ANALYSIS: Data Sets and Book Bans

The rush to scrub or in some cases take down datasets raises the question: Is this the next step in the book ban movement? Or is there a greater opportunity arising before us?

By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Most parents and students have probably never heard of the Institue of Education Sciences. But those who are concerned with what works and what doesn’t in education lean heavily on its findings when evaluating government programs.

For a government agency, IES’ signature program is uncharacteristically clearly named — the What Works Clearinghouse.

Nonpartisan in approach, it uses research to evaluate existing programs and rates them from Tier 1 — best — to Tier 4 — worst. (In fairness, the program soft-pedals its findings. Tier 1 programs are deemed “strong,” while Tiers 3 and 4 are damned with faint praise as “promising” and “rationale.”)

IES also collects and reports out education statistics. Want to know what education in Virginia looks like? — there’s an IES dashboard for that.

Last week, however, IES found itself squarely in Elon Musk’s crosshairs as the division “is being all but shut down,” according to a report from NPR. While the site itself is still functioning, contracts have been cancelled and there are concerns as to whether the work on which WWC rests will continue.

Fears that other data collectors and datasets may soon be ended are growing. Earlier this month, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey — considered by many to be one of the most useful tools for understanding American society, and by others an example of government overreach — temporarily disappeared.

This effort to remove, short-circuit, or in some instances scrub databases of information the new Administration doesn’t agree with has the potential to cause significant economic damage. The numbers of people and organizations that depend upon ACS data, for instance, are spread across the economy. From the business community to the military, housing industry to local governments, and state governments to researchers at universities around the world.

If WWC and ACS and related databases suddenly disappear, what happens?

Here One Day, Gone the Next

Eric Bonds is a professor at the University of Mary Washington who uses a mapping tool called EJScreen to help students understand “environmental hazards and pollution risks along with demographic characteristics like race, income, and measures of community health.”

However, earlier this month, the tool suddenly vanished. “I was using the tool in the morning to prepare for class. But by the time I got there in the afternoon, the tool had been removed,” he told the Advance.

It’s not just a few wide-eyed students who lose out. According to Bonds, “Cities can use this tool as a way to learn who is facing environmental risks and ensure that those risks aren't falling disproportionately on disadvantaged neighborhoods.”

The recent pulling of funds from the Charting My Path for Future Success Program in Spotsylvania Schools is another victim of the assault on education data. It won’t be the last.

Parents, too, may be surprised at data they potentially stand to lose if DOGE pursues an across-the-board approach to ending data.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as America’s Report Card, is the only exam administered to students across the United States that allows for apples-to-apples comparisons of student performance across state lines. (State standardized tests, like the SOL in Virginia and TCAP in Tennessee, are developed independently of one another, meaning you can’t compare performance from state-to-state based on student performance.) It’s also overseen by the National Center for Education Statistics and IES.

Were NAEP data to disappear, or NAEP itself short-circuited, a powerful tool that serves as a check on state test quality would no longer be available.

Book-banning Equivalent, or Prelude to Educational Overhaul?

Locally, we are just beginning to see the impact that dataset removals and scrubs are having on individuals. The larger question is what’s driving this purge?

Some will look at this attack on data and draw a parallel to the book-banning fervor that swept through Spotsylvania in recent years.

Andrew Van Dam made a book-banning connection in a recent column for the Washington Post.

[W]atching [ACS] files disappear from a federal FTP server felt like watching the Library of Alexandria go up in smoke.

It’s not an incongruent comparison. ACS data daily touches our personal lives, informing everything from grant distribution, police work, school meals program, and school redistricting to most every decision in which localities pull upon reliable data to guide their thinking. (This document from George Washington University gives an overview of how extensively ACS data is deployed across the nation.)

It’s roughly the equivalent of stripping libraries from schools, thus depriving students of the information they need to stretch their minds.

The assault on books locally drew swift condemnation from both myself and my conservative Advance cofounder Shaun Kenney, who quite possibly best described the irrationality of it all.

This argument over who-reads-what has to be the dumbest, most ignorant, most illiterate and stupidest debate on the history of God’s green earth.

Scrubbing or simply shutting down data because it recognizes LGBTQ+ individuals; or because it has points inspired by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; or because it deals with climate change or the connection between toxins and health seems as illiterate and stupid a tactic as banning books.

It’s not because data is always correct, or that we interpret it correctly. (See the recent Politico article: Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong.) Like any book, how well we understand it depends on our ability to see its strengths and weaknesses and report out accordingly.

Place me in the camp of those who see the connection between banning books and shuttering datasets.

Others will approach what’s happening and question if federal datasets and the agencies that produce them are causing more harm than good.

Matt Hurt, who runs the Comprehensive Instruction Program, is not as of now worried about NAEP data or, for that matter, IES or NCES, disappearing. To this point, he’s not aware of any threats to educational data used by the CIP program.

However, his answer went a step further.

“I’m not going to be all that upset if much happens with the Department of Education in Washington DC. That institution may create more problems than solutions.”

While he acknowledges that schools may well be affected by decreased budgets as federal dollars get withdrawn when agencies like IES and NCES are downsized, he also knows that “with … that … money — you’re hamstrung by the way you spend it.”

He cites as an example the process of “title monitoring.”

“Every division has to go through Title Monitoring,” Hurt told the Advance on Sunday. “Part of this is an accountability measure.” So districts have to report on Title I, and Title II, and Title III, and Title V dollars, and more.

The accountability element, however, “creates hoops for districts to jump through,” he said. “And in small districts [— like those in the CIP program —] there may be one person handling all this monitoring.”

Thus, “The strain on the district, and the added expense of hiring people to oversee it, can prove daunting,” he said.

Still, Hurt acknowledges some positives that have come with some federal regulations that necessitate data collection.

He points to No Child Left Behind act. The policy was deeply “flawed,” he said, “but at least it caused us to pay attention to subgroups” and their performance relative to other subgroups.

Pointing to the Bigger Issue

Acknowledging both the loss we will face if data disappears, as well as the reality that reforms need to occur around issues of federal overreach into education, points us to a bigger question.

What data do we need?

Hurt says: “[T]he data we need is a philosophical debate. We have to determine what our end goal is, and then determine what the appropriate measures of that are.”

Right now, there is no consensus on this.

The current moves by the Trump Administration will not create that discussion. Rather, they will only force the two sides further apart.

Fortunately, book bans and cries to destroy datasets tend to be short-lived. They burn white hot for a moment, until those who lit the match began to recognize the damage they’re doing to themselves.

That day is coming.

When it does, however, we’re going to need the data that is currently in place, and all parties at the table, to address the larger questions.

What is our end goal? And what data do we need to get there?

Destroying information won’t help us figure this out.

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