President Donald Trump signed an executive order to shut down the U.S. Department of Education this past Thursday, paving the way to begin dismantling the agency. Though the order was signed last week, the department had already seen cuts to programs aimed to help track educational progress and training, impacting educational resources across the country.
Approximately $900 million in funding to the U.S. Department of Education was cut by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in early February, with the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) bearing cuts in the form of 169 contracts and 29 grant terminations.
IES is responsible for educational research in the United States and has conducted studies on the efficiency of education initiatives and progress from early education to post-secondary education through vocational programs or colleges and universities.
Grants officer Joshua Einhorn for CSUN’s Michael D. Eisner College of Education said grants from the IES were used to fund special projects. This included training for special education teachers during a shortage at LAUSD and integrating special education students into traditional classrooms, which benefits both sets of students long-term, according to Einhorn.
Another special project funded by these grants was an algebra intervention orchestrated by CSUN secondary education faculty member Ivan Cheng to combat high fail rates. The program trained ninth-grade math teachers with the best practices in algebra instruction, which directly benefited thousands of students and impacted students throughout California.
“We had extraordinarily positive effects where we were able to raise algebra achievement on state standardized tests by over one standard deviation, which is really big, statistically speaking. That is like moving the Titanic,” Cheng said.
The results were published on IES’s What Works Clearinghouse, which ranks studies based on rigor and effectiveness. Without this program, researchers would not possess the results for future research.
“If it gets cut or is not updated, then the direct impact to all of us is that we won’t have access to that information to help us do our work better,” Cheng said. “So not having access to their database could really hinder research across the world, actually.”
Cheng noted several impacts that current cuts to the Department of Education may have on CSUN, including a pause in future research, the revokement of diversity and equality research, and the impact of losing staff in the department.
“You need Department of Education personnel to run the programs that are funded,” Cheng said. “Without them, these programs are essentially dead in the water if there’s nobody on the other end to respond.”
Einhorn expressed the importance of IES for CSUN and the US education system, especially for grades K-12.
“IES funds projects that are highly scientific with rigorous standards to determine pedagogical practices are best in K-12 teaching and training,” Einhorn said. “If there’s cuts, that means all these wonderful projects won’t occur, and that is a disservice to the community.”
IES has not been the only recipient of DOGE’s cuts. A press release by the U.S. Department of Education states that $600 million has been terminated in “divisive” grants relating to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), critical race theory and social activism.
Warnings from the Trump administration have been issued for universities and schools to end all DEI programs or face federal funding cuts. However, with direction from Dean Shari Tarver Behring from the College of Education, Einhorn stressed that DEI remains a commitment of the college and CSUN.
“If federal opportunities are not available, we are certainly going to strive for state grants, corporate grants, private foundation grants and donations from individual donors to sponsor our DEI efforts,” Einhorn said. “The college and CSU system remain committed to DEI for all students.”
