A major research coalition is calling on Congress to fund rigorous AI-in-education studies just as the federal agency responsible for that work has been reduced to a fraction of its former staff — leaving millions of English learners in an evidence vacuum.
The Briefing:
- The Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition of more than 150 nonprofits, philanthropies, researchers, and private-sector leaders, released a report on October 15, 2026, calling on Congress and the Trump administration to fund rigorous research into whether AI tools genuinely improve student learning outcomes.
- The Institute of Education Sciences lost about 90% of its workforce after DOGE swept through the Education Department in early 2025, falling from roughly 200 employees to just 31, according to the Hechinger Report. The Education Department's own inspector general found that 97 IES contracts totaling more than $1.1 billion were canceled.
- Stanford's SCALE Initiative reviewed more than 800 academic papers on AI in K-12 education and found only 20 that produced strong causal evidence of learning impact — a finding cited in the ALI report and covered by Education Week.
- In Texas alone, more than 1.4 million English learners — roughly one in four public school students statewide — attend districts that now lack the federal research backbone needed to independently evaluate the AI platforms being marketed to them.
