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My View

As federal cuts to education research loom — including potential reductions to programs that manage the National Assessment of Educational Progress — we’re facing a troubling reality. We’re losing the very tools that help us see what’s working in schools.

For more than a decade, our lowest-performing students have been falling behind at alarming rates. The gap between the highest and lowest performers is now the widest in testing history, according to reporting by Chalkbeat, with lower-performing 4th and 8th graders posting the worst reading scores in 30 years.

Without robust federal research to guide our understanding of effective interventions, school districts must become their own laboratories for learning. The question is: How do we improve our ability to identify and support struggling students when traditional research infrastructure is under threat?