Author

Paul E. Peterson

    Author Website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/


    Author Bio:
    Paul 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. 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 forthcoming 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 LimitsThe Urban Underclass (co-edited with Christopher Jencks) • Price of FederalismWelfare Magnets (with Mark C. Rom) • The New American Democracy (with Morris P. Fiorina, Bertram Johnson, and William G. Mayer) Three of his books have received major awards from the American Political Science Association. 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

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

Video: Paul E. Peterson talks with Nathan Glazer

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

Complete Results

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


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 are [...]

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

Saving Schools and Virtual Schooling

Video: Education Next’s Paul E. Peterson talks about his new book, Saving Schools, and about the advantages of virtual schooling, with Nathan Glazer.

03/11/2010

We Need Fewer Teachers, Not More

In Sunday’s NYT, Elizabeth Green explains beautifully the challenges of classroom teaching. She says we will need millions of additional teachers to cover baby boom retirements, and wonders how we can find enough good ones. The answer is that we can’t.

03/09/2010

The New Normal for Federal Education Spending

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week about whether the federal share of education spending is likely to remain at 15 percent and whether the $1 billion bonus for reauthorizing ESEA this year is likely to be awarded.

03/05/2010

A Virtual Race to the Top

Now that the first round of Race to the Top awards have been announced, we can appreciate the impact that this new federal initiative is having on stimulating new thinking at state and local levels. Promising money to states if they come up with sensible ideas seems to work more effectively than punishing schools and districts for low performance. But some of the truly bold new ideas in education today are escaping the attention of RttT policymakers.

03/04/2010

Has Integration Made Raleigh’s Schools Great?

Video: Nathan Glazer talks with Education Next about whether the policy of assigning students to schools to achieve socioeconomic diversity in Raleigh-Wake County has worked.

03/02/2010

Diane Ravitch on “the Nature of Markets”

Ignoring basic economic principles, Ravitch asks us to keep intact our hopelessly disabled school system, now stagnant for half a century or more. She thinks she can get American schools to adopt her favored curricular reforms—even though they have refused to do so despite her multi-decade advocacy.

03/02/2010

Choice and Residential Segregation

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week about a new Fordham Institute report identifying 2800 public schools that only prosperous kids can attend. A more choice-based public school system, such as the one endorsed by a new Brookings Institution report, would provide more opportunities for poor kids to attend better schools, they note.

02/23/2010

What’s Next in Education: Common Ground or Battle Ground?

Are the right and the left coming together on education policy? President Obama’s budget address is encouraging, if ambiguous. Looking elsewhere, one also finds mixed signals. Consider the two reports that came out last week, one on charter school segregation by a UCLA group headed by Professor Gary Orfield, the other a Brookings report headed by Grover Whitehurst, the widely respected former head of the Institute of Education Sciences.

02/08/2010

How Vouchers Came to New Orleans

Video: Michael Henderson talks with Education Next about how Louisiana managed to pass a voucher law.

01/27/2010

Obama is Getting the Message

A few days ago I urged the President to shift education upward on the national agenda. Now it appears that he had already anticipated the upset in Massachusetts and was beginning to make the grand pivot even before election day.

01/24/2010

Washington Post Wrong in Calling RttT the Largest Federal Education Expenditure

The $4.35 billion or so dollars spent on the Race to the Top, coupled with the extra billion now proposed by the president, is small beer compared to the $75 billion dollars that the stimulus package handed over to local districts for programming as usual. Yet the Administration has succeeded in persuading the allegedly skeptical, tough-minded reporters in Washington that RttT is the biggest federal education program ever mounted.

01/21/2010

If Only Obama Had Made Himself the Education President. . .

Even more than the current presidential approval rating of 48 percent, Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown’s morning-after celebration just one year to the day after Barack Obama took the oath of office tells us that something has gone wrong with the President’s governing strategy.

01/20/2010

How Much Teacher Unions Spend in Your State

Teacher unions are quietly undermining charter and merit pay legislation that is supposed to help states “race to the top.” To exercise such power, a hefty cash box comes in handy.

01/19/2010

Studies Find No Effects

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Jan. 7) about whether randomized field trials in education should be abandoned, since they so rarely find that the treatments have any effects.

01/07/2010

New York Times on the Wall Street Journal: The Stove Pot Calling the Mixing Bowl Black

In what is certain to be the top hilarity story of the week, New York Times columnist David Carr “thoughtfully” reveals what he sees as the drift to the right on the part of his company’s great rival, the Wall Street Journal.

12/14/2009

Focus of School Reform Shifting to Teachers

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week about whether teacher quality is eclipsing accountability and choice as a reform strategy and what role research plays in this.

12/10/2009

Are Middle Schools or Middle Schoolers the Problem?

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Dec. 10) about why it is so hard to talk to adolescents
about school and what schools can do to encourage parent involvement.

