Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University, and editor-in-chief of Education Next, a journal of opinion and research on education policy.

Peterson is a former director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and of the Governmental Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. A political scientist by training, Peterson has taught at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, Stanford University, the University of Washington, and the University of Illinois. While a professor at the University of Chicago, Peterson chaired the Social Science Research Council’s Committee on the Urban Underclass, and has served on many committees of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and 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.

Peterson is the author or editor of over one hundred articles and thirty-plus books, including School Choice International: Exploring public private partnerships; School Money Trials: The Legal Pursuit of Educational Adequacy; Reforming Education in Florida: A Study Prepared by the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education; The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools; Generational Change: Closing the Test Score Gap; No Child Left Behind? The Politics and Practice of School Accountability; The Future of School Choice; Our Schools and our Future; City Limits; The New Urban Reality; The Urban Underclass; Price of Federalism; Welfare Magnets; and The New American Democracy. Three of his books have received major awards from the American Political Science Association.

Peterson is a member of the independent review panel advising the Department of Education’s evaluation of the No Child Left Behind law and a member of the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force of K-12 Education at Stanford University. 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