This essay focuses on a particular subset of educational research, questions that are researchable and that, ultimately, will make a positive difference for the educational enterprise. It argues that to be researchable, tasks need to be addressable in operational terms -- that questions that hinge on values (e.g. "are large small classes better than large classes?") are inherently unaddressable until the values undergirding the questions are specified in clear and meaningful ways. Key claims of this paper are that in addition to being addressable, to advance the field, research questions should be meaningful and generative. What is meant by "meaningful" is that the answer to the questions posed should matter to either practice or theory in some important way. What is meant by "generative" is that working on the problem, whether it is "solved" or not, is likely to provide valuable insights. Interestingly, time is not necessarily an issue -- a problem that takes a century to solve may still be extremely valuable -- if the subproblems it spawns are rich, interesting, and addressable. From this author's perspective, for a problem to be researchable (in effect, answerable) is only a first step. What makes problems valuable to the field is their potential importance and their fruitfulness in producing ongoing insights and meaningful questions. A range of examples including design experiments, assessments, and the evolution of an extended research program are discussed as illustrations of the above claims.