Educational policy debates are no longer occurring exclusively in academic or governmental settings. Intermediary actors are promoting research using a variety of traditional and non-traditional media to advance and oppose policy agendas. Given the current policy arena, it is useful to re-examine the research underlying current reforms, and to determine whether there is an “echo-chamber” effect, where a small, or unrepresentative, sample of studies is repeatedly cited to create momentum around a policy proposal. In exploring the echo-chamber hypothesis, we focus on two distinct methodologies. Using bibliometric methods and examining social media activity by intermediary organizations, our preliminary evidence suggests the presence of an echo-chamber effect in policy debates.

There is a developing literature examining how charter schools, through the effects of competition, impact performance in public school districts and district-run public schools, also known as the second-level effects of competition. What follows is an examination of how competition is measured in this literature that offers a critique of existing approaches to that measurement. Findings in these studies are problematized by inconsistent findings in other, similar studies; inconsistencies which may be due to inconsistent definitions and metrics of competition. I suggest a more specific definition of competition and suggest that other disciplines may offer guidance in the pursuit of a more consistent measurement of competitive effects.

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