Education Gap

Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance, Harvard University. He is also editor-in-chief of Education Next and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Endangering Prosperity, A Global View of the American School, with Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann (Brookings, 2013); The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools, with William G. Howell (Brookings, 2004 and 2006). He is coeditor (with Martin West) of No Child Left Behind? The Practice and Politics of School Accountability (Brookings, 2003).

"A major contribution of this study lies in its application of randomized field trials...[which] are rarely used in educational research." — Journal of Politics|"Howell and Peterson have set a very high standard not only for voucher research but for the evaluation of educational reforms more generally....Their usage of sophisticated methodologies and their breadth of outcome measurements establish this as the definitive scholarly work on voucher programs in the United States." — American Journal of Education|"A fascinating and highly readable account of the experience of school voucher programmes in the United States." — Education Economics|"Howell and Peterson have made a tremendous contribution to the study of small-scale voucher programs and their consequences. The methods and findings presented in THE EDUCATION GAP establish a new standard of excellence in policy research and lay the ground for even more carefully calibrated future work." — Perspectives on Politics|"This is the most important book ever written on the subject of vouchers." —John E. Brandl, University of Minnesota