Author

Paul E. Peterson

    Author Website: http://savingschools.net


    Author Bio:
    Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Editor-In-Chief of Education Next, a journal of opinion and research. Peterson is a former director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and of the Governmental Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. He received his Ph. D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the German Marshall Foundation, and the Center for Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is the author of the book, Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning (Harvard University Press, 2010). He is also the author or editor of numerous other publications including the following: School Choice International: Exploring public private partnerships (co-editor with Rajashri Chakrabarti) School Money Trials: The Legal Pursuit of Educational Adequacy (co-editor with Martin R. West) Reforming Education in Florida: A Study Prepared by the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education (editor) The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (with William G. Howell) Generational Change: Closing the Test Score Gap (editor) No Child Left Behind? The Politics and Practice of School Accountability (co-editor with Martin R. West) The Future of School Choice (editor) Our Schools and our Future (editor) City Limits The Urban Underclass (co-edited with Christopher Jencks) Price of Federalism Welfare Magnets (with Mark C. Rom) The New American Democracy (with Morris P. Fiorina, Bertram Johnson, and William G. Mayer) Four of his books have received major awards from the American Political Science Association. Most recently, he was awarded the Martha Derthick Best Book Award for The Price of Federalism. The award is presented to the author of a book published at least ten years ago that has made a lasting contribution to the study of federalism and intergovernmental relations. Peterson is a member of the independent review panel advising the Department of Education’s evaluation of the No Child Left Behind law and a member of the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force of K-12 Education at Stanford University. The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center reported that Peterson’s studies on school choice and vouchers were among the country’s most influential studies of education policy.


Articles

The International Experience

What U.S. schools can and cannot learn from other countries

Photos: Additional images from the Education Next-PEPG Conference

WINTER 2012 / VOL. 12, NO. 1


Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?

 
The latest on each state’s international standing

Fall 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 4


The Public Weighs In on School Reform

Intense controversies do not alter public thinking, but teachers differ more sharply than ever

Fall 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 4


The 2011 Education Next-PEPG Survey

Complete Results


Eighth-Grade Students Learn More Through Direct Instruction

Students learned 3.6 percent of a standard deviation more if the teacher spent 10 percent more time on direct instruction. That’s one to two months of extra learning during the course of the year.

Summer 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 3


The Case Against Michelle Rhee

How persuasive is it?

Summer 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 3


A Battle Begun, Not Won

The following essay is part of a forum, written in honor of Education Next’s 10th anniversary, in which the editors assessed the school reform movement’s victories and challenges to see just how successful reform efforts have been. For the other side of the debate, please see Pyrrhic Victories? by Frederick M. Hess, Michael J. Petrilli, [...]

Spring 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 2


Happy 10th Anniversary, Education Next!

Over the decade, we have witnessed—perhaps contributed to—the advance of school reform.

Spring 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 2


Wasting Talent

Everyone’s local school needs to do better

Winter 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 1


Teaching Math to the Talented

Which countries—and states—are producing high-achieving students?

Winter 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 1


We Know Our Schools

All school evaluations, like all politics, are local

Fall 2010 / Vol. 10, No. 4


Meeting of the Minds

The 2010 EdNext-PEPG Survey shows that, on many education reform issues, Democrats and Republicans hardly disagree

Winter 2011 / Vol. 11, No. 1


The 2010 Education Next-PEPG Survey

Complete Results


State Standards Rise in Reading, Fall in Math

Most state standards remain far below international level

View the Underlying Data

Fall 2010 / Vol. 10, No. 4


Competition and Charters Spur Innovation

School markets are creative, not static

Summer 2010 / Vol. 10, No. 3


Charter High Schools

Promising results from charters that educate teens

Spring 2010 / Vol. 10, No. 2


A Courageous Look at the American High School

The legacy of James Coleman

Spring 2010 / Vol. 10, No. 2


A Recession for Schools

Not as bad as it sounds

Winter 2010 / Vol. 10, No. 1


What Happens When States Have Genuine Alternative Certification?

We get more minority teachers and test scores rise

Winter 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 1


Few States Set World-Class Standards

In fact, most render the notion of proficiency meaningless

Summer 2008 / Vol. 8, No. 3


The Persuadable Public

The 2009 Education Next-PEPG Survey asks if information changes minds about school reform.

Fall 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 4


Powerful Professors

Research can change the political agenda…if the circumstances are right

Fall 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 4


The 2009 Education Next-PEPG Survey

Download Complete Results Here (PDF).

