If you hadn’t seen or heard much of USC education professor Morgan Polikoff lately, you’re not alone. He’s off Twitter (for now) and on sabbatical.
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have anything to say, and a recent Kelsey Piper rant in The Argument about the lamentable state of education research generated a sharp rebuke from Polikoff: Ill-Informed Essays About Education Research are Weak and Sloppy. Why?
In this new interview, Polikoff says that ed research has improved substantially over the past two decades and suggests that slamming qualitative research is a lazy response.
“Education isn’t like giving people a pill,” says Polikoff. “If people don’t implement it, then it doesn’t matter.”
He doesn’t argue that there isn’t bad research out there — some of it quite popular — or that some percentage of education research isn’t ideologically committed. He just doesn’t think it’s so bad as some of us may think.
He also reveals what he’s working on (a second book hopefully coming out in 2027), describes what it’s like to be among the least politically liberal members of the USC education faculty (occasionally fraught), and explains why he hasn’t returned to Twitter yet (he deleted his account and would have to start from scratch).
Watch the interview or read the transcript above or on YouTube. Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.
Previously from The Grade
Literacy, blue-state politics, & media reluctance (Kelsey Piper 2025)
Why most education reporters are sticking with Twitter — for now
Latest NYT School Data Visualization Dumbs Down Test Results (Sean Reynolds 2017)
States and districts fight back, the rise of citizen journalists, & cellphone ban research
