Helping teachers learn what works in the classroom − and what doesn’t − will get a lot harder without the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences

A U.S. flag and an Education Department flag fly outside the U.S. Department of Education building on Feb. 4, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Alex Wong/Getty Images

The future of the Institute of Education Sciences, the nonpartisan research arm of the Education Department, is suddenly in jeopardy. The Department of Government Efficiency, a Trump administration task force led by Elon Musk, has announced plans to cancel most of the institute’s contracts and training grants.

The institute’s annual budget is less that US$1 billion – or less than 1% of the Department of Education’s budget – but it advances education by supporting rigorous research and sharing data on student progress. It also sets standards for evidence-based practices and formalizes the criteria for evaluating educational research.

In short, the Institute of Education Sciences identifies what works and what doesn’t.

As cognitive scientists who engage in educational research, we believe this often overlooked institute is key to advancing national education standards and preventing pseudoscience from entering classrooms.

Dissatisfaction with US education

Getting education right can help address some of the nation’s biggest challenges, such as high school dropout rates and poverty.

But throughout U.S. history, dissatisfaction with student achievement levels has spurred major education reform efforts.

Russia’s launch of the Sputnik space satellite, for example, triggered the 1958 National Defense Education Act. That measure attempted to strengthen science and math instruction to bolster Cold War defense efforts.

Concerns about educational inequality led to the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which funded schools serving students from low-income families.

After President Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education in 1979, small-government conservatives, including Ronald Reagan, pledged to abolish it.

As president, however, Reagan appointed former education commissioner Terrel Bell as secretary of education. Bell convened the National Commission on Excellence in Education. And in 1983 it produced A Nation at Risk, a report that warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity” in schools.

It motivated national leaders to push for higher academic standards.

In 1997, growing alarm over many students’ poor reading levels led to the National Reading Panel, which emphasized evidence-based reading instruction.

In response to continuing concern about U.S. education, President George W. Bush partnered with U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to pass the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. The law attempted to raise standards by mandating testing and interventions for low-performing schools. It provided incentives for successful schools and punishment for failing ones.

This law significantly improved achievement, particularly in math.

President George W. Bush appears at the bill-signing ceremony of the No Child Left Behind Act at Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio, on Jan. 8, 2002.
Tim Sloan/AFP via Getty Images

Institute of Education Sciences

Just months after Congress approved the No Child Left Behind Act, it established the Institute of Education Sciences to provide independent education research, becoming the first federal agency dedicated to using scientific research to guide education policy.

Before the institute, educational research was fragmented, ideologically driven and inaccessible to parents and teachers. Findings were buried in books or locked behind paywalls.

The institute broke that cycle. Structured with statutory independence, it is led by a director and a board composed of researchers, not political appointees.

It produces replicable results and makes them freely available to the public.

For example, the What Works Clearinghouse, launched in 2003, provides educators with guidance on effective practices. A school board seeking to adopt a new curriculum can find answers on the site about effective approaches.

The clearinghouse distills research into clear recommendations. It spares local decision-makers from having to wade through complex studies. The site also references original studies and offers descriptions for local decision-makers who want to examine the evidence for themselves.

Since 2007, it has published 30 practice guides. They cover topics such as teaching fractions, improving reading and reducing high school dropout rates.

These guides synthesize the best available evidence, rather than relying on one study, leader or political ideology.

Yet, the clearinghouse may be one of the parts of the Institute of Education Sciences on the chopping block.

Evidence increases freedom

From the 20th-century belief that instruction should be tailored to students’ skull shape to the 1970s movement promoting unstructured learning in classrooms without walls, pseudoscience and fads have obstructed improvements in education.

The Institute of Education Sciences protects educational freedom by countering these claims.

Some argue that free markets should dictate educational choices. They believe parents and school boards will naturally gravitate toward effective programs while ineffective ones fade away.

But education markets often reward programs with the best marketing, not the best results. Psychologists who study scientific thinking have documented how pseudoscientific programs gain traction through compelling narratives rather than evidence.

Meanwhile, public trust in expertise is declining, and pseudoscientific products flood the market. Programs such as Brain Balance and Learning Rx thrive in the $2 billion brain training industry.

Marketed directly to parents of children with learning difficulties, these products use slick advertising and claim to “rewire” children’s brains to boost learning. Families pay thousands for programs that lack credible, peer-reviewed evidence of lasting benefits.

Programs designed by university scholars also aren’t immune to the allure of anecdote over hard data.

Former Columbia professor Lucy Calkins downplayed the importance of teaching phonics, thus harming a generation of students’ reading development. Stanford professor Jo Boaler’s controversial ideas delayed Algebra I in some California schools until ninth grade and discouraged timed arithmetic practice.

And Drug Abuse Resistance Education thrived for decades despite overwhelming evidence that it did not work.

These examples reveal how well-intentioned but ineffective educational products gain traction through public appeal rather than rigorous research.

The future of IES

In 2007 the Office of Management and Budget awarded the Institute of Education Sciences the highest score on its program assessment rating tool, a distinction earned by only 18% of federal programs.

But most Americans probably never heard of this.

And that highlights the institute’s major weakness: insufficient emphasis on sharing its findings and practice guides with the public and policymakers.

The institute would do well to publicize its findings more extensively so that parents and education leaders can better access rigorous research to improve education.

Whatever changes are made to the Department of Education, preserving the institute’s role in providing research on what works best – and ensuring continuous exchanges between research and practice – will benefit the American public.

Nicole M. McNeil has served as an investigator on projects funded by IES, including one current project on leveraging technology to improve children’s mathematical understanding. She has given invited talks to trainees in IES predoctoral training programs and has served on IES grant review and awards panels. She regularly supports educators in engaging with IES’s What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) and its Practice Guides as part of her capacity-building efforts to connect volunteer tutors to cognitive science through an AmeriCorps VGF grant.

Robert Stuart Siegler has received funding from IES for four grants; the most recent of which ended in 2018. He also received funds from IES for heading the Fractions Practice Guide Panel and for writing a review for IES of findings from research that the institute funded.