The academic choices you make as a teenager can shape the rest of your life: If you take high school classes for college credit, you're more likely to go to college; and if you take at least 12 credits of classes during your first year there, you're more likely to finish your degree.
These and insights from thousands of other studies can all be traced to a trove of data the federal government started collecting more than 50 years ago. But earlier this year, that effort came to a halt.
Researchers, educators and policymakers have relied on this data to form conclusions and shape policy about American education — everything from how high school counselors should be spending their days to when students should start taking higher-level math classes.
On a single day in February, the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) canceled the long-running series of surveys, known as the high school longitudinal studies. The contracts were worth tens of millions of dollars.
The surveys started in 1972, and have gathered data on more than 100,000 high school students through their first decade or so of adulthood — sometimes longer.
"For 50 years, we've been mapping a timeline of progress of our high school system, and we're going to have a big blank," said Adam Gamoran, who was nominated to lead the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Education Department's research and statistics arm, under President Biden, but was never confirmed. "That's very frustrating."
A Department of Education spokesperson said the agency is reviewing how longitudinal studies "fit into the national data collection strategy based on studies' return on investment for taxpayers." The statement also said the department's Institute of Education Sciences, which oversaw the longitudinal studies, remains committed to "mission-critical functions.
How local school administrators use the federal surveys
Quintin Shepherd, the superintendent of Pflugerville ISD, just outside Austin, Texas, said these nationally representative surveys provide a point of comparison for how things are going in his own school district.
"Where do we benchmark amongst others? And if we're leading, how can we continue to lead? If we're lagging, how can we find places where we can make improvements?" Shepherd said.
To make those improvements, Shepherd said he again looks to the longitudinal data and the research it supports. Like research showing that career and technical education could increase the odds of getting a job after high school, or that taking algebra in middle school or early in high school sets students up better for college than if they take it in later years.
"I've seen entire systems, entire states, make evolutions towards knowing what's right and doing what's right as a result of this data," said Shepherd.
"We can't just pick this back up later"
Since the effort began in the early 1970s, the federal government has collected data on six large groups of high school students.
Researchers surveyed each group at least once during high school, along with some of the adults in their lives, like their parents and teachers, and then followed up with the students periodically after that, generally over the course of a decade or so. They collected transcripts and other documents to track progress, too. In total, the data set contains thousands of variables.
Such longitudinal data sets are valuable because they allow researchers to tease out effects that can't be seen in a single snapshot – but long-term efforts like this are also rare because they require sustained funding over decades.
The survey contracts that were canceled in February included a follow-up with high schoolers who graduated during the aftermath of the Great Recession, and a follow-up with students who were middle schoolers during the pandemic and who were surveyed as high school freshmen in 2022. Those younger students are scheduled to graduate this spring.
Elise Christopher oversaw the high school longitudinal studies at the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Institute of Education Sciences, until she was laid off in March along with dozens of her colleagues. Christopher, a statistician who worked at the center for more than 14 years, is concerned about the data that was scheduled to be collected this year and now won't be.
"We can't just pick this back up later," she said of the students graduating next year. "They won't be in high school. We won't be able to understand what makes them want to come to school every day, because they'll be gone."
Researchers were hoping to learn more about why chronic absenteeism has persisted in schools even years after COVID-19 abated, Christopher explained. They were also hoping to understand whether students are now less interested in attending college than previous generations.
"Every single person in this country who's been educated in the past 50 years has benefited from something that one of these longitudinal surveys has done," she said.
Stuart Buck is executive director of the Good Science Project, a group advocating for less bureaucracy in science funding.
"It seems to me that even if you were the most hardcore libertarian who wants the government to regulate almost nothing, collecting national statistics is about the most innocuous and useful thing that a government could do," he said.
He likened Trump's cuts to "someone showing up to your house and claiming they saved you $200 a month, and it turns out they canceled your electricity."
Never finding out how the story ends
Latrenda Knighten, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and a former math educator, said the studies have been a reliable source of insights for math teachers across the country.
"Selfishly, for me as an educator in a pre-K-12 system, I want that information," she said. "Because I want to make sure that we are doing the best that we can to provide students, in those formative years, with what they need."
Knighten said she and educators like her looked to the studies to better understand what kind of math classes most benefit students after high school — in college or in the workforce. And insights from current high schoolers could be especially valuable in the coming years, she said, as technology rapidly changes jobs and opportunities for young workers.
Knighten said the cancellation of the surveys is like "reading a really good book and getting to the climax and just stopping and never finding out how the story ends."
Reporting contributed by: Kate Martin
A previous version of this story appeared on APM Reports.
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