Posted on 07/18/2006 2:01:56 PM PDT by wouldntbprudent
[snip] The findings come at a time when both the U.S. Department of Education and Ohio lawmakers have sought greater support of private-school vouchers. Research that favored private schools would likely have bolstered pro-voucher arguments.
"I think what (the report) does, more than anything, is puncture the image of private schools as inherently superior," said Gerald Bracey, a Virginiabased education researcher and author of The War Against America’s Public Schools. "And by doing that, it sort of throws a monkey wrench into what I’m sure were going to be additional calls for vouchers" by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and President Bush.
(Excerpt) Read more at columbusdispatch.com ...
Wanna bet this story and this study are pure crapola?
Yeah but my private school doesnt have Muslim day and kids can play dodgeball. (Kalifornia)
No way. Just look at California and the academic performance ratings of its schools --- near or at the bottom of ALL states. We have MANY private schools that far exceed the deplorable and pathetic outcome-based education the liberal academic community lays on our children. Kids graduating from High School who are barely literate. Kids with little comprehension, and don't even think about asking them to solve a math problem.
It is sickening and the libs and MSM are trying to say private schools cannot and do not do any better??? Pure bull waste. More lies of the left.
I can't detect any bias... /sarcasm
Actually, there's no theoretical reason that a private school is necessarily better than a public school.
"In theory, there should be no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." And so it is in the case at hand. In practice, private shcools tend to be better.
In other words, what's "inherently" true and what's usually true are very different issues.
Exactly!
Even if it were true that the outcome for private schools is only equivalent to public schools -- which I doubt -- the fact remains that private schools are better because they don't require the government to get involved in curriculum decisions.
If we don't allow the government to dictate the content of our newspapers, how can we allow it to control the curricula in our classrooms?
Was this a press release from NEA Headquarters?
Well! Since public schools have been shown to be competitive, the public school industrial complex should not be afraid of vouchers for private schools!
And another thing...if private schools are no better than public why is it that just about every prominent democRAT (and their kids) since Truman has gone to private schools?
I suspect they are comparing the brightest public school students with average Christian schoolers. None the less Christian parents will continue to choose the Christian schools over public schools. They do not want their kids in places where bad behavior is tolerated and in some cases encouraged.
You are absolutely correct. Even if test performance at the average private school (adjusted for income, age of parents, academic attainment of parents, etc.) were lower than public school, the RIGHT TO CHOOSE among alternatives would make them worthwhile.
WRT to the crapola of this study, note that results are compared after adjusting for the student background. I suspect that the researchers tortured the data with statistics until they confessed to the foreordained conclusions.
If you read the whole story, you will quickly find that they "adjusted" the sample along "racial and economic" lines. In other words, they cherry picked the sample to get the results that they were looking for.
the fact remains that private schools are better because they don't require the government to get involved in curriculum decisions.
Not only do vouchers improve performance when used in failing school systems, they decouple them from government meddling.
I didn't see any mention of costs of the two different paths that supposedly get similar ends.
If you read the study itself, it isn't really dishonest. It acknowledges that the overall comparisons are of "modest utility". Furthermore, after using hierarchical linear models (HLM) to adjust for "gender", race/ethnicity, disability status, English proficiency, school size/location, composition of student body and teaching staff, they still found small advantages attending to private schools.
Fourth Grade HLM-Adjusted Differentials
Reading +14.7 points over public school average of 216
Math +7.8 points over public school average of 234
Eigth Grade HLM-Adjusted Differentials
Reading 18.1 points over public school average of 261
Math +12.3 points over public school average of 292
So, the fact is that the study results for private schools after all the adjustments still point to their superior performance vis-a-vis more expensive public schools.
Before the adjustments, the average scores at private schools are higher than indicated by adjusted differentials. The HLM adjustment gets rid of the "selection bias" that advocates of the State school monopoly use excuse their inferior performance.
The study only covered Catholic, Lutheran and Conservative Christian private schools. The elite private schools where Al Gore and Chelsea Clinton went don't appear to have been included in the data.
I'd be curious about the absolute and adjusted values for the following outcomes in addition to NAEP scores:
- drop out rate
- drug usage
- teen pregnancy
- venereal disease
- criminal convictions.
The public schools teach much besides math and reading, and I suspect their relative performance is even worse in these outcomes.
it was written:
"Actually, there's no theoretical reason that a private school is necessarily better than a public school. "
Just a few thoughts......
There is a lot of theory to support why public schools would be necessarily worse.
Public schools endorse, embrace and extol educational fads. It is inherent in their stucture, both at the funding, curricular and in what passes for education theory.
Public schools, particularly in low income areas, are always looking for money. Most apply for grants. Grants necessitate that particular curricula and approaches be used. Most of these curriculum that are mandated by the grants are based on fads with little or no evidence that they work, and often with substantial evidence that they don't work. Students are failed by failures in curricula. Most of these curriculum failures have been around since the turn of the century and have been renamed and resold to the same schools over and over again.
