U.S. Department of Education Updates FOIA Logs—After More Than a Year of Silence
For over a year, U.S. Department of Education failed to update its FOIA logs. That’s changed. You can now find logs through July 2025.
For over a year, U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) failed to update its Freedom of Information Action (FOIA) logs.
That’s changed. You can now find logs through July 2025.
What Happened
USDOE had logs published through December 2023. After that, for all of 2024 and through mid-2025, no monthly FOIA logs appeared publicly.
Recently, USDOE updated its FOIA logs page so that it now includes logs for all of 2024 and January through July 2025. This includes a requester ID, the office handling the request, the requester’s name and organization, and the request description.
USDOE’s FOIA logs page states it was “Last Reviewed: September 2, 2025”. This lines up with the addition of 2024 logs and 2025 logs through July 2025.
What USDOE Says
Although USDOE has not explicitly stated why the FOIA logs page went so long without updates, clues can be found in its 2025 Chief FOIA Officer Report. The report indicates FOIA workload skyrocketed and resources were strained. In the report, USDOE said:
USDOE processed more FOIA requests during FY24 (3,119) than FY 23 (2,385), however its backlog did not decrease between Fiscal Years 2023 and 2024.
USDOE “received 4,560 requests during Fiscal Year 2024 compared to 2,816 requests in Fiscal Year 2023”—a 62% increase—and FOIA Service Center (FSC) “also lost its contract support, reducing its ability to process cases.”
USDOE did close out the 10 oldest requests during FY 2024.
“43 FOIA requests became the subject of litigation. Constructive denials were the most common issue leading to litigation, causing a ripple effect and making it even more difficult for ED to make subsequent release determinations within the statutory timeline. With limited resources and an already stretched-thin staff, responding to litigative requirements negatively impacted the Department’s ability to keep pace and consequently was a significant factor in the growing backlog.”
Moving Forward
Moving forward, if USDOE maintains these updates, requesters and the public will be able to track FOIA requests in real-time. In its 2025 Chief FOIA Officer Report, USDOE said it did not use any new technology to support its FOIA program during FY 2024, however, it “continues to explore and identify new ways to leverage existing functions of the technology it currently uses, including its case management system and administrative search tools.”
SIDEBAR:
USDOE’s 2025 Chief FOIA Officer Report states the following, too:
“On September 19, 2024, ED launched its new modernized ED.gov website. As part of the migration process, content owners, including the FSC, were required to thoroughly review all landing pages.”
This is interesting because the site is riddled with broken links and problematic navigation. If “content owners” were required to “thoroughly review all landing pages”—and this change occurred a year ago—how is it that the site remains a problem? Yes, the design was updated, but important content, such as historic Differentiated Monitoring and Support (DMS) reports and letters, has seemingly been removed from the site. Some older documents can be found via searches done through search engines, while searches done through USDOE’s site itself fails to bring up the same results.