As reading and math scores fall to their lowest point in the past quarter-century, the US now has fewer tools to understand and develop interventions for this troubling trend. When the Trump administration took a wrecking ball to the Department of Education last year, -- firing nearly half of its workers and allowing the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to cancel nearly $900m in contracts, -- a little-known agency called the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) was among the hardest hit. NCES, a federal statistical agency, has for decades collected critical data on the state of education in America, including The Nation’s Report Card, an assessment of what students know across math, reading, writing, science and history. NCES data also helps set US education policy and allocate funding for school districts. But nearly all of the statistical agency’s work was abruptly terminated and its headcount dropped from about 100 to four. Some were rehired; NCES now has 12 staffers, according to the agency’s website. The cuts, which are part of the administration’s broader attack on taxpayer-funded data and research that don’t align with the president’s priorities, have hamstrung the historically under-resourced agency’s ability to collect and report on a range of data on K-12 and college students. These include surveys on the prevalence of guns and violence at middle and high schools and studies on how students are paying for college, former NCES employees say. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/25/student-math-reading-test-scores?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other