As part of the dramatic cuts at the U.S. Department of Education under the Trump administration’s DOGE program, the entire staff of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was cut to just one person. NAEP had a budget of $190 billion to administer an assessment in reading and math to a representative sample of 4th and 8th graders in every state every other year. The test questions change, but the testing standards and measures do not. This means that NAEP is the only uniform way to measure public education in each state and over time.
I’m often asked if school choice is an effective policy. In other words—do states that let parents easily choose from a number of publicly funded options for their children do better than those that don’t? We need NAEP to know the answer. Also, folks want to know if Missouri is improving or getting worse when it comes to educating our students. Well, the state has changed its own test several times in the last decade, so the only way we can know is to look at NAEP scores.
It’s difficult to achieve accountability in a vacuum. Gutting something in the name of cutting costs can be costly in itself. Missourians should hope that NAEP, federal education data collection, and the federal role in researching what works in education get rebuilt quickly and thoughtfully.
