The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that it would continue to operate its online library, known as ERIC, after allowing it to lapse last week. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had sought significant cuts to the document repository that is used by 14 million people a year, and allowed funding to run out on April 23. That ended the ability of the Education Department to add new research reports and documents to the library that is used by education policymakers, researchers and teachers.
“We are dedicated to sharing knowledge about the condition of education and ‘what works’ to improve student achievement,” said Matthew Soldner, the acting director of the Institute of Education Sciences, in announcing the continuation of the ERIC. A new, albeit much smaller contract was signed on April 24, according to the Federal Procurement Data System.
Soldner said that “no content has been removed or deleted from ERIC.” He added that the “preservation policy is unchanged: we will not remove an article in ERIC unless it is retracted by the publisher.”
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“I’m so happy!” said Erin Pollard Young, who had brought public attention to the fate of the library in an interview with The Hechinger Report, published on April 21. Pollard Young had been the sole Education Department employee who managed ERIC until her job was eliminated in March.
Nearly all of the work in operating the library is conducted by an outside contractor, AEM Corp. Going forward, ERIC’s $5.5 million annual budget has been cut by 50 percent. That will reduce the number of new papers and reports that can be added to the database and eliminate the helpdesk for the public.
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Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
This story about restarting ERIC 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.
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