Choice and Competition in American Education

Paul E. Peterson is Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and 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. Peterson is the author or editor over one hundred articles and twenty books and is a former director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and of the Governmental Studies program at the Brookings Institution.

• Chapter 1 The Private Can Be PublicChapter 2 The Costs of PrivatizationChapter 3 Regulations Do More Harm than GoodChapter 4 In Defense of RegulationChapter 5 We Need New Types of AdministratorsChapter 6 New Leaders: Will Public Schools Hire Them?Chapter 7 Fringe Benefits: AFT and NEA Teacher Salary SurveysChapter 8 Low Pay, Low QualityChapter 9 he Case for Merit PayChapter 10 Wage Compression and the Decline in Teacher QualityChapter 11 A Union by Any Other NameChapter 12 Reform Unionism Is HereChapter 13 Charter Schools: Mom and Pops or Corporate DesignChapter 14 Charter-School PoliticsChapter 15 A School Built for Horace: Tales from a Start-up Charter SchoolChapter 16 The Impact of Vouchers on Student PerformanceChapter 17 Do Vouchers and Charters Push Public Schools to Improve?Chapter 18 School Choice and Social CohesionChapter 19 How Vouchers Came to D. C.Chapter 20 Contracting Out: The Story behind Philadelphia's Edison ContractChapter 21 Home Schooling: The Nation's Fastest-growing Education SectorChapter 22 School Choice in No Child Left BehindChapter 23 Selling Supplemental Services

In these 21 articles contributors wrestle with such issues as the profit motive and whether it will benefit kids, deregulation of entry into the teaching profession, making teacher pay more competitive, the belief that teacher unions stifle reform, and the ever-increasing pressures to create charter schools, use school voucher program, contract schools out, increase home schooling, and sell supplemental services. They also take a hard look at school choice after No Child Left Behind.