The board of directors did not provide an official explanation for its actions. But Harvard education professor Martin West said in an interview that the cuts were meant to save efforts to assess in 2026. “As the program reduces the pressure on spending in real time, a faster moment is coming,” he said.
In other words, the board effectively cuts off the patient’s appendages to save the brain and heart. Despite the sacrifice, it is still unclear that Gambit would work.
Doge calls for a 50% cut to $190 million a year for testing plans. Almost all of the work is handled by external contractors such as Westat and ETS, and a five-year contract was awarded at the end of 2024. But instead of making annual payments, Doge reduces payments to shorter increments, putting pressure on contractors to bear the pressure of much-needed cuts. Currently, several contracts plan to run out of money in May and June, and Doge’s approval requires a restart of the fund flow. Indeed, Doge allowed a NAEP contract to completely run out of funds on March 31, forcing ETS employees to stop writing new questions for future exams.
Reading and Math Testing is scheduled to be managed in schools starting in January 2026, so additional disruptions may completely separate the primary assessment of NAEP. The NAEP was captured by a sample of 450,000 students who were selected to represent all fourth and eighth grade students in the country, each taking only the exam. This sampling method avoids the burden of testing every child in the country, but it requires the education sector contractor to perform complex statistical calculations of the number of subjects received and the number of test portions required to produce effective and reliable results. The contractor then must package the test section into a virtual test manual for students to be online. The education department also must obtain approval from the Office of Federal Administration and Budget before it can begin testing in schools, another set of paperwork handled by the contractor.
Horsehead dilemma
People familiar with board deliberations are concerned that contractors may be forced to agree to cuts that could damage the quality and effectiveness of the exam itself. Major changes in the exam or its management may make it impossible to compare student achievements with 2024 results, which may undermine the entire purpose of the assessment.
Board members end up facing difficulties. They can get stuck in the whole assessment or hope to maintain high quality of NAEP with smaller tests. They chose the latter.
These cuts are intended to comply with Congressional mandates. Although Congress requires a long-term trend assessment, the law does not specify how long the trend must be managed, so the governing committee has delayed it until 2033. Many testing experts question whether the exam has become a redundant NAEP because NAEP has a 35-year history of student performance. The board has discussed scrapping of the examinations since 2017. “The passage of time has raised questions about its continued value,” West said.
Originally scheduled for 2032, writing assessments for grades 4, 8 and 12 require overhaul, which will be an expensive, difficult process, especially with the current debate about what it means to teach writing in the AI era.
Loss of results at the national and regional level of certain exams (such as high school reading and math) is some of the more painful cuts. Comparing the ability of students to achieve across state lines has always been one of the most valuable aspects of the NAEP test, as comparisons can provide role models for other states and territories.
Cut costs
“Everyone agrees that NAEP can be more effective,” West said. West added that the board has been working to cut costs for years. But he said testing changes to future exams is tricky without compromising the effectiveness and quality of the current exam. Dual paths sometimes increase costs in the short term.
It is unclear how many millions of dollars were saved by the cancellation of the committee on Monday, but savings are certainly less than 50% of what Doge requires. The biggest driver of expenses is the main NAEP testing retained. The contract is awarded by a task, not through an assessment, so the contractor must come back to estimate that certain exams will affect their estimates of their expenses. For example, since the fourth grade science in 2028 has not been conducted, there is no need to write it for this. However, field workers in those days still needed to go to school to manage tests, including reading and math that have not yet been cut.
Comparative new and new evaluation timetables
External observers condemned cuts on social media, and an education commentator said the cancellation “start to lose muscle.” Science and history, while not congressional regulations, are important to many. “We should care about how our schools teach science,” Allison Socol said. “Any data point you look at shows that future careers will rely heavily on STEM skills.” ”
Doge’s Socol is worried about being unhappy with board cuts and demand. “It’s much easier to destroy things than to build them,” she said. “And once you take one thing away, it’s easy to get another.”
On April 17, the Ministry of Education announced that it would carry out the 2026 NAEP as planned. But after the massive layoffs in March, the department has the ability to oversee the process, as only two employees with NAEP experience are among nearly 30 employees who have worked in the test. McMahon may need to rehire some employees to achieve this, but the new job fair contradicts the spirit of Trump’s order to close the department.
Socol is worried that the Trump administration doesn’t want to measure student achievement. “The government not only has a very clear impetus in the education sector, but it’s less clear to understand how our public institutions serve the people of this country,” Socol said. “It’s much easier to ignore inequality if you don’t see it, and that’s the point.”
The Education Department did not answer my questions about their intentions for NAEP. McMahon is very strong at articulating the value of the assessment, but since Doge has to approve the NAEP contract, she may not have the final say. “It is clear that the secretary’s office does not have complete control over the door staff,” said one person who understands internal dynamics of the education department. “McMahon’s perspective influenced Doge’s priorities, but McMahon had no direct control at all.”
The ball is now in the Governor’s Court.
* Correction: An earlier version of the sentence erroneously stated that the long-term trend of NAEP two governments were scrapped by the Council on April 21. Only the government in 2029 was cancelled by the board of directors. In February, the Ministry of Education canceled the long-term trend NAEP for 17-year-olds in 2025. The nine-year-old and 13-year-old students have taken it away by April.
Contact the worker Jill Barshay At 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 about signal or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
