When education issues come to be understood in terms that neatly overlay the standard ideological alignments, they often become proxies for the war between Right and Left. This has been the case in the instance of charter schools, with proponents and critics mustering up researchers and findings to buttress their respective claims and, in general, resisting compromise. Although this politicization can be dispiriting, there are some encouraging signs that research in education is improving. The field is attracting better-trained researchers, better data on student achievement are available, and research designs are becoming more rigorous. Research as a collective enterprise--comprising multiple studies, attacking questions from differing angles, and exposed to the checks and balance of other studies in different settings and using differing methodologies--can increasingly enrich our knowledge base.