They're Urged to Speak Out, But Education Researchers Face a High-stakes Choice

It’s a bit like asking patients in intensive care to make the case for their own treatment.

Federal education research — the system that tracks student learning and evaluates what works — has been battered by mass firings, contract cuts and cancellations, and stalled grant funding. Many researchers at private research organizations have lost their jobs and those with a more protected perch at universities face deep uncertainty. Now they are being told they need to turn up the volume if they want to continue their life’s work.

Their predicament was the focus of the Association for Education Finance and Policy’s annual conference earlier this month in Chicago. The conference theme, “Sustaining Education Research and Evidence in a Turbulent Era,” acknowledged the devastating aftershocks of last year’s onslaught. But the cure remains uncertain. At a March 20 session on rebuilding the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), an emissary from the Trump administration, Amber Northern, urged the audience to become stronger champions for their cause.

A year ago at this same conference, Northern was just a typical researcher, as horrified as everyone else over the DOGE cuts to federal education research. She was and is the director of research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy think tank. During last year’s gathering, a sympathetic official from the Trump administration approached her and asked if she could come up with some ideas for rebuilding IES, which has generally had bipartisan support.

This year, Northern was at the conference in her new role as the author of a report on IES’s future, released in late February, and was making the rounds to sell its recommendations.

Her main message to her fellow researchers: You’re not doing enough.

Rebuilding IES won’t happen, she warned, without broad public pressure. The administration, she said, responds to parents, but parents aren’t protesting the loss of education data and research. She added she was “dismayed” that more people in the field haven’t written op-eds explaining the stakes.

The room pushed back. Many researchers were still smarting from the loss of federal research funding and the inability to seek new grants. (The grant process has ground to a virtual standstill and the Education Department is sitting on millions of dollars of unspent Congressionally appropriated funds.)

Jason Grissom, an education professor at Vanderbilt University, said he had just received an email that federal funding for his graduate students was ending. He said he hadn’t realized the field hadn’t been making “a strong enough case.”

But Vivian Wong, a research methodologist at the University of Virginia, challenged the idea that it would be realistic to build a broad coalition. “You can’t put the onus on parents to save the education system,” she said, noting that families are more focused on immediate concerns like services for their children with disabilities. Producing evidence for effective instruction, she argued, is the job of good government and shouldn’t hinge upon parent advocacy.

Others raised a more personal risk: speaking out could backfire. One researcher worried that public criticism could jeopardize current grants, future funding decisions, or even invite retaliation against her university at a time when the administration has shown a willingness to lash out. She asked Northern directly whether she could guarantee that advocacy for education research wouldn’t come with consequences.

“I can’t say for sure,” Northern replied.

And that’s the bind. Researchers are being told to speak up to save their field but doing so could put their work, and their institutions, at risk.

Another possible lever is Congress. Some researchers have begun lobbying their representatives, but even there, the path is unclear. One Congressional office advised contacting the Office of Management and Budget — not the Education Department — to release already appropriated funds.

Meanwhile, schools are struggling with absenteeism and falling reading and math scores. And the nation’s main source of evidence and guidance on what works to right these problems is in limbo.

Researchers did receive one reprieve. Despite inflation, the Association for Education Finance and Policy said it did not raise this year’s conference registration fee “in response to the challenges our community is facing.”

This story about federal education research was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.