Fall 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 4


Virtual School Succeeds

But can we be sure about the students?

Summer 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 3


For-Profit and Nonprofit Management in Philadelphia Schools

What kind of management does better than the district-run schools?

Spring 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 2


What Is Good for General Motors

For years, our public schools have paid as little attention to personnel costs as General Motors has.

Spring 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 2


The Home-Schooling Special

Today's choicest choice

Winter 2009 / Vol. 9, No. 1


The Next President Had Many School Choices

Will he provide similar opportunities for others?

Fall 2008 / Vol. 8, No. 4


The 2008 Education Next-PEPG Survey of Public Opinion

Americans think less of their schools than of their police departments and post offices

Fall 2008 / Vol. 8, No. 4


Today’s Education-Industrial Complex

Why aren’t schools an issue in the 2008 election?

Spring 2008 / Vol. 8, No. 2


Excellence Reformers Need to Make a Choice

Is accountability the reform of the past?

Winter 2008 / Vol. 8, No. 1


Good News for Presidential Candidates

The public supports a wide range of education reforms

Fall 2007 / Vol. 7, No. 4


A Lens That Distorts

NCLB’s faulty way of measuring school quality

Fall 2007 / Vol. 7, No. 4


What Americans Think about Their Schools

The 2007 Education Next—PEPG Survey

Fall 2007 / Vol. 7, No. 4


Politics First, Students Last

A well-heeled commission issues a weak-kneed report

Summer 2007 / Vol. 7, No. 3


The Entrepreneurs and the New Commission

Changing minds in the education establishment

Spring 2007 / Vol. 7, No. 2


The NCES Private-Public School Study

Findings are other than they seem

Winter 2007 / Vol. 7, No. 1


Learning from Catastrophe Theory

What New Orleans Tells Us about Our Education Future

Fall 2006 / Vol. 6, No. 4


Is Your Child’s School Effective?

Don’t rely on NCLB to tell you

Fall 2006 / Vol. 6, No. 4


Vouchers in New York, Dayton, and D.C.

Vouchers and the Test-Score Gap

Summer 2001 / Vol. 1, No. 2


The Supreme School Board

Vouchers on Trial

A view from inside the courtroom

Summer 2002 / Vol. 2, No. 2


Ticket to Nowhere

In the wake of A Nation at Risk, educators pledged to focus anew on student achievement. Two decades later, little progress has been made

Spring 2003 / Vol. 3, No. 2


Voucher Research Controversy

New looks at the New York City evaluation

Spring 2004 / Vol. 4, No. 2


The Brown Irony

Racial progress eventually came to pass—everywhere but in public schools

Fall 2004 / Vol. 4, No. 4


The Children Left Behind

Now it is certain, on its third anniversary, that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is a monumental achievement. The accountability provisions of the law shine a bright light on the performance of schools across the nation, forcing many of them to attend to long-ignored problems. But new evidence confirms what was known when the law [...]

Spring 2005 / Vol. 4, No. 2


Johnny Can Read…in Some States

Johnny can’t read … in South Carolina. But if his folks move to Texas, he’ll be reading up a storm. What’s going on? It turns out that in complying with the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), some states have decided to be a whole lot more generous than others in determining whether students [...]

Summer 2005 / Vol. 5, No. 3


Let the Public In

How Closed Negotiations with Unions Are Hurting Our Schools

Summer 2006 / Vol. 6, No. 3


Keeping an Eye on State Standards

A race to the bottom?

Summer 2006 / Vol. 6, No. 3


Of Teacher Shortages and Quality

Good teaching—the kind that can routinely raise student achievement—is the most valuable of all education resources. When a teacher inspires, children learn, even when the building is antiquated, the Internet is missing, and classes are bigger than usual. So teacher quality matters. A lot. Yet the standard measure of quality today, the teaching credential or [...]

Spring 2006 / Vol. 6, No. 2


Blog Posts/Multimedia

The Right Role for the Federal Government

Give parents the information they need to pick their school of choice

02/07/2012

Teacher Unions, Mac the Knife, and Dollar Power

During the 2010-11 fiscal year, the NEA invested $18.8 million dollars in a bewildering array of grateful non-profit groups and organizations

01/11/2012

Resist Those Calls for the Formation of a Third Party

A lot of people, unhappy with both the Obama Administration and the Republican alternative, are searching for a middle way.

