The study of policy in comparative education has been approached using methods associated with the principal social science disciplines that have informed the field since its inception. In particular, the disciplines of history, political science, sociology, and anthropology have had a significant influence on determining the acceptable methods for comparative educational policy analysis, as evident by studies of policy published since the mid-1990s in "Comparative Education Review." Given the multidisciplinary orientation of comparative education, it is curious that the discipline of linguistics remains virtually absent from the pages of the field's flagship journal. This dearth is particularly anomalous today when one considers the interest in critical inquiry as a framework for interpreting the discursive aspects of knowledge production. Such interest makes it an opportune time to consider how one type of linguistic analysis--critical discourse analysis (CDA)--could enhance the comparative study of educational policy. In this article, the authors engage in a twofold analysis to "make transparent" an opaque element in contemporary international development discourse: "partnership." They use CDA as both framework and methodology to scrutinize the claims of partnership in the poverty reduction policies of the United Republic of Tanzania. (Contains 7 tables, 1 figure and 8 footnotes.)