Another Education Department delay: Release of NAEP science scores

Miami Herald

08-07-2025

The repercussions from the decimation of staff at the Education Department keep coming. Last week, the fallout led to a delay in releasing results from a national science test.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is best known for tests that track reading and math achievement but includes other subjects too. In early 2024, when the main reading and math tests were administered, there was also a science section for eighth graders.
The board that oversees NAEP had announced at its May meeting that it planned to release the science results in June. But that month has since come and gone.
Why the delay? There is no commissioner of education statistics to sign off on the score report, a requirement beforeit is released, according to five current and former officials who are familiar with the release of NAEP scores, but asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press or feared retaliation.
Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.
Peggy Carr, a former Biden administration appointee, was dismissed as the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics in February, two years before the end of her six-year term set by Congress. Chris Chapman was named acting commissioner, but then he was fired in March, along with half the employees at the Education Department. The role has remained vacant since.
A spokesman for the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees NAEP, said the science scores will be released later this summer, but denied that the lack of a commissioner is the obstacle. "The report building is proceeding so the naming of a commissioner is not a bureaucratic hold up to its progress," Stephaan Harris said by email.
The delay matters. Education policymakers have been keen to learn if science achievement had held steady after the pandemic or tumbled along with reading and math. (Those reading and math scores were released in January.)
The Trump administration has vowed to dismantle the Education Department and did not respond to an emailed question about when a new commissioner would be appointed.
Related: Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3
Researchers hang onto data
Keeping up with administration policy can be head spinning these days. Education researchers were notified in March that they would have to relinquish federal data they were using for their studies. (The department shares restricted datasets, which can include personally identifiable information about students, with approved researchers.)
But researchers learned on June 30 that the department had changed its mind and decided not to terminate this remote access.
Lawyers who are suing the Trump administration on behalf of education researchers heralded this about-face as a "big win." Researchers can now finish projects in progress.
Still, researchers don't have a way of publishing or presenting papers that use this data. Since the mass firings in mid-March, there is no one remaining inside the Education Department to review their papers for any inadvertent disclosure of student data, a required step before public release. And there is no process at the moment for researchers to request data access for future studies.
"While ED's change-of-heart regarding remote access is welcome," said Adam Pulver of Public Citizen Litigation Group, "other vital services provided by the Institute of Education Sciences have been senselessly, illogically halted without consideration of the impact on the nation's educational researchers and the education community more broadly. We will continue to press ahead with our case as to the other arbitrarily canceled programs."
Pulver is the lead attorney for one of three suits fighting the Education Department's termination of research and statistics activities. Judges in the District of Columbia and Maryland have denied researchers a preliminary injunction to restore the research and data cuts. But the Maryland case is now fast-tracked and the court has asked the Trump administration to produce an administrative record of its decision making process by July 11. (See this previous story for more background on the court cases.)
Related: Education researchers sue Trump administration, testing executive power
Some NSF grants restored in California
Just as the Education Department is quietly restarting some activities that DOGE killed, so is the National Science Foundation (NSF). The federal science agency posted on its website that it reinstated 114 awards to 45 institutions as of June 30. NSF said it was doing so to comply with a federal court order to reinstate awards to all University of California researchers. It was unclear how many of these research projects concerned education, one of the major areas that NSF funds.
Researchers and universities outside the University of California system are hoping for the same reversal. In June, the largest professional organization of education researchers, the American Educational Research Association, joined forces with a large coalition of organizations and institutions in filing a legal challenge to the mass termination of grants by the NSF. Education grants were especially hard hit in a series of cuts in April and May. Democracy Forward, a public interest law firm, is spearheading this case.
Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [e-mail].
This story about delaying the NAEP science score report was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.
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