In my experience, what K–12 educators want from research is stuff that’s useful. They want strategies rooted in evidence and frank appraisals of whether instructional practices actually do what they say. They want researchers who kick the tires and fair-mindedly report on the strengths and weaknesses of pedagogies, practices, and policies.
That’s not what educators are getting. On a range of sensitive questions—from restorative justice to social-emotional learning to culturally responsive education to gender identity to affirmative action—the education research community has, in recent years, operated as if its role is to help advance a morally correct set of nostrums.
This matters mightily for teachers and school leaders. They adopt recommended strategies, experience disappointing results, and are left to wonder what they did wrong. Meanwhile, the scholars who’ve authoritatively promoted these policies and practices blame “implementation problems” rather than the inadequate vetting conducted by an insular community of researchers.
The good news? It needn’t be this way. The education research community can choose to set things right. I’ve been noodling on all this while compiling the 15th annual Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings published in EdWeek, an exercise designed to identify the scholars who’ve had an outsized impact on policy and practice. That inevitably raises questions about the kind of impact they’re having.
Take the debate that’s raged in recent years over “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” “anti-racist” education, and critical race theory. This was an extraordinary opportunity for universities to foster competing lines of inquiry, promote discussion across ideological divides, and elevate discourse over dogma.
Instead, the education research community picked a side. In 2020, the American Educational Research Association and National Academy of Education issued a Joint Statement in Support of Anti-Racist Education, directing researchers to “stand against the notion that systemic racism does not exist.” Conversation over. Case closed. And these organizations were hardly alone. A host of college presidents issued similar statements, as did the lion’s share of academic associations. My inbox was dotted with missives from scholars (many of whom identify as progressive) who feared the professional consequences of disagreeing with any of this.
In the research community, the proponents of DEI, critical race theory, and “anti-racist” education were presumed correct; critics were labeled “deniers” and “bigots.” This made it tough to ask all sorts of important questions: To what degree does “equitable” discipline mean prioritizing racial proportionality over acceptable conduct? Is it educationally sound to teach students to view the world through a lens of oppression, privilege, and intersectionality? Does it really make sense to describe the United States in the 21st century as a systemically racist nation? If the United States is racist, how persuasive is the case for the “remedies” pushed by proponents of DEI and “anti-racism”? Dogma vanquished discourse.
One result: college campuses that are suffused in fear. A recent survey of more than 6,000 faculty members across 55 colleges and universities, conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, found that 87 percent of faculty said there were topics about which it was hard to have open, honest conversations on campus. The most-cited topics? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, racial inequality, transgender rights, and affirmative action.
K–12 leaders stumble into accidental 'culture wars' when they adopt practices that they’ve been told were evidence-based and effective, only to find out ... that their confidence might have been misplaced.
And it’s not just right-leaning thought that’s getting stymied. The Republican response to campus groupthink has featured a surge of legislation intended to rein in campus dogmas. This has had repercussions of its own. Thus, while half of conservative faculty members report that they’re hesitant to voice their opinions, so do 1 in 5 liberal faculty. Over a third of faculty say they self-censor their written work: That’s nearly four times the number of social scientists who said the same thing in 1954—at the height of McCarthyism.
Yikes! Colleges and universities are exactly where these kinds of fraught questions should be constructively considered. And they’re where education researchers should be providing models and tools to K-12 educators.
Instead, hot-button education debates have played out with academe on one side—and a slew of parents, activists, and conservative thinkers on the other. In disputes over race, gender, or immigration, for instance, associations, institutions, journals, and influential education scholars have almost uniformly fallen into lockstep, fostering the notion that academics are partisans and sending a clear signal to individual researchers who might disagree.
This has practical consequences.
Ideas aren’t fully pressure-tested. Studies are conducted and reviewed by sympathetic scholars, and used by like-minded thinkers to justify proposals, leading to curricula, training, or grading practices that strike many teachers and parents as suspect.
“Traditional” views on discipline, instruction, or civic education are mostly located outside the academy in think tanks and advocacy groups. This limits the back-and-forth between competing perspectives.
One result is that K–12 leaders stumble into accidental “culture wars” when they adopt practices that they’ve been told were evidence-based and effective, only to find out (when confronted with irate parents or frustrated teachers) that their confidence might have been misplaced.
For instance, there’s much in SEL that is commonsensical and grounded in research. Yet the “research-based” SEL label has also been affixed to polarizing strategies (think race-based affinity groups or rules banning school staff from informing parents of a student’s gender identity) for which there is no meaningful evidence.
Fortunately, there’s an opportunity to do better. Many colleges, including Harvard and the University of Michigan, are committing themselves to policies of “institutional neutrality,” emphasizing that, while it’s fine for individual scholars to express views, scholarly institutions themselves commit to cultivating robust dialogue rather than embracing the “right” answers. Higher education is gradually abandoning the DEI statements and machinery that stymie free inquiry, while university leaders are acknowledging the need to promote more open discourse.
Education researchers should lean into this shift. Those charged with recruiting scholars or doctoral students should seek candidates who approach problems from different perspectives. Research associations should stop taking stances and instead commit to fostering robust exchanges regarding evidence, principles, and practical implications.
Researchers should make a concerted effort to invite in those with divergent views, embedding heterodox perspectives in a research team or on a research advisory board, so as to more fully anticipate concerns and appreciate obstacles.
The editors of scholarly journals should do more to encourage rigorous scholarship that questions reigning orthodoxies and to reach out to skeptics when seeking reviewers. Conferences and campus confabs should work much more diligently to encompass diverse perspectives and to make all participants feel welcome.
Mostly, the education research community just needs to practice what it’s been preaching about the value of diversity and inclusion.
This will make research more reliable, yield policies and practices that are more useful, and perhaps even help to rebuild confidence in higher education. Talk about a win-win.
