Raising standards in education has been the mantra for educational stakeholders in England for the past two decades and has informed national, regional and local agendas for school improvement. In the relentless pursuit of finding solutions to pedagogical problems, action research has been promoted as an effective strategy. Informed by an emancipatory agenda, action research provides a framework for the generation of knowledge through different perspectives. However, the relentless drive for school effectiveness and the commodification of research impose external and internal pressures on those conducting the research. This paper provides a critical appraisal of leading such a project by making explicit the cocktail of potential tensions that have remained largely disregarded. It posits the claim that educational action research conceived as a critical collaborative inquiry has surrendered its democratic values to an all-pervading performativity culture. Finally, we conclude that collaborative action research conducted in the politicized educational contexts of today cannot be true to its ideal and that in order to preserve its moral integrity, it needs to come clean by acknowledging the mess inherent in all collaborative enterprises conducted in the real micro-political worlds. (Contains 5 notes.)