A POLEMIC ON EDUCATION REFORM IN THE AMERICAN STATES

Building upon previous research on educational reforms in the states after A Nation at Risk, we attempt to evaluate the effect of reforms on the improvement of both schooling and learning in secondary schools. Only meager data are available to evaluate the question and they yield ambiguous results. Our argument is that the absence of good measures of educational outcomes prevent intelligent reform constituting a cause for alarm in the education community as well as the society at large.