Posted on 05/09/2005 3:19:18 PM PDT by Crackingham
The crumbling neighborhood public school down the block or that gilded private school on a hill? There's a tendency to imagine the two this way - and to assume the private school will produce better students. But beleaguered public schools have recently received a small, though noteworthy, boost. After accounting for students' socioeconomic background, a new study shows public school children outperforming their private school peers on a federal math exam.
Overall, private school students tend to do markedly better on standardized tests. But the reason, this study suggests, may be that they draw students from wealthier and more educated families, rather than because they're better at bolstering student achievement.
One study is unlikely to settle a long-simmering debate over the merits of public versus private education. But its authors say they hope it will give pause to a current trend in education reform: privatization.
From tax-dollar financed vouchers for private schools to a drive to put public schools in private hands, market-style reforms are all the buzz in education.
Competition, the reasoning goes, is healthy for schools. Those that must produce results to survive have to be better than those that don't face such pressure.
But these findings "really call into question the assumption of some of the more prominent reform efforts," says Christopher Lubienski, an education professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who wrote the study with his wife Sarah Theule Lubienski, also an education professor at the university.
In particular, says Mr. Lubienski, it challenges the assumption that "the private-school model is better and more effective, and can achieve superior results. It really undercuts a lot of those choice-based reforms."
"A New Look at Public and Private Schools: Student Background and Mathematics Achievement" appears in the May issue of Phi Delta Kappan, a highly regarded education journal.
Analyzing raw data from the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress for 28,000 fourth- and eighth-graders representing more than 1,300 public and private schools, Mrs. Lubienski, whose research focuses on equity issues in math education, was surprised by what she was seeing. When children of similar socioeconomic status were compared, the public school children scored higher. She called in her husband, who studies school choice and privatization, to help interpret the results.
"She called in her husband, who studies school choice and privatization, to help interpret the results."
Because having been taught in the public schools, she was unable to read the results.
And if the results are accurate, what was their explanation?
Flawed data or flawed researcher?
The local public grade school near me has an abysmal rate of literacy, while the catholic school a couple of blocks further down, while not great, looks like geniuses compared to these kids.
What a bunch of crapola. "After accounting for students' socioeconomic background....". I take this to mean "we jacked up the public students scores because they received free lunches". What a bunch of BS.
If you want to see test scores that blow both the public AND private schools clear out of the water then look at the Homeschool community.
Link to their article in Phi Delta Kappan:
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k_v86/k0505lub.htm
After accounting for students' socioeconomic background,
One child in public school, one child in private school.
High school.
The public high school gave my son a MUCH better education than the private school gave my daughter.
However, the environment.....no drugs, no violence, lots of teacher involvement with the students was worth the cost of the private school for my daughter.
We all have to decide what is best for our own child.
Details of their study here:
http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP102.pdf
Absent hard information about the methodology of this particular study, the proper conclusion is that this is another example of junk science, from bigoted researchers. Did I miss anything?
Congressman Billybob
I know of no private school that reveals socio-economic data about its attendees.
"Hence, correlations between school sector and achievement are not necessarily causal. In other words, one cannot conclude from this analysis that public schools are more effective at promoting student growth than private schools. There may be confounding variables not accounted for in this study that could help explain these patterns." In short, the study does not stand for what the sloppy reporter for the Christian Science Monitor claimed.
Furthermore, I got to examine their methodology. These two professors manufactured their own "Socio-Economic Standard" different than those markers used by any other researcher, and then based their charts on that manufactured standard.
As I said, this is more academic bullsh*t, designed to prove a predetermined result, and nothing more. John / Billybob
define "better"...
If there was better teacher involvement at the private school, why were the results worse? Were the teachers worse? Private school teachers - except in elite schools - receive notoriously low pay; does that mean the better ones go to the public schools?
It's the exact opposite where I grew up… the Public High School was and is FAR superior to the Private one.
There were many families who sent their kids to Private Schools or Home-Schooled for the early grades but then to the Public High School.
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