With selected characteristics taken into account
Here is a huge finding that didn't make much of a splash: when you control for parental income, race/ethnicity, books in the home, and other known factors on children's school performance, students in public schools peform just as well as those in private schools. This doesn't mean that private school students don't do better, it just means the differences can be entirely explained by demographic differences between the students who attend private vs public schools.
If you're interested in demography at all it's interesting to check out the full report from the Department of Education. I was disappointed to see that they didn't have a separate model to measure the effects of the demographic makeup of a classroom on performance -- that is, to look at the effect the other students in the classroom have on your scores. It would be interesting to measure this effect completely apart from the effect of the school as a whole, and it seems completely doable within their experimental design. Oh well.
Obviously this should give public educators a huge morale boost, and it may also provide an argument for those opposed to school vouchers (although that particular policy structure is more about local choice than the overall quality of private vs public schools). If you believe in the market's ability to ferret out the value of a particular service, then the results here are a little disconcerting, because you have to look elsewhere (prestige? the desire to self-segregate?) for what's of value here.
So based on the study do you think kids benefit from being in a class with more affluent kids? That is, should you always try to send your kids to the most affluent school possible, whether that be New Trier public or St. Ignatious private?
That's what the study doesn't really address. Their experimental design builds that into the school's overall benefit, so you don't get to see whether that on its own makes a difference, regardless of the school.
By the way, don't draw too many conclusions about schools you know from this. The study takes into account all public and private schools, and there are plenty of stinkers out there on both sides of the fence.
Post a comment