The aim of this study was to compare the acquisition of the van Hiele levels of sixth-grade students engaged in instruction using a reform-based curriculum with sixth-grade students engaged in instruction using a traditional curriculum. There were 273 sixth-grade mathematics students, 123 in the control group and 150 in the treatment group, involved in the study. The researcher administered a multiple-choice geometry test to the students before and after a five-week of instruction. The test was designed to detect students' reasoning stages in geometry. The independent-samples t-test, the paired-samples t-test and ANCOVA with a = 0.05 were used to analyze the data. The study demonstrated that although both types of instructions had positive impacts on the students' progress, there was no statistical significant difference detected in the acquisition of the levels between the groups.