saw in politics that you don't get in the way when the other guy is shooting himself in the foot. You also stay out of the way when the other party is solving a political headache for you.
That brings us to Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon. Her hearing is later this week. It's political malpractice she's not already confirmed. Her paperwork is complicated but she was confirmed in 2017 by the Senate with 81 votes for Small Business Administrator - where her tenure earned bipartisan praise. Her nomination was an absolute layup where the Dems risked overreaching. Now the problem facing the Dems will be just what to focus on in this target saturated environment (though they'll still probably overreach with the MSNBC cameras there and all that). Having her confirmed might also help with all this chaos. Agree with her or not she's not a chaos monkey and was well-regarded in Connecticut education circles.
So many lawsuits. And it's only been a few weeks. It's exciting to see a whole new generation of attorneys get beach houses in Delaware. The plight of the second homeless in D.C. is real. But if team Article I isn't going to do it's job then put in Team Article III coach!