Children as Pawns: The Politics of Educational Reform

Political leaders are not using evaluation evidence as a leading determinant in selecting educational policies, and we need to better evaluate school reform measures to intelligently apply our less-than-infinite school funding resources to improve our schools. Mr. Hacsi, with lucid writing and great intellect, lays out his primary arguments. In his well reasoned introduction and conclusion he states that most of the studies of existing programs are inconclusive or provide conflicting evidence. He asserts that advocates and opponents of education reform initiatives often misuse the available program evaluation information to support their positions. He then reviews five highly-controversial educational issues, Head Start, bilingual education, class size, social promotion, and public funding of education. For each of these he summarizes the positions of the proponents and opponents, reviews the evaluations that were done on each, the quality and reliability of these evaluations, and provides a brief history. All of this is done in an even-handed manner, and conclusions about particular issues are left to the reader.