04-06-2025
Education Department misses key deadline for delivering statistics report
UPDATE: After this story was published, the Education Department updated its website late Monday afternoon, June 2, explaining that the new Report on the Condition of Education would no longer be a 'singular report' and instead update indicators on a rolling basis. The department published a sparse Part I highlights report on five topics.
For nearly 160 years, the federal government has been producing a statistical report on the condition and progress of education. In 2002, as part of the Education Sciences Reform Act, Congress gave the Education Department an annual deadline for that report: June 1.
But no "Report on the Condition of Education" was delivered by June 1 of this year, the first time the Education Department has failed to meet this statutory obligation.
The Education Department did not respond to email questions about the reasons for not meeting the deadline. But several former department employees, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said that outside contractors do most of the work to produce the report and those contracts were canceled in February by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Then, in March, Education Department employees who work on the report within the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) were fired as part of mass staff reductions. There was no one left - inside or outside the department - to do the work.
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"The Condition of Education is a herculean effort every year that requires so many people at NCES to coordinate and prepare for Congress," said Stephen Provasnik, a deputy commissioner of NCES who retired in January. "We've never missed a deadline before. But NCES has never had only three staff since the 1860s," he added, referring to its predecessor statistics office.
The NCES produces a wide array of statistics on students and teachers throughout the year. The Condition of Education bundles all of these tables together with explanations, charts and figures so that the public can understand trends, such as how the demographics of students have changed over time. Educators, researchers and policymakers use the report as a reference manual, akin to a corporate annual report.
The tables that would have been assembled for this year's report were largely produced before President Donald Trump took office.
Related: DOGE's death blow to education studies
Going forward, however, fewer data tables are expected to be produced because separate contracts for a range of data collections were also terminated in February. Some of those data collections have been restarted, but with less funding.
Three contractors were supposed to have helped produce the Condition of Education: Research Triangle Institute (RTI), Manhattan Strategy Group and Optimal Solutions. A federal website that tracks federal contracts shows that "other administrative action" occurred on May 28 on the Manhattan Strategy Group and Optimal Solutions contracts, but it is unclear what those actions were.
Committee staff for Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Michigan), the chairman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, did not reply to emails asking for a comment on the Education Department's failure to meet its statutory obligations.
Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@
This story about the Condition of Education 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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