Established in 1996, under the direction of Paul E. Peterson (Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government) PEPG has rapidly distinguished itself as a significant player within the educational reform movement. Having supplemented the program leadership with the addition of Deputy Director Martin R. West (Assistant Professor of Education, Political Science, and Public Policy at Brown University) and through the support of its institutional sponsors—the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at the Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Government in Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences—PEPG continues to fulfill its core missions:

• Provide high-level scientific training for young scholars who can make independent contributions to scholarly research.

PEPG's Postdoctoral Fellowship was initiated to attract top recent doctoral recipients to the research of education at Harvard, and the program has been a resounding success thus far. These fellows have been vital in producing some of PEPG's most important research papers and in organizing program conferences. Both past postdoctoral fellows currently hold tenure-track positions at major colleges and universities, a strong indication of the caliber of scholars that have filled this program role. In addition to these fellows, PEPG has worked with numerous Harvard University graduate students and undergraduates, who have contributed substantially to program events and research through their work as PEPG research fellows.

• Foster a national community of reform-minded scientific researchers.

With the establishment of Education Next, PEPG has helped to create a distinguished outlet for policy-relevant reflection by education practitioners, professors, and renowned journalists. By hosting numerous national conferences on issues ranging from school choice to school board politics, the program has brought together some of the nation's most respected education researchers and legal scholars on an annual basis. And with the initiation of the PEPG Education Policy Colloquia Series in 2004, the program has provided a more intimate forum to nurture an interest in education research within the Harvard community.

• Produce path-breaking studies that provide a scientific basis for school reform policy.

With the publication of The Education Gap: Vouchers in Urban Schools (Brookings, 2002), Paul Peterson and William Howell capped six years of PEPG's rigorous evaluation of voucher programs in New York City; Dayton, Ohio; and Washington D.C.— to name only a few. In 2003, Paul Peterson and Marty West served as editors for the first scholarly volume to assess the accountability movement, No Child Left Behind?: The Politics and Practice of Accountability (Brookings, 2003). In 2005, Peterson and West authored "The Efficacy of Choice Threats within School Accountability Systems," the first independent study to examine the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act on the test-score performance of individual students. And, as the program was recently name a key partner in the Center on School Choice, Competition and Achievement—the first federally funded research center on school choice—PEPG has firm backing to continue its influential research of school choice and accountability.

To learn more about PEPG, please see our annual reports and visit our sponsors and affiliates page.