Recent claims that educational research has shifted away from practical, classroom-focused topics toward social justice and identity concerns have sparked significant debate across the field. This paper challenges those claims directly, presenting a transparent and replicable analysis of American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference programs across two distinct eras: a period of rising student achievement (2005–2014) and a more recent period of declining achievement (2022–2025).

The analysis finds that research on most teacher-identified concerns, including mental health, student behavior, technology and AI, chronic absenteeism, and teacher retention, has actually increased since the earlier era. The notable exception is literacy and reading research, which declined by approximately 34 percent, a trend the paper traces directly to the defunding of the federal Reading First initiative. A through-line finding is that federal funding and policy decisions appear to drive what researchers study, with significant implications for how policymakers think about research investment, particularly given current threats to the data infrastructure that all education research depends on.