Without NAEP, we will not be so painfully aware of the learning losses of the pandemic and how children can’t read and reproduce like they did in 2019, nor will other states hope to replicate the wonders of Mississippi, which in just a decade has been read from the fourth to the fourth grade of the 49th readers nationwide. Indeed, the disastrous 2024 NAEP score is the primary reason President Donald Trump shut down the education sector in a March 2025 executive order. Without NAEP, there is no evidence of failure.
Testing from the outside seems like a simple task. After all, teachers create and conduct exams every day. But under the hood, NAEP is very complex and a series of actions must be created by different deadlines. Review their validity, reliability and bias; select students who will be tested and tested with them, and finally analyze the results with statistical accuracy. Smaller delays and cuts can have great consequences. “It’s like Jenga,” said a former education official. “If you take out something, the whole thing will collapse.”
The threat to NAEP began in February by Elon Musk’s Ministry of Efficiency (DOGE). Doge’s cost cutters cut the Ministry of Education’s research and statistics contract, but the spokesman stressed that NAEP’s contract has not been cut. Although NAEP seems to have survived, there are warning signs. The data on which the test depends has been cancelled. Without data on student demographics and poverty, statisticians will not be able to create nationally representative students to take the NAEP exam.
Then, behind the scenes, the education department began to challenge NAEP directly.
Strict external analysis scrap
In February, a panel of experts studying the effectiveness of NAEP exams was told to stop working because the Ministry of Education had cut funds, according to panel members. The team maintained the rigorous quality of the exam by studying whether the questions in the test measure the skills we care about and whether we can trust scores. Jack Buckley, former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, chaired the NAEP effectiveness research group and said it was meeting weekly until mid-February.
Threatened non-core NAEP testing
NAEP includes large tests, beyond the primary tests of mathematics and reading for fourth and eighth graders in the early 1990s. It also dates back to the older NAEP tests in 1969, which have been renamed as the “Long-Trend” test. A few days after the cuts about contracts, the education department canceled the long-term trend NAEP for the 17-year-old, which is scheduled to be managed this year. The law stipulates that long-term trend assessments of NAEP must continue to be conducted for students aged 9, 13 and 17 years, but there is no specified frequency. Some state education officials and researchers worry that cancellations will lead to other NAEP tests that Congress does not need, which Congress does not need. “These things are important for comprehensive education,” said a state education official, who demanded anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Funding suspension and writing exams
External contractors perform most of the work to create and manage exams. That’s why in the late winter, when state education officials heard that a contract with private data collection company Westat suspended funds to select a sample of representatives of students taking the exam and then administered in the school. The funding was restored in March a few weeks later, according to a former Education Department official. Westat denied any pause in funding and said the work is still available from June to June. But rumors shocked state officials. As of last week, Maryland officials have not learned that the work has been restored and believe it is still on hold. “There is a lot of confusion,” another state’s assessment administrator said.
Funding and work also temporarily stopped the digital platform students used to take exams and used to fill out questionnaires, and according to four people familiar with the matter, they did not want to be identified because they were worried about consequences. Like all software, it requires ongoing maintenance, upgrades and security patches. But the timing is particularly worrying, as digital testing will be managed differently in 2026. Instead of NAEP bringing the device to school, it uses testing software to preinstall it, and it is tested on the school computer. Additional work must be done to ensure that the school can log in without failure.
Contractors built the platform ETS showed off its features for Doge last week. But, according to former education officials, Doge staff are looking for additional cost-cutting places and are impressed.
This digital platform is also needed to complete the behind-the-scenes paperwork so that states can participate in the 2026 assessment. These steps should be completed in May. For now, the funds for digital platforms are exhausted again in June.
The Education Department did not respond to inquiries to explain its plans for NAEP and the reasons for the cuts. According to former education officials, cuts were partly linked to Washington’s budget campaign, which allowed education sector funds to be limited in mid-March when shutdowns were imminent. Once Congress provides funds to the government, fresh funds will be fine until September 30, but the suppliers do not receive the money immediately. It is unclear whether the delays were intentional and also a strategy for pressure suppliers to make cost concessions or the result of a massive shooting at the Ministry of Education in March, which leaves employees insufficient to handle the new funding.