There are so many of these it is almost impossible to name them all anyway. A few that come to mind, whole language, whole math, small learning groups, block scheduling, quantum learning, and on and on..... Not to mention the current fads of "brain based" learning, small learning communities.
Of course there is also the whole issue of discipline and the public schools inadequate response to anti-social behavior.
Sorry....been to both. Two room Catholic school 1-4 and 5-8....moved at start of 7th, had to go to Public school and they were at LEAST 3 years behind what I had already learned.....and the DISCIPLINE???? There was almost NONE at the Public school.....very sad.
So gov't schools should have nothing to fear under a voucher program. After all, given a voucher worth $5k, about half the per pupil cost of sending a child to a gov't school, few parents would switch to private schools for their children, right? I mean, teacher union dues would never go into fighting a voucher initiative, right?
Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg wrote a book praising the Public schools, HOWEVER, she does NOT send her kids to public school...HYPOCRITE!!
Uh huh. When they use the public school tests to measure performance. Let's see how the public school kids perform when they have to take the tests that private schools actually use to measure performance.
Besides, academic performance is hardly the only reason to keep one's children out of the government indoctrination centers.
Private schools excel, if for no other reason, for accountability. If parents aren't pleased with the results, they can pay to go elsewhere. Competition is a big factor.
Pure, unadulterated propaganda.
Oops, I picked the wrong numbers of the study's table. After "adjustment for race and other student characteristics", the differentials are insignificant.
My bad.
"Someone with a strong view against vouchers is Gerald W. Bracey, public education researcher and associate professor at George Mason University. He feels that no state can avoid the federal law’s true intent to create negative publicity for public schools so that private vouchers seem the only appropriate option. " From "No Child Left Behind - Laudable Goal, Difficult Mandate"--- By Sean W. Hadley, Esq.
You mean there is supposed to have been no "bias" in the yahoo's agenda-driven "independent report"?
Assuming for the sake of arguement that the study is wrong, adopt school vouchers and have the government start subsidizing private schools and how long do you think it'll be before the government says, "Hey, we're paying for this. We should have a say in how you run your school." And when the government does that then how long do you think it'll be before the private school is teaching at the same level of success as the public school?
We have a family friend who grew up poor in LA. He was a smart kid, and used to get beat up regularly for "acting white". A public school counselor helped him get a scholarship to a private school. The rich white kids at the private school never gave him any trouble for being poor or black.
He's a doctor now. Guess private school worked better for him.
My kids went all through private schools for the following reasons:
1. I knew that if there was a problem, or if I had a question, I could call the school AND GET A PHONE CALL BACK and the teacher WOULD KNOW WHO MY KID WAS.
2. I knew my kids would be prepared for college, not prepared to say, "Do you want fries with that?".
I was right on both points. Best decision I ever made.
One can prove just about anything with a properly contrived study.
Agreed. However, my point was simply that the authors of the article were disingenuously setting up a strawman by claiming that private schools were not inherently better than public schools.
It's a lot easier to show that private schools have a significantly higher probability of being better, than it is to prove they are necessarily better in every case, regardless of time, place or other circumstance. By framing the issue in terms of what's inherently true, instead of what's probably true, the article slants the analysis in favor of public schools.
We're going to private this year because my daughter is not reading like she should. We had the district pay for an independent evaluation on her by a neuropsychologist, learning specialist, and a speech therapist. The evaluation recommended lots of speech and a multi-sensory reading program. The district ignored the recommendations and said she is doing fine. However, they will make it so that she doesn't have as much homework.
Don't forget that this study only measured math and reading. There are more subjects than math and reading like history, science, art, PE, and music. The public school that my kids attended last year only did math and reading and nothing else. My kids are going to private next year.
Bingo!!!!!!!!! One of the major reasons why we are going private next year.
The sad thing is that we were in a public school that was okay (good test scores, most of the kids were nice, very active parents), and then the district closed it. We then went to a school from H***.
OMG, are they still pushing that new math crap? You did well to get your children out.
No kidding, the storiees I hear from friends who went to public schools are appalling, as if bullying, physical assaults, and teasing are normal parts of a secondary education. My wife works with a teacher who used to teach at the local high school, and her stories are mind-blowing.
Well...just give the parents the vouchers and see which one they choose...
I will believe it when the elite stop sending their kids to private schools.
Oh it is worse that the new math. This program adopts the idea that there are different math processes that can be used to figure out problems. Lets teach several of these processes in the hopes that the individual student will gravitate to a process that works for them.
The downside is, that some percentage of students are not able to easily grasp different ways of processing a math problem. So they end up using step 1 from process 1 and step 2 from process 2 and end up with a method that will NEVER reach the right answer.
Worse yet, the school district spent millions on this program and they are not even willing to consider a different approach.
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