12/10/2009

Technological Innovation is Our Best and Final Hope for Saving High Quality Math and Science Education

More than half of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are immigrants, wrote Paul Kedrosky and Brad Feld in a Wall Street Journal editorial last Wednesday. Kedrosky and Feld cite this fact to argue that visas for talented foreigners are desperately needed to sustain the growth sectors in the American economy. Their point is well taken, but the fix is only short term. The United States needs to begin growing its own creative talent by educating the best of our young people in science, math, and cognitive science skills from an early age.

12/08/2009

Biggest Spender in Politics: The NEA

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Dec. 4) about what the National Education Association is buying with its campaign contributions, which total $56.3 million and exceed the campaign contributions made by any other organization in America.

12/04/2009

Is the Decline of the Mainstream Press Bad for Education?

Education is the top in only 1.4 percent of news coverage by television, radio, newspapers and news web sites, a report issued by the Brookings Institution tells us. Should we be distressed? Perhaps, but we shouldn’t be surprised.

12/03/2009

Race to the Top Versus the Money Chase

The National Education Association (and its local affiliates) gave $56.3 million dollars to state and federal election campaigns in 2007 and 2008, more than any other entity. The much smaller American Federation of Teachers tossed in another $12 million dollars into political campaigns. This enormous cash nexus that swamps anything any business entity has contributed creates a huge problem for Arne Duncan.

12/03/2009

Saving Jobs or Stimulating Reform?

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Nov. 24) about the effect of the stimulus package on education, a sector that has proven to be very good at job creation.

11/24/2009

Election Postmortem

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Nov. 19) about what the results of the 2009 off-year elections mean for education.

11/19/2009

Will Congress Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut?

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Nov. 4) about a bill passed by the House that would send $8 billion to states to boost the quality of preschools and expand the number of preschool spots for disadvantaged children.

11/04/2009

Stimulating Stagnation in Education

According to a New York Times report, the Obama Administration admits that over half of the jobs it created or saved by its stimulus package were in the field of education. Had that money really been spent in ways to promote educational productivity, it would have been faithful to the investment goals of the stimulus package.

11/02/2009

Voters Choose Neighborhood Schools over Socioeconomic Diversity

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (October 29) about Wake County, North Carolina, where voters earlier this month elected new school board members who have pledged to undo the county’s controversial policy of assigning students to schools based on income (to achieve diversity).

10/29/2009

In Memoriam: Theodore Sizer

What is most important is that Sizer, as establishment a figure in education as any, never forgot what was most important: searching for the successful ways of educating the next generation.

10/23/2009

The Nobel Committee Isn’t the Only One Giving Speculative Prizes

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (October 22) about wishful thinking in the education reform community. Do school reformers need to temper their enthusiasm about the reform du jour?

10/22/2009

Instead of Creating Charters, Just Incarcerate the Students

A Massachusetts state commission has solved the high school drop-out problem. Just incarcerate the students. That’s the thrust of its recommendation.

10/21/2009

Nobel Prize Winner Elinor Ostrom and Her Theory of Co-Production

The selection of political scientist Elinor Ostrom as worthy of a Nobel prize in economics has been as astonishing to many economists as was the choice of President Obama as peacemaker of the year. In her case, the question is not “What has she done?” but “Who is she?” To those of us influenced by her work, however, her selection has been deeply satisfying.

10/19/2009

Teacher Specialization

Video: Frederick Hess talks with Education Next about reading specialists, den mothers, and teacher pay in the 21st century.

10/18/2009

Will Michelle Rhee Triumph?

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (October 14) about education politics in Washington, D.C., where Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee recently fired 229 teachers.

10/14/2009

Will the Federal Role in Education Double?

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week about Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s recent speech, the future of federal education spending, and making NCLB’s successor tighter about ends and looser about means.

10/08/2009

Charter Schools Narrow Achievement Gaps in New York City

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk about Caroline Hoxby’s random assignment study of student achievement in charter schools in New York City.

10/01/2009

Evaluation of D.C. Voucher Program

Video: Patrick Wolf talks with Education Next about his “gold standard” evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and about the likely future of that program.

09/30/2009

Liberating Learning

Political scientists Terry Moe and John Chubb have shifted their bets from that spoke of the school-reform roulette wheel named “school voucher” to one marked “technological innovation.”

09/25/2009

How Much Support Is There for Merit Pay?

Opinion on merit pay has yet to consolidate in one direction or another, as a lot of people have yet to make up their mind.

09/24/2009

What Congress Is Not Working On

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. gab about NCLB this week, and consider whether the law will be reauthorized by 2014, which is the deadline for all students to achieve proficiency.

09/24/2009

Charter Schools, Unions, and Linking Teachers with Student Achievement Data

Podcast: Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. discuss the week’s education news, including an announcement that a charter school in Massachusetts has signed a collective bargaining agreement with its teachers, an agreement that includes merit pay.

09/17/2009

Sponsored Results
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