Uncertainty in the National Coordinator
Despite the suspension of testing management and technology, NAEP State Coordinator funds may run out by the end of March. State education officials fear losing these critical jobs that coordinate testing in state schools and process data sharing agreements with Washington. “We’re sweating,” said an education official in a Republican-controlled state. The official will have to fire the important employee. Funding was finally obtained on March 27, but the budget was lowered: State coordinators will no longer meet for data workshops to help them understand and understand and interpret the results to education officials and the public.
Although these national work was preserved, on March 31, funds ran out of a more critical task: the creation of the NAEP exam, according to four people who knew directly about the suspension contract. ETS conducted “content development” work, and nonprofit testing organizations told its employees that they were responsible for overseeing the writing and review of NAEP testing issues so that leave was requested until funding resumed. For the 2026 NAEP test, the problem still needs to be packaged into a 30-minute section, and new questions need to be written and field tested for future science and 12th grade math and reading.
Budget cuts
A more difficult budget cuts the loom. Doge is actively seeking to cut the size of all education sector contracts that were not terminated in February. NAEP has about 10 major contracts, and all contractors are asked to come up with ways to cut costs. According to a former Ministry of Education employee, Doge is in active negotiations with suppliers. The supplier has submitted and resubmitted the cost cut proposal, but so far, Doge employees are not satisfied.
In the Ministry of Education bureaucracy, NAEP is located within the Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) responsible for research and statistics. Mark Schneider, a non-resident researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, said he heard Doge initially sought to cut 75% of its cuts, then cut 50% of its NAEP contract, costing more than $190 million a year. Several former Ministry of Education employees said Doge questioned why the federal government needed to create expensive, customized tests, and why it couldn’t replace it with another company’s commercial “shelf” exams. Testing experts told me that there is no high-quality business examination.
More importantly, the new test will make it impossible to compare future results with past scores. If the scores are improved, it may be because the new test is easier, not because the student’s achievement has been improved.
To be sure, $190 million per year is a lot of money. Everyone I talked to said that the process might be more effective. The 2022 report from the National Academy of Sciences shows that efficiency and updated technology can reduce costs while maintaining strict quality standards. But if Docchi suddenly reduces cost by 50%, it is impossible to maintain quality, Wright said.
Supervision
In March, only two people with NAEP were with the NAEP after a massive shooting of federal employees from the Department of Education. Only one of them has experience in managing contracts with external suppliers. Prior to the mass shooting, education staff checked in with their suppliers daily and spent hours a week with them, helping to make decisions when complications arise, such as not being able to recruit enough students to test new issues on-site. Now, the remaining remaining contract supervisors are responsible not only for NAEP, but also for all contracts collected. Former education staff said that each supplier has no more than 10 minutes per week. “You may encounter errors when you don’t have these bodies,” Wright said. “You need to monitor this work day after day.”
Not everyone is worried. Erika Donalds is a close ally of Education Minister Linda McMahon. Donalds opens the Center for Education Opportunity in the right-wing think tank of the First Institute of Policy. She expressed confidence that McMahon retained NAEP, and Donalds was considered “worthy.”
“I don’t have the same heartburn right now,” Donalds said. “I have confidence in the team and their understanding of the importance of information continuity.”
Behind the scenes of lobbying
The Evaluation Center discussed anxiety about NAEP in its April 2 webinar, a nonprofit organization that advises the country in its annual tests. According to Juan D’Brot, senior assistant to the center, many state education supervisors and their staff attended the legislative session of the Chief State School Officer’s Committee in Washington in March. “As far as we know, many people advocate the role of NAEP and the importance of credible, high-risk assessments directly to the Ministry of Education,” he wrote in a webinar chat.
Other supporters of the test are making comments in the media. Education Secretary William Bennett, led by former President Ronald Reagan, wrote an open letter in 74-year-old conservative commentator Chester Finn urging McMahon to retain NAEP, calling it “the department’s most important activity.” Bennett then worked with Lamar Alexander, Minister of Education under former President George HW Bush, and published an article on the Fox News website stating that NAEP is the primary function of the three most important functions of the education sector that should be retained. Republican adviser David Winston, who worked for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, wrote an article titled “We Must Protect NAEP.”
It is not clear whether anyone in the education department is listening.
