Thread: Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/15/ed...d3c&ei=5087%0A

Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
Published: July 15, 2006

WASHINGTON, July 14 — The Education Department reported on Friday that children in public schools generally performed as well or better in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private school counterparts fared better. The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores in 2003 from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools, found that fourth graders attending public school did significantly better in math than comparable fourth graders in private schools. Additionally, it found that students in conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind their counterparts in public schools on eighth-grade math.

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The official said the warning against drawing unsupported conclusions was expanded somewhat as the report went through in the review.

The report cautions, for example, against concluding that children do better because of the type of school as opposed to unknown factors. It also warns of great variations of performance among private schools, making a blanket comparison of public and private schools “of modest utility.” And the scores on which its findings are based reflect only a snapshot of student performance at a point in time and say nothing about individual student progress in different settings.

I thought I should go ahead and post this up. I've seen a pretty impressive private school and a few crappy public ones. However, I guess you never really know what the general trend is unless you study it.


WEB

I am extremely skeptical of this claim, because I could post a number of articles showing studies that "prove" that public schools are much worse. But, then everyone has an agenda. Based on my personal experience, I found private school to be a better learning environment and I thought the teachers were a fraction or two better than the ones in public school. But I think the difference is the environment and the structure of the schools. I could be wrong, but I suppose the difference between private and public is organizational and cosmetic, more than definitively educational.

How well do they compare when it comes to critical thinking skills? How well do they compare when it comes to a desire for learning - including life long learning?

Are all these tests standardized tests that public schoolchildren are taught to ace, to the exclusion of other studies?

In the end it all comes down to the attitude of the children. Granted, I would never send my kids to public schools in Washington D.C. or some inner city school district, but the child has to have a desire to learn for a school to do any good. This desire comes from the child's upbringing and of course you will see more desire in private schools, but it can be found in public schools. A child who has a thirst for knowledge and a desire to succeed will do well in either setting.

They have a situation in Detroit in which a huge balloon of private schools started opening because it was discovered how big the market was for them and that many of them do not do well at all. Some private schools are great but some are not very good at all just like with public schools. In the town we live in we only have one private school that is for kindergarten through high school and it is a very conservative Christian school and there is no alternative other than that. In Paducah which is the town I was born in and is much bigger they have a very conservative Christian private school and a Catholic school. No market for a secular private school I suppose which is sad because it leaves many some fields of study out. At the University here in Murray evolutionary biology is a big field in the science department so if you grew up here you would have no background for it unless you went to the public schools.

There is little worth learning in school; and under the "No Child Left Behind" regime - there is nothing worth learning besides learning how to take the government test for mediocracy.

Originally Posted by BleedingHeadKen

How well do they compare when it comes to critical thinking skills? How well do they compare when it comes to a desire for learning - including life long learning?

I've sat in on private school classes, and I've gone to public school for my entire years k-12.

The only skill which the kids at the private schools had that the public school students were lacking was the ability to do lines of cocaine (the private schools in my area all cost 10,000+ easily). Everything else? We could do it just as well, or more often then not, better. And you get far more of what i'd consider "life skills" imho in the public schools (I'll define this as everything which is not strictly academic in nature or application).

I was going to post another take on this issue. President Bush's education initiaitives from 2001-2002 motivate public schools to change. Now public schools are catching up with private schools.

See what the threat of competition can do!

Yes, the threat of loss of federal taxpayer dollars and the setting of high standards does wonders.

Now let us revisit vouchers for private schools and homeschools or 100% transferrable tax credits. Think how much better for the students...

Originally Posted by Thematic-Device

I've sat in on private school classes, and I've gone to public school for my entire years k-12.

The only skill which the kids at the private schools had that the public school students were lacking was the ability to do lines of cocaine (the private schools in my area all cost 10,000+ easily). Everything else? We could do it just as well, or more often then not, better. And you get far more of what i'd consider "life skills" imho in the public schools (I'll define this as everything which is not strictly academic in nature or application).

This really depends on your location. In many districts public schools are just as good as private schools. In many they aren't.

Where I come from the pirvate schools are better than about 75% of the public schools and on par with the rest of them. By far the biggest advantage of a Private school (in Spokane, WA, anyway) was that the private school (there was only 1 major private high school with roughly 800-900 students...I think there are some others but attendence is well under 100 students) was that the SAT and ACT scores were much higher. Of course, this doesn't reflect accurately on the intelligence of students but it does show that the private school was more geared towards sending its kids of to college. The Private school sent routinely sent about 95% of it's graduating class off to college, 92% (approx) went on the to four year schools, and by far the vast majority, though I can't remember the exact precentage, graduated with at least a BA/BS. That is much higher than any of the public schools could claim...of course, that's only one city, it could be vastly different in another city.

looking beyond the US, I recently heard a discussion which included educational researchers from several countries - including the US. They were talking about voucher systems, and looking at how these may facilitate kids accessing private schools, and therefore improving the educational experience.

what has been found is that SES (socio economic status), including educational levels of parents is IN GENERAL a far better indicator of how well children will perform at school than attendance at private schools, or resources available in a school.

PARENTS have a far bigger influence on their childrens education than any teacher will.

IN GENERAL, private schools are attended by children whose parents have higher incomes, levels of education and expectations of the education system AND their children.

There are some public schools that have similar catchments.

Those groups where children do well in school DESPITE lower educational levels of parents often come from immigrant populations, where parental and traditional values include an attitude of 'I will support you to finish school - in return - you have a responsibility to do well - to be more successful than I have been. This is especially common in many Asian immigrant communities.

If rural areas fair poorly in relation to urban schools (which some studies have shown they do) it is often more related to parental/environmental factors outside of the school, rather than poorer resources.