General Audience Articles

Choice in American Education. Paul PetersonIn Terry Moe, Ed.. A Primer on America’s Schools. Hoover Institution Press. 2001.
Impacts on School Vouchers on Students and Families. Paul PetersonIn John C. Goodman and Fritz F. Steiger, Eds.. An Education Agenda: Let Parents Choose Their Children’s School. National Center for Policy Analysis. 2001.
Choice and Competition in K-12 Education. Paul PetersonIn Joseph Nye and Jack Donahue, Eds.. Government amid Bigger, Better Markets. Brookings Institution Press. 2001.
The American Mayor: Elections and Institutions. Paul Peterson. Parliamentary Affairs, 54(4). 2000.
What Happens to Low-Income New York Students When They Move From Public to Private Schools. William G. Howell, Paul E. PetersonIn Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti, Eds.. City Schools: Lessons from New York. John Hopkins University Press. 2000.
Vouchers and Central-City Schools. Jay P. Green, Paul E. PetersonIn Christopher H. Foreman, Jr., Ed.. The African American Predicament. Brookings Institution Press, 82-96. 1999.
Building the Case: What Evaluation Has to Say About School Choice. Paul PetersonIn Evaluating for Success. The Philanthropy Roundtable, 37-55. 1999.
Implications of School Choice Experiments. Paul Peterson. The Center on Education in the Inner Cities Review, 8(1), 20-21. 1999.
Top Ten Questions Asked About School Choice. Paul Peterson. Brookings Papers on Education Policy. Brookings Institution Press, 371-418. 1999.
Central-City School Systems: Time for Experimentation. Paul Peterson. Brookings Newsletter. 1998.
What Evaluation Has to Say About School Choice. Paul Peterson. Philanthropy, 12(4), 23-25. 1998.
Race Relations & Central City Schools. Paul Peterson, Jay P. Greene. The Brookings Review, 16(2), 3-37. 1998.

Some say U. S. race relations are improving; others say not. Some say that affirmative action has fostered racial progress; others say not. But almost all Americans, liberal or conservative, agree that in the long run racial equality can be fully achieved only by eliminating disparities in the average educational performances of blacks and whites. Most Americans, we submit, would go so far as to say that if the next generation of blacks and whites acquire similar academic skills, the remaining barriers to racial equality could well slip away of their own accord.

Under Extreme Duress, School Choice Success. Paul Peterson, Chad NoyesIn Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti, Eds.. New Schools for a New Century: The Redesign of Urban Education. Yale University Press. 1997.

The Wisconsin state legislature enacted in 1995 a large- scale voucher program offering a choice among both religious and secular schools to thousands of Milwaukee children living in low- income families. The program will not come into effect unless the Wisconsin state supreme court rejects a challenge to its constitutionality. Until such time, low income families seeking alternatives to the city's public schools must choose within the confines of a more limited plan set up in 1990. The Milwaukee story is hardly a "best practice" tale that educators love to relate.

A Report Card on School Choice. Paul Peterson. Commentary, 29-33. 1997.

The problems in American education are endemic. For example, compare math and science performance by students in the United States with that in other countries. The Third International Mathematics and Science Study ("TIMSS"), reporting on tests administered in 1995 to half a million students in forty-one countries, compares the math performance of U.S. students in fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades with that of students abroad. Math tests are thought to be especially good indicators of school effectiveness, because math, unlike reading and language skills, is learned mainly in school.

School Choice in Milwaukee. Paul Peterson, Jay P. Greene, Chad Noyes. Public Interest, No. 125, 38-56. 1996.