While teachers worry about discipline, ed researchers focus on 'equity'
- Joanne Jacobs
- Oct 30
- 2 min read
Education researchers are focused on equity, social justice and identity, writes David Marshall on The Hill. Next comes critical race theory. Classroom teachers' top priority is student behavior and discipline. Many say "research is too often disconnected from their day-to-day realities, offering little actionable insight or failing to reflect the challenges they encounter."
A former social studies teacher in Philadelphia, Marshall is an associate education professor at Auburn. He and colleagues analyzed the topics of presentations at the American Educational Research Association’s annual meetings between 2021 and 2025, and surveyed teachers across the U.S. With the exception of artificial intelligence, a priority for both groups, they found almost no overlap of concerns.
In addition to student behavior, teachers' top concerns were mental health and well-being, parental involvement and teacher retention," Hill writes. They "are struggling with how to get students to sit down, focus, and learn."
Classroom disruptions are way up since the pandemic, he writes. "Teachers describe spending more time managing discipline and less time on instruction." Yet the handful of researchers dealing with the issue focused on “restorative justice” approaches, "which often place an even greater burden on teachers."
Mental health is not a priority for researchers, Hill adds. "Word searches of the 2025 conference program find more than 300 presentations on 'resistance' and almost 100 on 'safe spaces.' There were only 41 on student mental health and 24 on teacher mental health."
Irrelevance is a dangerous policy for academics, he writes."If educational research continues down a path disconnected from classroom realities, we risk not only alienating educators but also giving ammunition to policymakers who are already skeptical of the value of federally funded research."
When someone is newly elected to a school board, state board of education, or become a political appointee at the Department of Education, they will be shown the data on the achievement gap between Asian/white students versus black/Hispanic students. The gap is huge and has gotten bigger since the 1980's. That is why the government gives money to do research of equity and inclusion.
The question is why has most of the right side of education policy has decided to ignore the issue and use 100% school choice to hide the issue by decreasing available data. And other question is why do both the left and the right political want to avoid the issue of achievement gaps so much.
American schools of education are a tremendously bad investment of federal dollars -- which is another premise in favour of this Congress's eliminating the U.S. Department of Education (full disclosure, for which I did contract work twice during the Obama administration), thereby returning educational sovereignty to our States, which should determine the extent to which they want to continue with the status quo, or reorganize their universities of teacher education.
Administrators and Consultants all push equity. No teacher gets promoted who isn't onboard. Teachers face constant "professional development" PD on equity.
They need to put the word research in quotes. I finished a Masters' in Curriculum and Instruction in June, reviewed hundreds of papers, and pretty much was able to find whatever research I wanted to support my positions, so long as I went away from that provided by the class. The actual research, however, seems to have conducted by people like Sweller, Clark, and Kirschner; all pretty much abandoned by the current educational establishment. Much of the current fad is driven by the topics you mention above.
Also, as usual, I can't log in anymore, even though I used to from this computer. Oh well. 🙄
<I>Irrelevance is a dangerous policy for academics, he writes."If educational research continues down a path disconnected from classroom realities, we risk not only alienating educators but also giving ammunition to policymakers who are already skeptical of the value of federally funded research."</i>
Rightfully, yes. Ed schools and ed research as we do it now is <I>hot garbage</i> and anyone who looks at it without already being in on the grift* can see it in five seconds.
We'd be better off with none of it than with its current state.
(* Most people involved don't think it's a grift, but it still acts exactly like one.)