Truthiness in Education

By Kevin G. Welner & Alex Molnar

At a time when America’s education policymakers have nominally embraced the idea of tying school reform to “scientifically based research,” many of the nation’s most influential reports are little more than junk science. A hodgepodge of private “think tanks” at both the state and national levels wield significant and very often undeserved influence in policy discussions by cranking out an array of well-funded and slickly produced—yet ideologically driven—research.

Often written by people with little discernible expertise and invariably not subjected to peer review, these reports consistently end with a findings section that supports the ideological preferences of the research sponsor.

Moreover, the research offered by many private think tanks commonly violates the standard canons of social science inquiry. The American Psychological Association’s research standards, for example, lead to the following...