E. Hansford's take on disbanding US ED

Are we slaughtering the goose who delivered a golden egg?

Emily Hanford, whose name is likely familiar to most readers of Special Education Today because of her influential reporting about reading and reading instruction in the series of podcasts called “Sold a Story,” dropped an episode 21 August 2025 about reductions in the US government’s support for educational research. The topic is closely related to previous posts here on SET (see 11 February 2025, 12 February 2025, 14 August 2025, 12 October 2025).

Photo of a microphone in front of a keyboard and a monitor showing the splash page for Sold a Story. Photo © 2025 by John Wills Lloyd, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). American Public Media has rights to the image on the screen.

Here is Ms. Hanford’s explanation of what the episode covers:

You might think the Trump administration’s cuts to the Department of Education are a good thing. You might think they’re a bad thing. But most people seem to agree that something big is happening here. Something is changing about the federal government’s role in education. And about the federal government’s role in education research. And because this podcast has focused on education research, we decided to make an episode about what’s happening.

…

For this episode, we talked to a bunch of the researchers who are responsible for the body of work people now call “the science of reading.” They told us they’re deeply concerned that cuts to the Institute of Education Sciences — and to scientific research more broadly — pose a threat. A threat to continued progress on the science of reading and the effort to get that science into schools. We also talked to historians to help us put what’s happening now into perspective. And that’s where we’re going to start. With a little bit of history.

Ms. Hanford’s reporting in this episode integrates events—many of which will also be familiar to many readers—with discussions with staffers for the Institute of Education Sciences and researchers who have experienced the reductions in force during the tumultuous months between February and September of 2025.

I strongly encourage readers to listen to this episode of Sold a Story. Episode 14: The Cuts” is available for free. There are additional resources (e.g., a transcript) at the Web page for the episode and one can find other valuable resources available at the show’s Web site, Sold a Story.

Highly recommended.