FORMING AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL-POLICY WITH INTERNATIONAL DATA - LESSONSFROM THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION

The sociology of education offers three relevant lessons from ifs past to improve the use of international data on education by American pol icymakers. The first is that school-improvement research should be ext ended to include more routinely the wider organizational variation in schools cross-nationally. The second is that there are hidden organiza tional trade-offs in educational reform that are aimed solely at mecha nically improving the achievement of students. The third is that the t ype of data that may be the most useful to policymakers is nor being a dequately collected. These three points are discussed in relation to r ecent U.S. and international studies and statistics on education.