Update. "‘Breathtakingly Irresponsible’: Former Workers Decry Decimation of #Education Dept.’s #Data Warehouse"
https://www.chronicle.com/article/breathtakingly-irresponsible-former-workers-decry-decimation-of-education-dept-s-data-warehouse
"More than 160 contracts measuring educational progress across the nation’s schools and colleges were suddenly halted. Probationary workers were fired, employees were blocked from accessing information on their computers, and a national center that dates to the time of Abraham Lincoln was effectively decommissioned overnight. Employees worked late into the evenings downloading data that had taken decades to compile, according to interviews with more than a dozen people fired from the Institute of Education Sciences (#IES), an independent and nonpartisan agency within the U.S. Department of Education [#DOE], and its National Center for Education Statistics (#NCES)…IES, which had 173 employees before the cuts, was left with just over a dozen after Elon #Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency swept through the Education Department early last month. The crippling of the office was so swift and haphazard that it left serious doubts about how much of the educational data that has informed higher-education policy and practice will continue to be available."