01/09/2012

What Do the Latest NAEP Scores Tell Us about NCLB?

Did the federal law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), close the education gap?  Now that Congress is talking about reauthorizing NCLB, it struck me that it would be worthwhile to see what the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tell us about the direction the nation has moved in the years since the law was passed.

11/07/2011

Views of EdNext Readers In Line With Those of General Public (except on Teachers Unions)

Ed Next readers—or at least those who participate in our polls—are not all that different from the public at large, except that they seem to know more about the issues and are thus more inclined to take a position on them. That’s what we discovered when we asked the same questions of readers as were posed to a representative cross-section of the public as a whole in 2011.

10/31/2011

Jeb Bush, Melinda Gates, Sal Khan and the Coming Digital Learning Battle

The debate between blended and online learning will continue. Too much politically is at stake for it to be otherwise.

10/17/2011

Regardless of Who is to Blame, Accountability and Merit Pay are Taking Some Heat in Texas

I am encouraged when Sandy Kress tells me that the moves away from accountability and merit pay that have taken place recently in Texas were forced upon Governor Rick Perry and Robert Scott, the state’s education commissioner, by legislative pressures beyond their control.

10/05/2011

Is Rick Perry Abandoning School Accountability and Merit Pay?

Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott was in enemy territory recently, telling the folks at Massachusetts’s Pioneer Institute (including some who favor Romney, such as myself [full disclosure] ) about the virtues of the Texas education system, a topic of national significance now that Rick Perry’s chariot has leaped to lead position in the Republican presidential nomination race.

10/03/2011

Do Rich People Know What’s Going On in Their Local Schools?

The savvy, well-heeled people who populate our affluent suburbs are expected to know what is going on. Those who send their children to public school settle only for the best. Not surprisingly, most are happy with what they get. Yet it turns out that many, probably most, of the schools in affluent neighborhoods deserve no better than a “C.”

09/27/2011

Public Wants Single-Sex School Option, Even Though Professors Do Not

If there is no evidence as to which type of schooling is to be preferred, why not let parents choose which type of schooling is best for their child?

09/23/2011

Power to the Principals

Podcast: Paul Peterson and Chester Finn discuss a study of Chicago principals who were given the power to choose which teachers to fire.

09/22/2011

Obama’s Jobs Bill Takes from States and Cities as Much as It Gives Them

Now that President Obama has let both the expenditure and revenue-raising shoes drop, it is clear that the costs to state and local governments of the new jobs bill could very well equal—perhaps exceed—the benefits they might receive.

09/19/2011

An Easy Way to Calculate the Rising Cost of Schooling

Information on the cost and performance of the Wellesley Public Schools may be available somewhere else in the vast reaches of the internet, but to quickly access accurate information you have to go to education.com

08/24/2011

A Year Late and a Million (?) Dollars Long—the U. S. Proficiency Standards Report

The U. S. government just provided the public with much the same information Education Next shared with readers a year ago: A comparison of state standards in reading and math at the 4th and 8th grade levels.

08/22/2011

With a Math Proficiency Rate of 32 Percent, U.S. Ranks Number 32

Thirty-two percent of U.S. students in the class of 2011 were proficient in mathematics when they were in 8th grade. Coincidentally, that places the United States in 32nd place among the 65 nations of the world that participated in PISA, my colleagues and I report today.

08/19/2011

NCLB Waivers

Podcast: Paul Peterson and Chester Finn discuss efforts by Arne Duncan to give states some leeway with respect to NCLB.

08/08/2011

Education.com Tells Me How Much I Pay—and What I Get

Now that I know how much is being spent, I realize little more is to be gained from spending more.

08/05/2011

No Matter How You Ask the Question

School vouchers rebounded in 2011

08/03/2011

How Obama Will End the Debt Crisis on His Own Hook: The NCLB Precedent

Substituting presidential preferences for explicit laws passed by Congress is an extraordinary invocation of executive power, but Secretary Duncan says it is necessary to take such actions because of the NCLB stalemate. That stalemate is small potatoes compared to the debt crisis.

07/28/2011

GOP Candidates on Education

Podcast: Paul Peterson and Chester Finn discuss education policy and the Republican candidates for president.

07/28/2011

Shouldn’t the Public Sector Share the Pain?

If the right cuts are made, the public sector can remain equally effective but operate in a more efficient manner.

