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 on education policy. He is a former director of the Governmental Studies program at the Brookings Institution.  

Peterson is the author or editor of over one hundred articles and thirty-plus books, including School Money Trials: The Legal Pursuit of Educational Adequacy (Brookings, 2007); Reforming Education in Florida: A Study Prepared by the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education (Hoover, 2006); The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (Revised Edition) (Brookings, 2006); Generational Change: Closing the Test Score Gap (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); No Child Left Behind? The Politics and Practice of School Accountability (Brookings, 2003); The Future of School Choice ( Hoover, 2003); Our Schools and our Future...Are We Still At Risk? ( Hoover, 2003); Learning From School Choice (Brookings, 1998); The Price of Federalism (Brookings, 1995); The Urban Underclass (Brookings, 1991); The Politics of School Reform: 1870-1940 (University of Chicago, 1985); The New Urban Reality (Brookings, 1985); City Limits (University of Chicago, 1981); and School Politics Chicago Style (University of Chicago, 1976). Three of his books have received major awards from the American Political Science Association.

After receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago, he was a professor for many years there in the Departments of Political Science and Education. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 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 a member of the independent review panel advising the Department of Education’s evaluation of the No Child Left Behind law. 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.

Contact:

79 JFK Street
Taubman 306
Cambridge, MA 02138

617-495-8312/7976
ppeterso@gov.harvard.edu