The Data Blackout: Why America's Education Researchers Are Suing to Protect Data and Research Infrastructures

Two of the nation’s leading education research organizations are suing the U.S. Department of Education in an extraordinary effort to stop the agency from dismantling its own education data systems. The National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) – represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. – filed a federal lawsuit this week accusing the Education Department, under Secretary Linda McMahon, of effectively blinding itself and the public to critical information on American schools. The complaint alleges that the Department’s decision to stop collecting, analyzing, and sharing federal education data violates the law and undermines decades of progress toward equal access to quality education. The stakes, the researchers say, are nothing less than the nation’s ability to understand and improve education for all children, in every zipcode.

Dismantling Education Data Infrastructure

This legal battle did not emerge out of nowhere. It comes in response to a blitz of recent actions by the Education Department to gut its own research and data divisions. In February, the department abruptly canceled a reported $900 million in contracts, including many that supported the maintenance and updating of federal education databases. Then in March, officials announced a massive reduction in force, laying off nearly half of the department’s employees. The cuts fell hardest on the research arm – the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) – wiping out about 90% of IES’s staff and shrinking the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) from roughly 100 employees down to just three. In effect, the administration swiftly moved to “dismantle” the Department’s research centers. Even existing education datasets were taken offline or made inaccessible to the scientific community, leaving university researchers suddenly locked out of troves of information they once relied on.

All of this is happening despite Congress’s clear statutory intent that the Department of Education do the opposite. In 2002, Congress passed the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA), creating IES and its national research centers to ensure the continuous collection and dissemination of high-quality education data. Congress has not rescinded that mission – in fact, it has added new data mandates over the years and continues to appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars to support it. Yet the administration’s actions – part of a broader stated effort to shrink or even abolish the Department of Education – have forced the agency into default on its data duties. With contracts canceled and staff gone, the complaint notes, IES and its centers “are no longer able to comply with congressional mandates” to collect and report critical education statistics.

Why the Data Disappearance Matters

For a general public that doesn’t closely follow the inner workings of federal agencies, it may be difficult to understand why missing data points could spark such alarm. But education researchers stress that the loss of this data is a loss of accountability and insight. The federal government’s data systems are the backbone of understanding which student groups are thriving and which are being left behind. They include the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – often called the Nation’s Report Card – which measures student achievement across states, as well as large-scale surveys tracking everything from high schoolers’ academic progress to college students’ financial aid and debt. These databases allow analysts to measure achievement gaps, resource inequities, and the effectiveness of educational programs over time. In short, if we stop collecting this information, we stop seeing an accurate picture of American education – especially for vulnerable groups of students who have historically been least well served.

Carol Lee , president of the National Academy of Education, emphasizes that data is the bedrock of educational opportunity-focused work. “The systematic collection of educational data serves the essential purpose of not only identifying educational inequality but also providing the research base for policies and practices to address this inequality and ensure that all students have access to supportive, meaningful, and effective learning environments,” Lee said. Such data helped reveal achievement gaps and discriminatory practices in the past; without it, policymakers and communities would be flying blind when trying to fix problems or hold schools accountable for serving every child well. Andrew Ho , president of NCME, added that federal law “requires not only data access but data quality,” underscoring that simply having numbers isn’t enough – they must be accurate, comprehensive, and collected under consistent standards. For 88 years, Ho’s organization has helped set the standards for fair and valid educational measurements, a tradition he says they are now fighting to uphold in the face of this data blackout.

Indeed, much of the threatened information is precisely about traditionally underserved students – data on Black, Latino, and Native American students’ outcomes, on students with disabilities, on English-language learners, and kids from low-income families. These are the very groups that civil-rights advocates and researchers watch closely to gauge whether America is living up to its promise of equal educational opportunity. “This data is both critical to compliance with ESRA and other federal law, and essential to understanding, tracking, and promoting educational opportunity for Black and other marginalized students” explains Allison Scharfstein , an education fellow at LDF who is working on the case. In other words, if the data collection stops, ineffective practices could more easily fester in the dark. The public – from school boards to parents to Congress itself – would have far less evidence to determine whether policies are working or if new interventions are needed.

