In state after state, critics of education reform try to get data from state education departments to see for themselves how well things are really going and they get stonewalled. The Washington Post reports the story of one such data-retrieving effort, by Aaron Pallas, professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Pallas writes the Sociological Eye on Education blog — where this first appeared — for The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, non-partisan education-news outlet affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media…