A year after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) swept through the Education Department, the agency’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), remains largely dismantled. Nearly 100 contracts were canceled and roughly 90% of IES staffers were laid off, halting major statistical collections and program evaluations that lawmakers from both parties relied on. Amber Northern, a senior advisor to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, produced a 95‑page report titled "Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences" with dozens of recommendations to rebuild IES’s core functions. The document was delivered to McMahon’s team after the DOGE cuts; the department has not committed to implementation. The report frames IES as a bipartisan data engine modeled after the NIH and emphasizes restoring R&D capacity and national statistical collections. If implemented, the recommendations would reconstitute federally funded program evaluations and longitudinal collections essential for tracking student achievement and school spending. Education officials and congressional staffers now face a choice: rebuild a formerly bipartisan research infrastructure or allow long‑term erosion of federal evidence on K‑12 effectiveness.