A Legal Showdown Over Statutory Obligations

The NAEd and NCME lawsuit contends that what’s happening isn’t just a policy disagreement or misstep – it’s illegal. By choking off its data streams, the Education Department is accused of violating ESRA, the very law that requires it to maintain those research centers and ensure the availability of reliable education statistics. Moreover, the suit claims the agency has overstepped its authority and defied the will of Congress. Under the U.S. Constitution, the executive branch cannot simply cancel programs that Congress created and funded – doing so violates the separation of powers that balances authority between Congress and the president. Here, Congress clearly told the Department to carry out these data-collection functions (and kept paying for them), yet the executive branch has unilaterally walked away from them. Such an abdication of duty, the complaint says, is “unlawful ultra vires” action – essentially, the agency acting beyond its legal power.

Then there is the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a law that prevents federal agencies from making capricious, unjustified policy changes. The lawsuit argues that abruptly abandoning data collection is “arbitrary and capricious” and exceeds the Department’s statutory authority under the APA. Normally, a federal agency has to give reasoned explanations and follow certain processes before stopping a program – especially one mandated by law. In this case, the complaint portrays the Department’s actions as sudden and driven by preferences, rather than the result of legitimate study or rulemaking. By flouting both its specific obligations under ESRA and the general good-governance requirements of the APA, the Education Department’s leadership has invited a court intervention. The plaintiffs are asking the court for immediate orders to reinstate the cut positions and contracts at IES/NCES, and to prohibit the Department from destroying or failing to preserve any educational datasets in the meantime.

Allison Scharfstein of LDF, who is helping lead the litigation, said she is proud to represent NAEd and NCME “who are standing up not only for the integrity of education data, but for the rights of every student whose opportunity depends on it”. It’s not every day that scholars sue a federal agency to make it do its job, but that is exactly what this case essentially calls for. The complaint seeks nothing less than a court-ordered halt to the Education Department’s self-destruction and a restoration of its congressionally-mandated research mission and book of work.

Democracy, Education, and Accountability

At its heart, this escalating fight is about more than just statistics and research infrastructures – it’s about democracy and accountability. In a democratic society, data is a form of public truth-telling. For generations, federal education data has shone a light on uncomfortable realities – achievement gaps, unequal school resources, disparities in discipline and special education. That light has often spurred improvements and course corrections, from evidence-based practices to funding adjustments, because what gets measured gets addressed. If an administration can simply turn off the data faucet when the facts become inconvenient, it threatens to leave the public in the dark. Parents, educators, and elected officials can’t make informed decisions or demand improvements if they have no credible information on what’s going on in schools.

The administration’s attempt to erase access educational data is, in the eyes of the plaintiffs, an attempt to erase accountability. It means the national report card might be obscured, that researchers might not be able to tell if reading scores are up or down, or if disparities in graduation rates are widening or narrowing. Carol Lee and Andrew Ho warn that without the “research base” of evidence, efforts to address efficacy risk shooting in the dark. And without data “quality” alongside access, as Ho put it, even the information that remains could be unreliable. In an era when debates over education – from test scores to curriculum – are increasingly heated, having trustworthy data is crucial to keep those debates grounded in reality rather than fiction.

Whether this lawsuit succeeds will have repercussions well beyond the courtroom. A win for the researchers would reaffirm that no administration can unilaterally toss aside Congress’s commands, and it would safeguard a flow of information that affects every community in the country. A failure to stop the data expungement, on the other hand, could set a dangerous precedent that politics can trump facts. As Allison Scharfstein noted, the obligation to maintain education data isn’t just a bureaucratic box to check; it’s tied to the rights of students and the public’s right to know how those students are being served. In the end, the fight over spreadsheets and surveys is a fight for the soul of evidence-based education policy, and for the principle that in American democracy, knowledge is power – power that shouldn’t be turned off at a whim.

Tagging colleagues concerned with the future of IES: 

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