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As a longitudinal researcher, Daniel Goldhaber is used to taking the long view of education. As of March, he managed a dozen or so studies of teacher labor markets, evaluations, and factors that affect student achievement鈥攖he focus of years of analysis and millions of dollars of research funding.

The coronavirus may have blown much of that research investment off track. The pandemic has halted in-person interventions, testing, and teacher evaluations, and it鈥檚 muddied the contexts around the teacher labor markets Goldhaber studies.

鈥淲e might know who鈥檚 employed or not, but I鈥檓 not sure that I could make much of it given everything else that鈥檚 happening. In the case of student tests and teacher performance evaluations, those just won鈥檛 exist. But even if they did exist, I鈥檇 be really reluctant to draw strong conclusions about any of it,鈥� said Goldhaber, the director of the national .

鈥淭he bottom line is that we lose probably a full year of data鈥攁nd that鈥檚 鈥� that鈥檚 a huge deal,鈥� said Goldhaber.

The , the federal Education Department鈥檚 research arm, had 400 to 500 research grants in the field when the pandemic hit the United States, according to Mark Schneider, the director of IES. Most of them will be affected in one way or another, from missing data due to closures to research assistants who are unable to work in their labs or the field because of social distancing orders in most states. For example, Goldhaber noted that many of his data privacy agreements with districts require researchers to analyze some educational data at a secure site within now-closed school buildings.

Schneider said his staff is working on procedures to consider supplemental funding and grant extensions for projects that will not be able to complete their original work or timeline, 鈥渂ut we haven鈥檛 gotten formal requests yet, because I don鈥檛 think that people actually understand yet the full consequences. I鈥檓 going on the assumption that almost every school in the country is not going to open the rest of the year鈥攂ut you know, until people know exactly what the status is in May or June, they haven鈥檛 discovered yet the size of the effect.鈥�

Several major education research associations canceled their spring meetings in response to coronavirus outbreaks, and since have been trying to find ways to share that research and training online. Ongoing fallout from the pandemic forced the largest of these, the , to cancel both its in-person conference and an attempted virtual replacement. Now, the group plans to release a series of nine professional-development workshops originally slated for the conference but adapted to focus on how researchers should rethink and redesign their work considering the pandemic-related disruptions.

鈥淥ur focus of study is educational institutions and settings and the broader context in which that fits: the community, the family,鈥� said Felice Levine, executive director of AERA. 鈥淏ut whatever you are doing 鈥� whether in the field or in the lab and across the methods and modes of inquiry, that work has been interrupted in ways that are expected given the current circumstances but will alter the nature of those studies.鈥�

In late June, AERA plans to launch an expanded online repository of its accepted papers and presentations, as well as an 鈥渋nteractive presentation gallery鈥� in which researchers would be able to present their work with recorded voiceovers and arrange times for virtual question-and-answer sessions.

鈥楢 Terrible Data Hole鈥�

IES faces delays or cancellations to some of the biggest, longest-running, and most-used data collections which were in the field this spring, including parts of the Nation鈥檚 Report Card, the Program for International Student Assessment, and global adult education assessments. Schneider noted that traditional in-person training for thousands of volunteers to administer tests and studies in the fall may also have to be canceled, and the research agency is trying to find alternatives to keep those later studies on track.

鈥淚 think there鈥檚 going to be kind of a terrible data hole that we鈥檙e going to have to try to fill out in a variety of ways,鈥� said Beth Tarasawa, the executive vice president for research at the , a research and testing organization. 鈥淎nd it鈥檚 not just a hole in the data; it鈥檚 that major events are happening in this hole.鈥�

Several researchers and officials voiced concern that educators and school leaders are in dire need of research, on a wide variety of issues: the most effective ways teachers can connect with students emotionally, for example; the effects of parents鈥� involvement as home teachers on student learning; and how schools can provide guidance or mental health supports online.

In fact, the almost-overnight explosion of every kind of remote-learning and the dearth of solid evidence on how districts can approach it well and equitably is a top research priority for many experts.

