Educational reform in the United States is perpetually evolving. Much of the recent reforms have concentrated on high-stakes testing and assessment, but a parallel effort has been emerging in the field of vocational and career education. Prompted partly by federal legislation--most recently by the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act…

Although dealing broadly with issues involving program evaluation, this paper is especially concerned with large-scale evaluations of federally funded education programs that are national in scope and, to some extent at least, compensatory in nature. The paper concentrates on a few basic problem areas that seem inherent in the concept of…