Achievement Gaps: What Will it Take to Close Them?

Paul Peterson discusses the profound importance of reducing achievement gaps in communities like the Twin Cities – where they’re larger than virtually anyplace in the nation.  What’s been tried?  What needs trying next? 

Professor Peterson has edited and written two invaluable books in the last few years.

In Generational Change: Closing the Test Score Gap, an anthology featuring essays by ten distinguished scholars on desegregation, early childhood education and other parts of the puzzle, he said this about No Child Left Behind: “The law does not hold students accountable for their own performance. NCLB instead reinforces the image that students are objects to be manipulated, not people who need to acquire a sense of discipline, responsibility, and self-respect.”

And in The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (co-authored with William G. Howell), he concluded: “Voucher interventions that serve African American students seem particularly promising.”

A native of Montevideo, Minnesota, Dr. Peterson is Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard.