The voucher debate has been both intense and ideologically polarizing, in good part because so little is known about how voucher programs operate in practice. In The Education Gap, William Howell and Paul Peterson report new findings drawn from the most comprehensive study on vouchers conducted to date. Added to the paperback edition of this groundbreaking volume are the authors' insights into the latest school choice developments in American education, including new voucher initiatives, charter school expansion, and public-school choice under No Child Left Behind. The authors review the significance of state and federal court decisions as well as recent scholarly debates over choice impacts on student performance. In addition, the authors present new findings on which parents choose private schools and the consequences the decision has for their children's education. Updated and expanded, The Education Gap remains an indispensable source of original research on school vouchers. "This is the most important book ever written on the subject of vouchers." -John E. Brandl, dean, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota "The Education Gap will provide an important intellectual battleground for the debate over vouchers for years to come." -Alan B. Krueger, Princeton University "Must reading for anyone interested in the battle over vouchers in America." -John Witte, University of Wisconsin
William G. Howell is an associate professor in the Government Department at Harvard University and deputy director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard. Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard, the director of PEPG, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is author or editor of numerous books, including The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools, with William G. Howell (Brookings, 2004 and 2006). He is coeditor (with Martin West) of No Child Left Behind? The Practice and Politics of School Accountability (Brookings, 2003).
"This is the most important book ever written on the subject of vouchers." --John E. Brandl, University of Minnesota
"A major contribution of this study lies in its application of randomized field trials...[which] are rarely used in educational research." - Journal of Politics |"Howell and Peterson have set a very high standard not only for voucher research but for the evaluation of educational reforms more generally....Their usage of sophisticated methodologies and their breadth of outcome measurements establish this as the definitive scholarly work on voucher programs in the United States." - American Journal of Education |"A fascinating and highly readable account of the experience of school voucher programmes in the United States." - Education Economics |"Howell and Peterson have made a tremendous contribution to the study of small-scale voucher programs and their consequences. The methods and findings presented in THE EDUCATION GAP establish a new standard of excellence in policy research and lay the ground for even more carefully calibrated future work." - Perspectives on Politics |"This is the most important book ever written on the subject of vouchers." -John E. Brandl, University of Minnesota
