Downing Street should commit to education, health and care plans (EHCPs) to keep the trust of families who have children with special educational needs, the Labour MP who chairs the education select committee has said.

A letter to the Guardian on Monday, signed by dozens of special needs and disability charities and campaigners, warned against government changes to the Send system that would restrict or abolish EHCPs. More than 600,000 children and young people rely on EHCPs for individual support in England.

Helen Hayes, who chairs the cross-party Commons education select committee, said mistrust among many families with Send children was so apparent that ministers should commit to keeping EHCPs.

“I think at this stage that would be the right thing to do,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We have been looking, as the education select committee, at the Send system for the last several months. We have heard extensive evidence from parents, from organisations that represent parents, from professionals and from others who are deeply involved in the system, which is failing so many children and families at the moment.

“One of the consequences of that failure is that parents really have so little trust and confidence in the Send system at the moment. And the government should take that very seriously as it charts a way forward for reform.

“It must be undertaking reform and setting out new proposals in a way that helps to build the trust and confidence of parents and which doesn’t make parents feel even more fearful than they do already about their children’s future.”

She added: “At the moment, we have a system where all of the accountability is loaded on to the statutory part of the process, the EHCP system, and I think it is understandable that many parents would feel very, very fearful when the government won’t confirm absolutely that EHCPs and all of the accountabilities that surround them will remain in place.”

The letter published in the Guardian is evidence of growing public concern, despite reassurances from the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, that no decisions have yet been taken about the fate of EHCPs.

Labour MPs who spoke to the Guardian are worried ministers are unable to explain key details of the special educational needs shake-up being considered in the schools white paper to be published in October.

Stephen Morgan, a junior education minister, reiterated Phillipson’s refusal to say whether the white paper would include plans to change or abolish EHCPs, telling Sky News he could not “get into the mechanics” of the changes for now.

However, he said change was needed: “We inherited a Send system which was broken. The previous government described it as lose, lose, lose, and I want to make sure that children get the right support where they need it, across the country.”

Hayes reiterated this wider point, saying: “It is absolutely clear to us on the select committee that we have a system which is broken. It is failing families, and the government will be wanting to look at how that system can be made to work better.

“But I think they have to take this issue of the lack of trust and confidence, the fear that parents have, and the impact that it has on the daily lives of families. This is an everyday lived reality if you are battling a system that is failing your child, and the EHCPs provide statutory certainty for some parents. It isn’t a perfect system … but it does provide important statutory protection and accountability.”

The repercussions from the decimation of staff at the Education Department keep coming. Last week, the fallout led to a delay in releasing results from a national science test.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is best known for tests that track reading and math achievement but includes other subjects too. In early 2024, when the main reading and math tests were administered, there was also a science section for eighth graders. 

The board that oversees NAEP had announced at its May meeting that it planned to release the science results in June. But that month has since come and gone. 

Why the delay? There is no commissioner of education statistics to sign off on the score report, a requirement before it is released, according to five current and former officials who are familiar with the release of NAEP scores, but asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press or feared retaliation. 

Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

Peggy Carr, a former Biden administration appointee, was dismissed as the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics in February, two years before the end of her six-year term set by Congress. Chris Chapman was named acting commissioner, but then he was fired in March, along with half the employees at the Education Department. The role has remained vacant since.

A spokesman for the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees NAEP,  said the science scores will be released later this summer, but denied that the lack of a commissioner is the obstacle. “The report building is proceeding so the naming of a commissioner is not a bureaucratic hold up to its progress,” Stephaan Harris said by email.

The delay matters. Education policymakers have been keen to learn if science achievement had held steady after the pandemic or tumbled along with reading and math. (Those reading and math scores were released in January.)

The Trump administration has vowed to dismantle the Education Department and did not respond to an emailed question about when a new commissioner would be appointed. 

Related: Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3

Researchers hang onto data

Keeping up with administration policy can be head spinning these days. Education researchers were notified in March that they would have to relinquish federal data they were using for their studies. (The department shares restricted datasets, which can include personally identifiable information about students, with approved researchers.) 

But researchers learned on June 30 that the department had changed its mind and decided not to terminate this remote access. 

Lawyers who are suing the Trump administration on behalf of education researchers heralded this about-face as a “big win.” Researchers can now finish projects in progress. 

Still, researchers don’t have a way of publishing or presenting papers that use this data. Since the mass firings in mid-March, there is no one remaining inside the Education Department to review their papers for any inadvertent disclosure of student data, a required step before public release. And there is no process at the moment for researchers to request data access for future studies. 

“While ED’s change-of-heart regarding remote access is welcome,” said Adam Pulver of Public Citizen Litigation Group, “other vital services provided by the Institute of Education Sciences have been senselessly, illogically halted without consideration of the impact on the nation’s educational researchers and the education community more broadly.  We will continue to press ahead with our case as to the other arbitrarily canceled programs.”

Pulver is the lead attorney for one of three suits fighting the Education Department’s termination of research and statistics activities. Judges in the District of Columbia and Maryland have denied researchers a preliminary injunction to restore the research and data cuts. But the Maryland case is now fast-tracked and the court has asked the Trump administration to produce an administrative record of its decision making process by July 11. (See this previous story for more background on the court cases.)

