Op-ed

Penalizing Schools That Succeed. Paul Peterson. New York Post. February 19, 2009.

THE stimulus package will more than double the fed eral money being spent on K-12 education for the next two years. But will local districts spend the cash productively?

Flash back to 2002, when school reform was in the air in Philadelphia, one of the nation's largest and most troubled school districts. The district, under state pressure, revamped its governing structure and contracted out its 46 most challenging schools.

Dog Eats AFT Homework. William G. Howell, Martin R. West, Paul Peterson. The Wall Street Journal. August 18, 2004.
Money Has Not Been Left Behind. Martin R. West, Paul E. Peterson. Education Week. March 17, 2004.

"An unfunded mandate," cry the critics of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. In the words of Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee: "By neglecting his promise to provide the funding necessary to help each student to reach high standards, George W. Bush has made a mockery of the phrase 'leave no child behind.'" Virginia's Republican-dominated legislature recently struck a similar chord, passing (on a vote of 98-1) a resolution complaining that the law will cost "literally millions of dollars that Virginia does not have."

A quiet revolution. William G. Howell, Paul E. Peterson. The National Law Journal, A21. July 08, 2002.
Rigorous Trials and Tests Should Precede Adoption of School Reforms. Paul Peterson. The Chronicle of Higher Education, B4-B5. January 22, 1999.

Few doubt that education in our inner cities is in desperate need of improvement. Decades after the civil-rights movement began, equal educational opportunity remains more a slogan than a reality. Minority-group students in U.S. elementary and secondary schools continue to learn much less than their white peers, as measured by a wide variety of tests of student achievement, such as the SAT and the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Let the Charters Bloom. Paul Peterson. Hoover Digest: Research and Opinion on Public Policy, No.3 Summer, 81. 2010.

President Obama staked out a position on education this spring, delivering a radio address that bluntly acknowledged that American high school students are trailing international averages. He sketched out details of a bill his administration would be pushing to revise the No Child Left Behind Act. He proposed to preserve testing requirements but create a better measuring stick, require that teachers be evaluated by performance (not credentials), and use carrots instead of sticks to encourage progress.