The Education Gap: Vouchers And Urban Schools [Paperback]

William G. Howell (Author), Paul E. Peterson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0815736851 | ISBN-13: 978-0815736851 | Publication Date: February 10, 2006 | Edition: Revised

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is the most important book ever written on the subject of vouchers." --John E. Brandl, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota

"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." --Perspectives on Politics

About the Author

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 Henry Lee Shattuck professor of government and director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and editor-in-chief of Education Next.

Product Details

• Paperback: 323 pages
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press; Revised edition (February 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815736851
• ISBN-13: 978-0815736851
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,160,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Howell and Peterson are tops in their field, December 19, 2003

By 

"ibischuck" (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (Hardcover)

Paul Peterson and William Howell are revolutionaries in their field--Education Public Policy. This book is so great because it lacks the ideological and political biases that permeate nearly 90 percent of the voucher books out there. Despite what the previous reviewer stated I wish to defend Howell and Peterson's book (which needs no defending from me). Their book which is put out by the Brookings Institute (hardly an ideologically driven think-tank Brookings is the model of centrism) Howell and Peterson formulate their empirical data from randomized field trials. RFTs are the gold standard in empirical research studies that seek to compare two groups of individuals while controlling for one factor. In this case Howell and Peterson are able to control for the much noted self-selection bias problematic to many voucher studies and show that African-American students from similar economic and educational backgrounds score significantly (1 standard deviation)higher when they are educated in parochial/private schools than in their neighborhood public schools. A wealth of research from 99.9 percent of all the other scholars studying this topic have in one shape or form supported that finding--that black students do improve upon going to a private school viz. a voucher. Only Alan Krueger and Zho (2004) of Princeton discredit parts of the study, but they refuse to control for baseline data which does not allow them to control the self-selection bias. Furthermore Krueger et al. uses a questionable racial classification scheme where self-identified black/hispanic folks are reclassified as African-American/non-hispanic. In the final analysis its hard to disagree with Peterson and Howell and the above reviewer does so at his own peril. These folks are professionals in the truest sense of the word and they work at the venerable Harvard Program on Education and Governance Policy--please don't try to mislead people into thinking they are overly ideologically motivated.

5.0 out of 5 stars Text for college, December 23, 2011

By 

KelliShopping (Las Vegas) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Education Gap: Vouchers And Urban Schools (Paperback)

This book is a requirement for some urban educ classes I have coming up this semester. I used Amazon Prime and it was adream I got all my books within days of ordering and there is no worry about having them in time for classes. They were much cheaper on Amazon than in the bookstores.

2 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars statistical smoke and mirrors, May 7, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (Hardcover)

5-7-2003 article discredits all of Peterson's claims. His research partner, Mathematica, refused to back his claims. subsequent analysis has shown Peterson's findings are more ideology than research.