Related: Education researchers sue Trump administration, testing executive power

Some NSF grants restored in California

Just as the Education Department is quietly restarting some activities that DOGE killed, so is the National Science Foundation (NSF). The federal science agency posted on its website that it reinstated 114 awards to 45 institutions as of June 30. NSF said it was doing so to comply with a federal court order to reinstate awards to all University of California researchers. It was unclear how many of these research projects concerned education, one of the major areas that NSF funds.

Researchers and universities outside the University of California system are hoping for the same reversal. In June, the largest professional organization of education researchers, the American Educational Research Association, joined forces with a large coalition of organizations and institutions in filing a legal challenge to the mass termination of grants by the NSF. Education grants were especially hard hit in a series of cuts in April and May. Democracy Forward, a public interest law firm, is spearheading this case.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

This story about delaying the NAEP science score report was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

Key points:

When I talk about our district being the seventh-largest in Kentucky, with 13,000 students, people don’t have a frame of reference for what it’s like educating that many young people. But when I compare the size of our student body to the passenger count of four cruise ships, it clicks. 

So imagine we’re on a voyage with thousands of students, except they’re not disembarking after a week or two. They’re with us for the long haul. As we endeavor to understand their journey of learning, one piece of data does not tell us the whole story. 

Before Bullitt County Public Schools implemented a comprehensive data system, we often found ourselves looking at multiple different data sources for each individual child. We would go to one platform to look at their reading data, another for their behavior data, and yet another for math.

Likewise, one type of data is not sufficient either, so our educators consider both quantitative and qualitative reference points. For instance, we conduct empathy interviews where we talk with students and staff to find out more about their experiences. Specifically, this has allowed us to improve in closing the achievement gap for students with disabilities over the last several years and to provide our teachers with more tailored professional learning for support.

That’s just one example among many that illustrates the success we’ve had already at establishing a culture where data is prized. We look at it. We use it. We do something with it at all levels of our organization. But when educators have abundant reports that are not interconnected, they are data rich and information poor, which can result in less-than-optimal decisions. This became apparent with the implementation of assessment platforms for universal screening and diagnostic assessments, which were additional platforms we did not previously have in the district. When taking inventory of all the programs and platforms, our data was scattered everywhere like luggage on a cruise ship that had never been assigned cabin numbers–everyone’s bags were out, but no one knew where anything belonged or how to get it to the right cabin. 

Academic and non-academic data allow us to see the whole child, but when the metrics are scattered across many platforms, it leads to siloed decision-making at the classroom, school, and district level. We knew that providing our teachers and principals with one place to access data in one location gives educators time back and improves their ability to make essential improvement decisions.  

My role includes oversight of programs ranging from school counseling to English learning to technology, as well as curriculum implementation, instruction and assessment programming, and alignment with federal, state, and local resources. The inundation of disjointed data hit me particularly hard. It felt like I was trying to steer a massive cruise ship, but the navigation data for the engine room was on one system, the passenger manifest on another, and the weather radar on a completely different, incompatible screen. 

Compliance and reporting is not the most exciting part of my job, but it has to be done and is a monumental responsibility in and of itself. Many reports require data from multiple sources to demonstrate need and program effectiveness. Manually stitching pieces of information on spreadsheets is a significant drain on time and resources–and an all-too-common struggle for leaders overseeing complex educational ecosystems. 

For years, I had been on the hunt for a place where all the data about a student, from the time they enrolled in Bullitt County Public Schools to the time they graduated, could be collected from all the different sources. But not only that, the system had to be straightforward. As a deputy superintendent, I don’t have time to learn to code or handle other intensive back-end requirements. And it had to be affordable, reliable, and backed by top-tier customer service. 

After we implemented our current Otus system in February 2024, I had an inkling it was different as soon as we launched access for our principals and administrators–about 35 total. We saw over 200 logins within the first month–more than anyone could have predicted–and we hadn’t even gotten to the meat and potatoes of the system yet in terms of ramping up its capabilities. 

We now incorporate all our non-academic data, such as attendance, as well as comprehensive academic grades and scores from courses and testing, both current and historical. If there has been a change in a child’s trajectory, our principals and instructional coaches can look for correlations and perhaps even pinpoint factors that contribute to identifying a solution. For students who might otherwise be “invisible” due to reasonable academic progress, this system makes attendance patterns and other non-academic shifts much more visible, truly allowing us to see the “whole child” instead of just fragmented data.

We can also look on a macro level to determine where we need to focus more resources. This has brought tremendous gains in student achievement. One of the first things we noticed was a pocket of students who weren’t making progress on foundational literacy skills at the elementary level. We were able to really dig in and figure out what the problem was. We were able to see that one of our platforms was not providing us all the necessary information. We received data based on grade-level academic standard assumptions instead of the individualized foundational literacy skills students needed. We adjusted our resources, and this year, 96 percent of K-5 students met typical growth in English language arts. 

When we noticed that the number of students mastering Algebra 1 concepts was not where it needed to be, we created a committee, conducted a root cause analysis, made policy changes, and will be implementing more robust professional learning and consistent high-quality instructional resources in all middle schools. 

Our next steps will be equally exciting. We recently gathered real-time data and feedback that provided us insights on our Professional Learning Community process. The results indicated the need for a system-level adjustment, and that will be part of our ongoing building phase as we add teachers as users in our software going forward. 

Had we not consolidated our data in a single system, our reliance on siloed and incomplete information could have left some of our 13,000 students adrift. Now we are more confident than ever that when they eventually walk down the gangway at graduation, they will be thoroughly prepared for their new destination.