Does Education Reform Improve Job Performance?

The late 1980’s and 1990’s were a period of intensive reform within American public education. However, in terms of verified student outcomes, there is little evidence that most of these reforms had the desired impact. Examining military personnel data, which is a highly detailed source of information on recent high school graduate’s performance, we find that the quality of Navy recruits improved during the 1990’s. However, we don’t find evidence that this improvement was the result of school reform. Specifically, recruits from states that enacted reform do no better on our performance measures than recruits from non-reform states, even after controlling for baseline performance. In some cases, recruits from “reform” states perform at lower levels than those from non-reform states. Reforms seem to affect non-degree graduates differently (often more negatively) than they affect high school graduates. The increase in quality of Navy recruits appears to be due to selective recruiting and/or a general increase in achievement, rather than to any specific school reform(s).