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“If these information are break up throughout a number of federal companies,” Cheng mentioned, “there would doubtless be extra bureaucratic hurdles required to mix the info.”
Info sharing throughout federal companies is notoriously cumbersome, the very drawback that led to the creation of the Division of Homeland Safety after 9/11.
Hiring and $4.5 million in recent analysis grants
Even because the Trump administration publicly insists it intends to shutter the Division of Training, it’s quietly rebuilding small elements of it behind the scenes.
In September, the division posted eight new jobs to interchange fired employees who oversaw the Nationwide Evaluation of Academic Progress (NAEP), the biennial check of American college students’ achievement. In November, it marketed 4 extra openings for statisticians contained in the Federal Scholar Assist Workplace. Nonetheless, nothing is anticipated to be fast or clean. The federal government shutdown stalled hiring for the NAEP jobs, and now a brand new Trump administration directive to type hiring committees by Nov. 17 to approve and fill open positions might additional delay these hires.
On the identical time, the demolition continues. Lower than two weeks after the Oct. 1 authorities shutdown, 466 further Training Division staff had been terminated — on high of the roughly 2,000 misplaced since March 2025 via firings and voluntary departures. (The division employed about 4,000 at first of the Trump administration.) A federal decide quickly blocked these newest layoffs on Oct. 15.
There are additionally different small new indicators of life. On Sept. 30 — simply earlier than the shutdown — the division quietly awarded 9 new analysis and improvement grants totaling $4.5 million. The grants, listed on the division’s web site, are a part of a brand new initiative referred to as, “From Seedlings to Scale Grants Program” (S2S), launched by the Biden administration in August 2024 to check whether or not the Protection Division’s DARPA-style innovation mannequin might work in training. DARPA, the Protection Superior Analysis Tasks Company, invests in new applied sciences for nationwide safety. Its most celebrated challenge grew to become the idea for the web.
Every new challenge, principally centered on AI-driven personalised studying, obtained $500,000 to provide early proof of effectiveness. Recipients embody universities, analysis organizations and ed tech corporations. Tasks that present promise could possibly be eligible for future funding to scale up with extra college students.
In accordance with an individual acquainted with this system who spoke on background, the 9 initiatives had been chosen earlier than President Donald Trump took workplace, however the formal awards had been delayed amid the division’s upheaval. The Institute of Training Sciences — which misplaced roughly 90 % of its employees — was one of many hardest hit divisions.
Granted, $4.5 million is a rounding error in contrast with IES’s official annual funds of $800 million. Nonetheless, these are believed to be the primary new federal training analysis grants of the Trump period and a faint sign that Washington is probably not abandoning training innovation altogether.
This story about dangers to federal training information was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, impartial information group centered on inequality and innovation in training. Join Proof Factors and different Hechinger newsletters.
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