Federal Education Cuts Halt Technical Assistance Programs

Until recently, Nevada’s Washoe County school district was working with the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) West on a project to reduce chronic absence. The REL West team was in the middle of conducting multiple studies including one on early warning indicators, another examining a specific intervention they were testing to reduce chronic absence, and another looking at how the district could improve their student absence review boards. In mid-February, the US Department of Education abruptly canceled all of the contracts behind the REL and Comprehensive Centers programs, causing all projects to come to a halt. Now the results from the research will not be shared with Washoe County, let alone publicly.

According to the US Department of Education (ED), these contracts were cancelled due to “wasteful and ideologically driven spending” and for “forcing radical agendas onto states and systems.” But this rationale misstates and distorts the structure, work, and goals of these programs.

Both the RELs and Comprehensive Centers helped states, school districts, education service centers, institutions of higher education, and other education partners address some of the most pressing challenges in education. They had a regional focus, with 10 RELs and 14 Regional Comprehensive Centers distributed across different regions of the country, that allowed them to provide intensive assistance grounded in the needs of the region and driven by their state and local partners. There was also a National Comprehensive Center providing universal and targeted assistance to states across the country, often collaborating with the Regional Centers. “We help leaders use evidence-based practices in their decision making and their initiatives and to build structures, policies and practices to help sustain the work over time. It’s not what we come up with, it’s what they ask us to do,” said a former staff member of the National Comprehensive Center who wished to remain anonymous. [1] In other words, these programs worked in partnership with practitioners and decision makers to solve their own problems of practice.

As John Rice, who directed REL West, shared in an interview, state and local partners were largely focused on perennial issues such as teacher retention, chronic absence, literacy and math achievement. Partnerships and projects often grew out of need sensing in the field, for example, a school district might have a challenge with reading achievement and be looking for help on how to address the issue. REL West had a protocol to gauge the level of readiness and commitment of a potential partner to help ensure that the work would help “move the needle” on the issue and have the maximum impact possible. “But the key is that the work was always driven by the partners. It was always based on their questions, their problems of practice…So, the strategies we would use varied…Sometimes we'd do technical assistance around data use, sometimes it'd be an applied research study. Sometimes it would be both, but whatever we collectively thought was needed to help partners reach their goals around improving student outcomes,” he said.

One of the projects that REL West was engaged in, and that was cut short by the contract cancellation, was in partnership with six institutions of higher education (IHEs) in California that were looking for strategies on how to bring back adults who had completed some credits but had not yet earned a certificate or a degree. The work aimed to identify effective strategies to re-engage these learners with the hopes that they could be scaled and applied at other IHEs. Rice also pointed to work to translate dense academic research and complex practice guides into practical tools that educators could apply directly in their classrooms.

The contract cancellations also eliminated projects addressing one of the biggest issues in education, teacher shortages. The National Comprehensive Center spent the last couple of years focused on helping states and districts address teacher shortages. They conducted a two year professional learning series to help increase awareness and highlight best practices for Grow Your Own educator programs, in partnership with New America and other organizations. Another professional learning series focused on educator Registered Apprenticeship programs and how to design and implement high-quality programs. They brought together a workgroup of external partners including senior leaders from the US Department of Education and the US Department of Labor and members from regional Comprehensive Centers, Jobs for the Future, the Tennessee GYO center, the Educator Registered Apprenticeship intermediary, and more. “It was really effective. By the time we ended that series there were 47 states that had approved programs,” said the former National Comprehensive Center staff member. The Center created toolkits to help guide GYO and educator apprenticeship efforts, which are no longer publicly accessible, thus wasting taxpayer dollars.

The current presidential administration is attempting to dismantle and close the US Department of Education under the pretense of bringing control back to the states. However, local education and state education agencies rely on the resources and technical assistance provided by the federal government are reeling from the cuts. As a recent article in Education Week staff from a handful of different state agencies bemoaned the loss of expertise and thought partnership.

Education partners across the country are concerned about how states and districts will access the essential support they need to serve students and families and support teachers. “Education is a complex undertaking. And so what seems to be being dismantled is the very carefully designed system of support. Particularly for rural and urban environments, they need support, the needs are just more accelerated. And without an available and high quality system of support, I don’t know what will happen,” said the former National Comprehensive Center staff member.

For a fuller list of affected projects, see this resource from Knowledge Alliance.

[1] The views of this former staff member do not reflect the views of the National Comprehensive Center or the entities contracted to do this work.