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March 25, 2025

Reimagining Federal Education R&D: IES, Workforce Skills, and State Leadership

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has taken a hit from DOGE, losing about 90 percent of its workforce. Regardless of the future of the Education Department, we need to continue to improve education R&D and identify what in IES should be preserved, or indeed expanded, to meet the nation’s needs today and in the…

March 10, 2025

Many Children Left Behind: The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress Results Indicate a Five-Alarm Fire

Key Points  Introduction By now, the awful results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)1 have been publicized, chewed over, and digested—and they are already moving into the rearview mirror as states, school districts, and teachers fall back into the comfortable routine of doing the same thing over and over again.  But continuing that…

February 7, 2025

Low-Performing Students Fall Farther Behind the Pack

On January 29, the National Assessment of Education Progress, NAEP, released results from its 2024 assessment. This latest installment of the self-styled “Nation’s Report Card” makes depressing reading. Indeed, if it weren’t for bad news, there would be hardly any news at all. The previous 2022 NAEP results were bad—but they could be blamed on…

November 19, 2024

We Aren’t Testing Students on the Computer Skills They Actually Need

The results of the 2023 International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) were just released. ICILS is given to a sample of eighth-grade students and is supposed to measure their ability to use information and communications technology. Including the United States, 35 education systems worldwide participated in the study of “computer and information literacy,” while a subset…

November 12, 2024

The National Assessment of Educational Progress Recompete: Is It Real Change or Lipstick on a Pig?

Key Points Read the PDF. The American government runs on contracts between government agencies and private companies (both for- and not-for-profit).1 When things go awry, it is often because a long-term incumbent contractor lacked the incentive to provide more cost-effective services or accountability for a poor product, both of which have been made clear by the…

November 12, 2024

Government Contracting for “America’s Report Card” Is Broken

If you tried to apply for federal student aid this 2024–2025 school year, you would have been met with a glitch-filled online form created using 40-year-old code, released three months behind schedule, and that might have arrived too late for a college to offer you the aid you applied for. This failure of the Education Department and…