Abstract
This article aims to clarify concerns regarding what constitutes acceptable scholarship in education at a time when such scholarship is under challenge from publications and institutions with a strong bias toward policy advocacy. This is accomplished by examining the Fordham Foundation–supported publication “Whole-Language High Jinks” and the accompanying promotional literature. In order to do so, use is made of discourse analysis as a method of inquiry—an approach that facilitates examining the manner in which Fordham and its president, Chester Finn, endeavor to shape the debate and determine the parameters of the public discussion of school reform.