鈥淚 think we鈥檝e had a tremendous amount of knowledge about online learning and we are learning in real time a tremendous amount more,鈥� AERA鈥檚 Levine said, adding that the closures 鈥減rovide an important way for us to learn more, and to engage more explicitly in how we work with students with diverse learning modalities and what that means in online learning.鈥�

Levine also said the cancellation of many standard assessments during the closures will provide 鈥渁n opportunity to learn about different ways of assessing or having continuous feedback in ways that helps the student understand where they are, and also helps the teacher assess and improve 鈥� in a different way with other kinds of indicators than the more standard practice.鈥�

As it stands, many districts are being forced to implement strategies that have rarely or never been tested before, such as trying to teach young children remotely. And the effects of such untested strategies need to be tested, whether they work or not.

鈥淥ne of our failures as a field鈥攅ducation researchers鈥攊s that we don鈥檛 learn from failures,鈥� Schneider said. 鈥淲hat I don鈥檛 want to do is let all these natural experiments, these naturally occurring events that create these radical transformations 鈥� just to come and go without trying to capture information about what worked, what didn鈥檛 work, why.鈥�

鈥淲e鈥檝e started discussions around, how fast could we be set up to make this pivot?鈥� Schneider said. 鈥淕iven our strictures and given our commitment to rigor and validity, how fast can we actually undertake some different kind of research about what is happening right this very minute that鈥檚 radically transforming education? 鈥� So if [researchers] come back and they say, 鈥業 can鈥檛 do a post-test because all my 4th grade classrooms are closed, are gone,鈥� is there a way that they could take their existing data and flip it over to a test using learning management systems? That to me is an interesting challenge.鈥�

Tarasawa and her colleagues at NWEA are among those trying to pivot to coronavirus-era priorities. They created a quick-turnaround projection of potential learning loss under pandemic-related closures. It was adapted from an existing series of longitudinal projections of summer learning loss, based on achievement, growth, and background data from more than 5 million students who have taken NWEA鈥檚 digital adaptive test.

鈥淲e were thinking, how can we leverage what we have now to give us some idea of what we might get in the fall? Like epidemiologists have their predictions, we actually can leverage our data and reinvest it in those ways,鈥� Tarasawa said.

Christopher Minnich, NWEA鈥檚 chief executive officer, said the group, which works about equally often with researchers and directly with school districts, 鈥渟hifted our priorities immediately after the school closings鈥� to provide new analyses about the problems districts are facing, from academic engagement and learning loss to the effects of various remote learning approaches. NWEA鈥檚 online assessments, which are typically administered in fall and winter as well as spring, have become one of the remaining datasets to look at student growth in a year when almost all state testing was canceled or interrupted.

鈥楥omplex Experiment鈥�

Raj Chetty, a Harvard University economist who studies education opportunity gaps, likewise is trying to reposition his long-running work on how to help disadvantaged youth close education opportunity gaps, while also exploring new equity problems arising from the macroeconomic shock to schools and communities.

鈥淚 do think there are a bunch of people trying to think about how to leverage this as a natural experiment, where you have changes around all kinds of things from remote learning to sleep patterns, to spending more time with family, et cetera,鈥� Chetty said. 鈥淚 think the challenge there is, it鈥檚 effectively a very complex experiment because we鈥檝e changed so many things at once. It鈥檚 going to be very hard to pin down the effect of any one channel.鈥�

Yet Tarasawa said the necessity of research amid school closures and social distancing may be a 鈥渃all to action鈥� for education researchers to find more adaptive research methods that don鈥檛 rely only on randomized controlled trials and 鈥渋mplementation fidelity 100 percent as designed.鈥�

鈥淵ou know, epidemiologists and public health has been ahead of us in education for a long time and can lean into the messiness in which people behave,鈥� Tarasawa said. 鈥淚 think this is going to be that call for us that we can鈥檛 have everything perfect under all conditions. Some kids are going to be on a particular online curriculum for 30 minutes. Others are going to be on and off for an hour. How do you tease out the impact? So I do think we鈥檙e going to have to be more nimble as a community. That鈥檚 been a long time coming and this is just forcing our hand to do that.鈥