Education reform movement nurtured at Harvard’s Kennedy School

Deep within the bastions of liberal Harvard University, a small enclave of school reformers is quietly reshaping the conversation around education. 

Nearly 30 years ago, Paul E. Peterson founded the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Since then, he has tackled issues ranging from school choice to accountability in public education. 

The program recently hosted its fourth annual Emerging School Models conference, which brought together more than 2,000 participants in person and online to discuss microschools, charter schools and the broader school choice movement. 

This year’s key themes included the rise of education savings accounts (ESAs), the growth of homeschooling and learner-centered models, and the state policy reforms that could help promote new education models. 

Peterson said he launched the program during “a moment in time when the stars were aligned.” 

“There was a favorable predisposition on the part of the Kennedy School, the central administration, to set up an education program outside of the education school,” Peterson told The Lion. The Graduate School of Education “tried to prevent it, but at this particular moment there was a donor who wanted it and there was a dean, provost and president who were at least (minimally supportive).” 

The program launched within six months – just before the opportunity might have closed – and continues its work today. 

Peterson said one of the biggest issues in both public and private education is cost. A recent report found that public schools now spend more per student than private schools in every state but Utah. Yet test scores have fallen, and the United States ranks behind most Western nations in overall education performance. 

That gap creates an opportunity for homeschools, microschools and other emerging models, which typically spend far less per student, Peterson said. 

“If you have education savings accounts enacted in more and more states, I think you could see a big expansion occurring under that framework,” he said. “If legislatures put more resources into ESAs, that’s going to give a lot of families more options.” 

Don Soifer, head of the National Microschooling Center and a panelist at the conference, told The Lion that microschools could grow from 1% or 2% of the school-age population to as much as 10% in the near future. 

“It’s not at all out of the question,” Soifer said. “That would require both school choice states making their programs friendly to microschools and continued growth in states without school choice programs, where schools are primarily tuition-based.” 

Peterson credited former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos with helping unify the Republican Party behind school choice. That support has helped the movement double in size in just five years to serve more than 1.3 million students. Still, Peterson argued that the issue must not remain partisan. 

“You’ve got to have a bipartisan coalition to really have a transformation of the educational system,” said Peterson, who has studied education since the 1960s and authored a book on Chicago Public Schools in the 1970s. 

He described school districts as the single greatest obstacle to reform. 

“The school district is an entity unto itself,” he said. “It’s headed by a school board – 90% of those are elected – and they have huge bureaucratic structures and billions of dollars at their disposal. Even though student performance hasn’t improved, they still have great strength.” 

Reform, however, is taking root in unexpected places. Peterson pointed to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of a microschool as a sign of changing attitudes. 

“To think that Silicon Valley might move in this direction – with all the firepower and legitimacy it has – is significant,” he said. 

While academics often focus on test scores, Peterson suggested that safety concerns may be the greatest factor driving parents toward alternative schooling models. 

“These big news stories about shootings – they’re affecting both private and public schools,” he said.  

“There’s lots of possibilities on the horizon,” he added. “I would hate to say this is definitely going to happen, but I can see real opportunities – and lots of obstacles.” 

Soifer, who called Peterson a “hero” of the school choice movement, was more optimistic. 

“Between researchers, policymakers, practitioners and policy leaders, the interest in microschools at Harvard was further evidence that the movement is continuing to grow significantly,” he said, “and that it’s going to play an even more important role in shaping education in this country.”