Unexpected Dismissal
Peggy Carr, the first woman and the first Black person to lead the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), was abruptly dismissed from her position as commissioner on February 24, 2022. The reason for her removal remains unclear.
Carr was escorted out of her office without any explanation and never officially told the reason for her dismissal. She described the firing as a "professional tragedy" and a "personal tragedy," stating that she does not know whether the decision came from the White House, a government efficiency office, or an outside policy advocate.
As commissioner, Carr oversaw 60 data collections, some with multiple parts, and was responsible for documenting geographic boundaries for school districts and classifying locales as urban, rural, suburban, or town. This data is crucial for federal programs.
NCES is the federal government's third-largest statistical agency, and Carr was attempting to modernize and fix the agency while piloting an old airplane, taped together through a complicated network of contracts. The immediate problem is that there aren't enough personnel to do the work that Congress mandates.
Carr's dismissal left NCES leaderless until July 7. Following her dismissal, Carr's deputy, Chris Chapman, was also fired. The Education Department disclosed in a June legal brief that it is restarting the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), but it's unclear who will tabulate the scores and analyze them for the test.
Carr's priority was to save NAEP, but the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), known as DOGE, was demanding aggressive cuts. Carr worked to satisfy the demands without cutting into critical activities, but she could not see a way to achieve the 50% cuts to NAEP's $185 million budget without breaking the trend of tracking student achievement over time.
The fate of NCES remains uncertain, with the Education Department saying it is restarting and reassessing some data collections that DOGE terminated, but the scope of the work might be much smaller. NCES has an unusual structure, relying on outside contractors to do 90% of the data work. On February 10, 89 of Carr's contracts were terminated, which represented the vast majority of the statistical work that her agency conducts.
Carr joined NCES in 1993 and was appointed commissioner by former President Joe Biden in 2021. Her term was six years, established to insulate statistics from politics. Carr defended standardized tests against charges that they are racist and helped build the National Assessment of Educational Progress into the influential Nation's Report Card.
Following her dismissal, Carr plans to stay involved in education statistics from the outside, discussing calculating where states and school districts rank on an international yardstick. Carr is concerned about the maintenance of historical datasets and protecting privacy and student confidentiality. She says it will take years to understand the full extent of the damage.
References: 1. The Washington Post 2. Education Week 3. The Hechinger Report 4. The New York Times 5. Politico
- The dismissal of Peggy Carr, a notable figure in education statistics, has sparked concerns about innovation and modernization within the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a crucial source of data for federal programs and business decisions.
- The lack of clarity surrounding Carr's firing has raised questions about diversity-and-inclusion and leadership in educational institutions, particularly given her historic role as the first Black Commissioner of the NCES.
- The departure of Carr and her deputy has left NCES in a state of leadership vacuum, potentially impacting careers in education statistics and general news reporting.
- The financial implications of Carr's dismissal extend beyond education, affecting business operations and political decisions, as access to accurate education data is essential for informed decision-making.
- The ongoing uncertainty surrounding NCES underscores the broader issue of inequality in access to quality education and the role of politics in shaping education policies, a topic of ongoing debate in politics and general news.
