Federal education R&D absorbed a shock in early 2025: large-scale staffing cuts eliminated 90% of personnel in the Department of Education's research arm and terminated nearly $900 million in research grants, according to reporting compiled by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Some staff and contracts have since been reinstated, but the disruption leaves the field assessing what remains of an infrastructure built over two decades.

For R&D managers in education research — university labs, district research offices, and edtech vendors alike — the damage centers on the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the Department's independent research and statistics arm. Understanding which functions survived requires a map of the institute as it stood before January 2025.

The statutory base

The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA) created IES with four centers: the National Center for Education Research (NCER), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), and the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER). The statute charges IES to "compile statistics, develop products, and conduct research, evaluations, and wide dissemination activities in areas of demonstrated national need."

Each center holds a distinct portfolio, and the 2025 cuts did not fall uniformly across them.

NCES: the data backbone

Federal education data collection predates the modern Department itself. Congress created an initial Department of Education in 1867 specifically to gather data on school organization and management nationwide; it moved to the Interior Department as the Office of Education in 1869, and federal education statistics collection began in 1870. NCES is the current custodian of that 155-year function, organized into four divisions: early childhood, assessment, elementary/secondary, and postsecondary statistics.

Its signature product is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), first administered in 1969 and the only nationally comparative test of student academic performance. States must participate in NAEP's 4th and 8th grade reading and math assessments every two years as a condition of receiving federal education funds — a compliance mechanism that researchers and district administrators should factor into any assessment of whether the 2025 disruption could interrupt the data series.

NCES also maintains the Common Core of Data, a comprehensive database of U.S. schools and districts; the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant Program, which helps states connect data from early learning through the workforce; and the annual Condition of Education report.

NCEE: evaluation and knowledge transfer

NCEE runs large-scale evaluations of federally funded programs — including the Teacher and School Leader Incentive program, Dual Enrollment, and Career and Technical Education under Perkins V — and houses the knowledge-use infrastructure many practitioners depend on: 10 Regional Educational Laboratories, the What Works Clearinghouse, the National Library of Education, and the ERIC literature database.

Adjacent but outside IES, the Comprehensive Center Network — 20 centers authorized by the Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002 — provides capacity building to states, local and regional education agencies, and tribal education agencies, drawing on REL research.

NCER and NCSER: the grant-making engines

NCER funds the competitive research most directly affected by the terminated contracts. Its teaching and learning division covers literacy, mathematics and science, early childhood, English learning, and socialization; its policy and systems division handles rural and distance schooling, school reform, assessment and accountability, workforce, and postsecondary topics.

Notable NCER programs include the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which funds education technology prototypes including science-of-reading-based assessments and interventions; AmplifyGAIN, which studies generative AI in K-12 math and science instruction; and the From Seedlings to Scale (S2S) grant program for scaling solutions to persistent educational challenges. Vendors and university teams with proposals in these pipelines should verify status directly, given that some terminated contracts have been reinstated while others have not.

NCSER sponsors research on infants, toddlers, and children with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and partners with NCEE on IDEA implementation evaluations. Its funded work spans language-development interventions, a social-emotional and behavioral risk screener for early childhood, and Project SUSTAIN, which examines special educator working conditions.

R&D beyond IES

Outside the institute, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education runs the ED Facts initiative, consolidating state-submitted data on program participation, performance, and demographics, available for analysis through ED Data Express. OESE also administers the Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program, which validates and scales solutions for high-need students through three competitive tiers — early-phase, mid-phase, and expansion — calibrated to an innovation's evidence base.

What comes next

The Bipartisan Policy Center's assessment is that IES-produced evidence still informs practice at every level of the education system, and that national statistics collection, program evaluation, and research-to-practice translation strengthen the talent pipeline. Debate over the institute's scale and structure continues, and with ESRA's statutory framework intact, the coming congressional reauthorization discussions will determine whether the post-2025 version of federal education R&D retains the capacity the 2002 law envisioned.