07/25/2011

President’s Approval Rating Turns Negative: Not accidentally, bipartisanship does too

Two numbers that have come out since last Friday are depressing the chances for action on federal education policy. Everyone now knows that employment ticked upward to 9.2 percent, but few have noticed that Obama’s Real Clear Politics (RCP) job approval rating, positive for most of 2011, turned negative early Sunday morning.

07/11/2011

School Board Wagnerian Opera—Why Not?

Would it be possible to get some opera company – perhaps students at some adventurous school for the performing arts – to do a school-reform Ring cycle?

07/07/2011

Rhee’s Popularity Rises with the Public, but Not with the Powerful

Michelle Rhee’s public popularity has shifted upward, but the elites who chair the committee set up by the National Research Council to assess Rhee’s chancellorship are holding firm to their anti-Rhee convictions, no matter what the evidence.

06/28/2011

Do Merit Pay Systems Work? What Can We Learn from International Data?

Recently, Education Next released a path-breaking, peer-reviewed study by Ludger Woessmann which estimated long-term impacts of merit pay arrangements for teachers on student performance. Even though the study was executed with great care and sophistication a group which receives funding from teacher unions has persuaded a reviewer to write a misleading critique of the paper.

04/25/2011

Measuring Michelle Rhee’s Accomplishments

A Response to Ginsburg’s Concerns

04/20/2011

The Longevity Increase—What?

Teacher union leaders are outraged that the Watertown, Mass. school committee has rejected a negotiated contract that would give them a longevity increase. That’s extra payment for just “Being There.”

04/18/2011

Michelle Rhee v. Her Critics

What’s the evidence that Rhee was no better than her predecessors? And that other cities are doing just as well?

04/11/2011

Taking the Measure of Michelle Rhee

Podcast: Paul Peterson analyzes two new reports on Michelle Rhee’s performance as D.C.’s Schools Chancellor and describes his new findings on the gains made by D.C. students.

04/11/2011

Why Mayoral Control Works: Evidence from New York City

It is hard to imagine a school board finding a way to reverse its decision within a three-month period. But for Bloomberg, the price was too high. If he was to keep his own mayoralty on track he had to master the problem at Tweed Hall without delay.

04/11/2011

DC Children Can Thank Boehner— and Randomized Trials

Boehner deserves a thank you from the children of the District of Columbia for knowing how to play the one best policy card at his disposal. But Boehner could not have played that card had he not had convincing evidence that the voucher program he was trying to restore had been effective.

04/10/2011

Educating Rita: Digital Learning in the Sixties

“Educating Rita” makes the case both for digital learning and for end-of-the year external examinations.

04/08/2011

Are Experienced Teachers Really That Much Better?

Unions like to concentrate big salary gains—and pension benefits—on the more experienced teachers, because those are the teachers who tend to have clout within the schoolhouse and inside the union.

04/07/2011

A Pedagogical Divide in the World of Digital Learning

Digital learning is coming but the battle over its form and content is just beginning.

04/06/2011

The Education School Master’s Degree Factory

Simply by giving up the extra payment awarded to teachers with master’s degrees, school districts in Florida could save better than 3 percent of their teaching personnel costs without losing any of their classroom effectiveness.

04/04/2011

Every Number Needs a Denominator

One judges a country’s educational system capacity to challenge its most talented students by calculating the proportion of its students that are advanced in math, science and reading, not the raw number.

03/18/2011

Eliminating those Pesky Education Earmarks

With the Democratic walk-out in Wisconsin, all bets are off on what only recently seemed to be the possibility of a bipartisan consensus on what to do about No Child Left Behind. But that does not mean that 2011 will not see significant action on federal education policy.

03/11/2011

When It Comes to Collective Bargaining, States Should Follow the Feds

I am hopeful that the president will endorse a policy that has enabled him to take initial steps to reduce federal deficits. He should not disparage governors who seek similar authority at the state level in order to help solve their own pressing fiscal problems.

03/10/2011

National Democratic Party Supports Attack on the Democratic Process

The unmitigated partisan harangue is annoying. Far more disturbing, however, is the refusal by Democratic legislators to participate in the democratic process simply because their views are currently in the minority.

03/09/2011

Sponsored Results
Sponsors

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University - Ideas Defining a Free Society

Harvard Kennedy School Program on Educational Policy and Governance

Thomas Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence and Education Reform