Demonstrators were outside the U.S. Department of Education offices in Washington, D.C. on March 13, 2025, not really sure why this matters, but they were protesting mass layoffs and budget cuts by the Trump administration and DOGE. The big shots in education research, who usually don’t see eye to eye, are now teaming up to battle the cuts to data and scientific studies at the U.S. Department of Education.
Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, the first head of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), and Sean Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist, are among the many scholars who have submitted declarations against the department and Secretary Linda McMahon. They are worried about how their work is getting messed up and believe that the cuts will ruin education research.
Professional organizations representing these scholars want the courts to bring back terminated research and data, and stop the mass firings at the Institute of Education Sciences. This division collects data on students and schools, gives out research grants, shows off effective practices, and measures student achievement.
Three major lawsuits were filed last month in U.S. federal courts by six different professional organizations. The groups include the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), American Educational Research Association (AERA), Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), National Academy of Education (NAEd), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). A lot of these groups have members in common.
Left-wing and progressive legal organizations are leading these lawsuits. They are Public Citizen, Democracy Forward, and the Legal Defense Fund, which was originally started by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) but is now on its own. Allison Scharfstein, a Legal Defense Fund attorney, says that education data is crucial for showing educational differences and improving education for Black and Hispanic students.
The research associations’ officers talked about how tough it was to sue the government, especially since they work at universities that are also under fire from the Trump administration. They were worried about possible retaliation, but they decided that standing up for education research was more important.
The lawsuits say that the Trump administration went overboard by cutting things that Congress demands by law. Private citizens can’t usually sue the federal government, but under the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, private organizations can ask courts to step in when executive agencies act randomly or against the law. The suits point out that the Education Science Reform Act of 2002 wants the Education Department to run Regional Education Laboratories and do special data collections, but the department stopped doing these things in February.
The suits argue that the Education Department can’t do what Congress wants, such as giving out grants to study effective teaching practices, after firing almost 90% of the IES staff in March and stopping panels that review grant proposals. The research groups say their members and education research will be damaged forever.
There are two big worries coming up in June. Researchers are set to lose access to important datasets on June 1, and more than 1,300 Education Department employees are supposed to be officially fired by June 10. It’s a mess because no one will be left to keep key data, and researchers might have to delete their hard work. Dan McGrath, a Democracy Forward lawyer, says it will be impossible to fix everything once it’s gone.
Lawyers in two of the lawsuits have asked for a temporary order to undo the cuts and firings, rehire federal employees, and keep the studies going. A hearing to talk about this is set for Thursday in a Washington court. It seems like Harvard University and others are finally pushing back against the Trump administration, but let’s see if it helps.
That’s the news about the Education Department lawsuits, written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a group that covers education inequality and innovation. Don’t forget to sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.
