The board didn’t present an official rationalization for its strikes. However the vice chair, Martin West, a Harvard professor of training, stated in an interview that the cuts had been an effort to save lots of the 2026 assessments. “A second of reckoning got here extra rapidly due to the pressures on this system to scale back bills in actual time,” he stated.
In different phrases, the board was successfully chopping off the affected person’s appendages to attempt to save the mind and the center. Regardless of the sacrifice, it’s nonetheless not clear that the gambit will work.
DOGE has been demanding 50 p.c cuts to the $190 million a yr testing program. Practically all of the work is dealt with by outdoors contractors, similar to Westat and ETS, and five-year contracts had been awarded on the finish of 2024. However as a substitute of paying the distributors yearly, DOGE has diced the funds into shorter increments, placing strain on the contractors to just accept sharp cuts, in response to a number of former Training Division workers. For the time being, a number of of the contracts are scheduled to expire of cash in Could and June, and DOGE’s approval is required to restart the circulation of cash. Certainly, DOGE allowed one NAEP contract to run out of funds completely on March 31, forcing ETS workers to cease work on writing new questions for future exams.
Studying and math assessments are scheduled to begin being administered in faculties in January 2026, and so extra disruptions might derail the principle NAEP evaluation altogether. NAEP is taken by a pattern of 450,000 college students who’re chosen to signify all of the fourth and eighth graders within the nation, and every scholar solely takes a part of a take a look at. This sampling method avoids the burden of testing each baby within the nation, however it requires Training Division contractors to make difficult statistical calculations for the variety of take a look at takers and the variety of take a look at sections wanted to supply legitimate and dependable outcomes. Contractors should then bundle the take a look at sections into digital take a look at booklets for college students to take on-line. The Training Division additionally should get approval from the federal Workplace of Administration and Price range to start testing in faculties — one more set of paperwork that’s dealt with by contractors.
A DOGE dilemma
Folks accustomed to the board’s deliberations had been involved that contractors may be pressured to comply with cuts that might hurt the standard and the validity of the examination itself. Important modifications to the examination or its administration might make it inconceivable to match scholar achievement with the 2024 outcomes, probably undermining the entire objective of the evaluation.
Board members had been finally confronted with a dilemma. They might minimize corners on the total vary of assessments or hope to keep up NAEP’s prime quality with a a lot smaller basket of assessments. They selected the latter.
The cuts had been designed to adjust to congressional mandates. Whereas the Lengthy-Time period Pattern evaluation is required by Congress, the legislation doesn’t state how often it should be administered, and so the governing board has deferred it till 2033. Many testing specialists have questioned whether or not this examination has change into redundant now that the principle NAEP has a 35-year historical past of scholar efficiency. The board has mentioned scrapping this examination since 2017. “The passage of time raises questions on its continued worth,” stated West.
The writing assessments, initially scheduled for 2032 for grades 4, eight and 12, wanted an overhaul and that may have been an costly, troublesome course of particularly with present debates over what it means to show writing within the age of AI.
The lack of state- and district-level outcomes for some exams, similar to highschool studying and math, had been a few of the extra painful cuts. The power to match scholar achievement throughout state traces has been some of the beneficial points of the NAEP assessments as a result of the comparability can present position fashions for different states and districts.
Value chopping
“Everybody agrees that NAEP could be extra environment friendly,” stated West, who added that the board has been attempting to chop prices for a few years. However he stated that it’s tough to check modifications for future exams with out jeopardizing the validity and the standard of the present examination. That twin path can generally add prices within the quick time period.
It was unclear what number of tens of millions of {dollars} the governing board saved with its evaluation cancellations Monday, however the financial savings are definitely lower than the 50 p.c minimize that DOGE is demanding. The most important driver of the prices is the principle NAEP take a look at, which is being preserved. The contracts are awarded by job and never by evaluation, and so the contractors have to return again with estimates of how a lot the cancellation of some exams will have an effect on its bills. For instance, now that fourth grade science isn’t being administered in 2028, no questions must be written for it. However subject workers will nonetheless have to go to colleges that yr to manage assessments, together with studying and math, which haven’t been minimize.
Evaluate outdated and new evaluation schedules
Outdoors observers decried the cuts on social media, with one training commentator saying the cancellations had been “beginning to minimize into the muscle.” Science and historical past, although not mandated by Congress, are vital to many. ”We must always care about how our faculties are instructing college students science,” stated Allison Socol, who leads preschool to highschool coverage at EdTrust, a nonprofit that advocates for fairness in training. “Any knowledge level you take a look at exhibits that future careers will rely closely on STEM expertise.”
Socol worries that DOGE is not going to be happy with the board’s cuts and demand extra. “It’s simply a lot simpler to destroy issues than to construct them,” she stated. “And it’s very simple, when you’ve taken one factor away, to take one other one and one other one and one other one.”
On April 17, the Training Division introduced that the 2026 NAEP would proceed as deliberate. However after mass layoffs in March, it remained unclear if the division has the capability to supervise the method, since solely two workers with NAEP expertise are overlooked of just about 30 who used to work on the take a look at. McMahon may have to rehire some workers to drag it off, however new hiring would contradict the spirit of Trump’s govt order to shut the division.
Socol fears that the Trump administration doesn’t actually need to measure scholar achievement. “There’s a very clear push from the administration, not simply within the training sector, to have quite a bit much less details about how our public establishments are serving the folks on this nation,” Socol stated. “It’s a lot simpler to disregard inequality should you can’t see it, and that’s the level.”
The Training Division didn’t reply to my questions on their intentions for NAEP. McMahon has been fairly forceful in articulating the worth of the assessments, however she may not have the ultimate say since DOGE has to approve the NAEP contracts. “What’s very clear is that the workplace of the secretary doesn’t utterly management the DOGE folks,” stated an individual with data of the dynamics contained in the Training Division. “McMahon’s views have an effect on DOGE priorities, however McMahon doesn’t have direct management in any respect.”
The ball is now in DOGE’s court docket.
*Correction: An earlier model of this sentence incorrectly stated that two administrations of the Lengthy-Time period Pattern NAEP had been scrapped by the governing board on April 21. Solely the 2029 administration was canceled by the board. The 2025 Lengthy-Time period Pattern NAEP for 17 yr olds was canceled by the Training Division in February. 9- and 13-year-old college students had already taken it by April.
Contact workers author Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Sign, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
