On February 4th, the Washington Post's Jay Mathews devoted his education column to TC faculty member Jeffrey Henig's new book, Spin Cycle: How Research Is Used in Policy Debates, The Case of Charter Schools, which uses the national charter school controversy to spotlight how complex education issues get played out in the press and other public venues. Mathews agrees with Henig's crticism that the media is too easily seduced by "the mystique of the [single] killer study" that appears to definitely settle questions that are in fact far too complex for such a resolution.

On February 7th, in a commentary piece in Education Week, Henig and Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute -- two scholars who frequently oppose one another on specific issues -- make a related point, arguing that researchers themselves "should promise less when it comes to determining what policies 'work.'"