October 10, 2007
INEDUCABLE IN ANY SETTING?:
Are Private Schools Really Better? (JOHN CLOUD, 10/10/07, TIME)
[I] was intrigued to read of a well-designed study released today by the Center on Education Policy that challenges decades of research on the advantages of private schools. "Contrary to popular belief, we can find no evidence that private schools actually increase student performance," said Jack Jennings, the center's president and a former staffer in the Democratic-controlled House, in a press release. "Instead, it appears that private schools simply have higher percentages of students who would perform well in any environment based on their previous performance and background."The study suggests vouchers for private schools are unnecessary because — once you control for socioeconomic status — students at private schools aren't performing any better than those at public schools. The study says that it is "the kinds of economic and resource advantages their parents can give [students]" — as well as the level of parental involvement in their kids' education —that determines success or failure in high school. That's a message the teachers� unions and Democrats in general love: The problem isn't in the schools; it's with social inequality.
Except that's not exactly what the data shows. It's true that controlling for socioeconomic status (SES) eliminates most of the public-school/private-school differences in achievement-test scores in math, reading, science and history. But even after you control for SES, Catholic schools run by holy orders (not those overseen by the local bishop) turned out to perform better than other schools studied. True, as the study says, there are only a small number of religious-order schools. But the data suggests that the type of school a kid attends does affect how well he will do — and that we could learn something from how holy orders run their schools. The Center on Education Policy, however, is an advocacy group for public schools, so it didn't look into why holy-order schools are succeeding where others fail.
Don't you love it when the Left strikes a blow for anti-egalitarianism? Posted by Orrin Judd at October 10, 2007 8:12 PM
Another set of lies on the tongue of the biggest serpent in America.
These liars are using the same set of data used by school choice advocates for decades. The data that "prove" that private schools aren't any better' when corrected for SES (socio-economic status) is the same set of data that proves that money spent has no effect on results... once one corrects for SES.
As I've said on every comment on this blog and every where I can post on the internet, if it is coming out of the mouth of anyone in the public ed. establishment, it is a lie (or a scam).
Kill public education, save a civilization.
Posted by: Bruno at October 10, 2007 10:33 PMYes, money spent makes no difference either.
Posted by: oj at October 10, 2007 11:48 PMAt this point you have to ask, does *school* make any difference? Is any school anything but daycare?
Arthur Robinson's method is to provide copies of a bunch of textbooks on which the copyright has run out, and lock the kid in a room with them ( http://robinsoncurriculum.com/ ). It's starting to look reasonable to me.
School has never made any difference in terms of the educability of students. The Founders were enthusiasts for public schools to the extent they could train republican citizens, not because they thought everyone could or should get an education in the modern sense.
Posted by: oj at October 11, 2007 2:11 PM"Schools run by holy orders?"
The words don't mean what the writer thinks they mean. It appears from the context that he means schools run by regular orders, that is to say, religious communities living under a regula, a rule.
Ditto Bruno--Ecrasez l'infame, only this time l'infame means the public schools.
Posted by: Lou Gots at October 11, 2007 3:15 PM