Daniel Goldhaber, a researcher specializing in longitudinal studies, has faced significant challenges in his education research due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Despite managing multiple studies on teacher labor markets, evaluations, and factors affecting student achievement, the pandemic has disrupted in-person interventions, testing, and teacher evaluations, making it difficult to draw strong conclusions from the existing data. Goldhaber emphasizes the loss of a full year’s worth of data as a significant setback.
The Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the federal Education Department, has also been impacted by the pandemic. With hundreds of research grants in progress, the closure of schools and social distancing measures have resulted in missing data and the inability of research assistants to work in their labs or in the field.
Various data collections in education have been severely affected by school closures and limited staffing. For example, the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies’ data collection was cancelled, as was the field trial for the 2021 Program for International Student Assessment. The National Assessment of Educational Progress Long-Term Assessment, which tracks academic changes of student cohorts over time, was also cancelled. In addition, the State ("Main") NAEP tests and state-level assessments have faced delays and cancellations.
The loss of these data collections has significant implications for educational research, accountability measures, and identifying and addressing academic achievement gaps and other issues.
Felice Levine, executive director of AERA, stated that their focus is on studying educational institutions and settings, as well as the larger context of the community and family. However, due to the current circumstances, their work has been disrupted, which will inevitably impact the nature of their studies.
In an effort to mitigate the issues caused by the disruptions, AERA plans to launch an expanded online repository of accepted papers and presentations in late June. They also intend to provide an "interactive presentation gallery" where researchers can present their work with recorded voiceovers and arrange virtual question-and-answer sessions.
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is also facing challenges in collecting data due to delays and cancellations of major data collections. This includes well-known assessments like the Nation’s Report Card, the Program for International Student Assessment, and global adult education assessments. To make matters worse, the traditional in-person training for volunteers may also have to be canceled, further impacting future studies. IES is exploring alternative solutions to ensure that ongoing studies can proceed as planned.
The lack of available research is concerning for educators and school leaders who require evidence-based insights on various issues. For example, they need guidance on effective ways for teachers to connect with students emotionally, the impact of parental involvement as home teachers on student learning, and how to provide online guidance and mental health support. Remote learning has become a priority for research, as districts are implementing strategies that have never been tested before. It is crucial to examine the efficacy of these strategies, irrespective of their success or failure.
Felice Levine highlights the closure of schools and cancellation of assessments as an opportunity for learning and engagement. She believes it is a chance to explore different ways of assessing and providing continuous feedback, as well as improving teaching methods with unique indicators. Furthermore, it is important not to let these natural experiments pass without capturing information about what worked, what didn’t work, and why. Education researchers should learn from failures and adapt their research approaches accordingly.
Schneider, from AERA, emphasizes the need for a speedy transition to research that captures the current radical transformations in education. Despite the challenges posed by strict standards of rigor and validity, researchers must find innovative ways to study the effects of the pandemic. For example, they can explore the possibility of using existing data and learning management systems to conduct tests. This presents an interesting challenge that researchers are eager to tackle.
NWEA, along with other organizations, is shifting its focus to address the priorities of the coronavirus era. They have created a projection of potential learning loss during the pandemic-related closures, based on previous longitudinal projections of summer learning loss. This projection is derived from data collected from over 5 million students who have taken NWEA’s digital adaptive test.
Overall, the current circumstances have caused disruptions in the field of education research. However, researchers and organizations are actively seeking alternatives and opportunities for learning in order to make meaningful contributions to the understanding of the impact of the pandemic on education.
‘Researching the Impact of the Pandemic on Education’
Raj Chetty, an economist from Harvard University who specializes in studying education disparities, is currently working on repositioning his long-standing research on closing the educational opportunity gap for disadvantaged youth. Additionally, he is exploring new issues of equity that have emerged as a result of the macroeconomic shock caused by the pandemic on schools and communities. Chetty sees this as an opportunity to investigate the various changes that have occurred, such as remote learning, altered sleep patterns, and increased time spent with family. However, he acknowledges that this situation presents a complex experiment, as multiple factors have been altered simultaneously, making it difficult to isolate the effect of any specific element.
Similarly, Tarasawa believes that the current circumstances of school closures and social distancing create a need for education researchers to adopt more adaptive research methods. Relying solely on randomized controlled trials and strict adherence to predetermined protocols may not be feasible in the current situation. Tarasawa highlights the field of epidemiology and public health as a model that education researchers should emulate, as these fields have long recognized and embraced the complexity of human behavior. In order to understand the impact of online learning, for example, researchers must account for variations in curriculum usage, such as some students spending only 30 minutes on a particular platform while others spend an hour or more. This requires a more flexible and nimble approach as a research community, which has been a needed shift for some time and is now being accelerated by the pandemic.
