EXCLUSIVE — The Trump administration placed Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, on leave Monday, just weeks after the nation’s yearly report card showed mathematics and reading scores plummeting to two-decade lows.
Former President Joe Biden appointed Carr to serve as commissioner in September 2021, following a nearly 20-year career atop NCES’s Assessment Division. Carr has not been terminated, according to Department of Education officials, and will continue to receive pay until a review of her employment is completed.
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“Today, the Department placed Peggy Carr, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) at IES who was appointed under the Biden Administration, on administrative leave,” a Department of Education spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “We thank Peggy for her service to the Department of Education.”
Carr’s leave comes less than one month after she delivered the 2024 National Assessment of Education Progress scores.
That report showed reading and math scores for eighth graders hitting their lowest point in more than two decades, continuing the downward trend among students following the COVID-19 pandemic. Fourth grade reading scores similarly fell to a 20-year low, but fourth grade math scores improved slightly.
“The Nation’s Report Card is out and the news is not good,” Carr told reporters after the report was released last month. “Overall, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, so the struggle continues.”
President Donald Trump has taken significant steps to roll back former Biden’s education priorities but has yet to propose a plan to shutter the Department of Education entirely, as he promised to do on the campaign trail.
Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick to be the next secretary of education, saw her nomination advance out of committee late last week along party lines.
During her confirmation hearing, McMahon vowed to “reorient” the Department of Education and said Trump’s promise to shutter the department entirely would require congressional approval.
“Certainly President Trump understands that we’ll be working with Congress, we’d like to do this right,” she told senators at the time. “We’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with.”
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However, the president has signed a number of school-focused executive actions. That list includes an executive order directing the federal government to prioritize school choice options when awarding education-related grants, an order barring transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports, and an order directing the federal government to terminate any funding directed to schools that still mandate students be vaccinated against coronavirus.
Furthermore, the Trump administration has already fired or suspended more than 100 career Department of Education employees, while Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have withdrawn dozens of Department of Education contracts, according to the Associated Press.