Excellence (?) of private schools.

[RoBear]

Anybody else notice that the government has not mentioned the study that found students don't do any better in private schools than in public ones? Guess we can't undermine the push for vouchers, eh? (Sorry if this has already been posted...)

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[RoBear]

4. Of course, private schools aren't held to the same standard.

As a former teacher I'm very aware of that "private schools are better" meme, but they never tell you that they often aren't held to the same requirements. Often they don't have to provide for students with special needs. And they don't HAVE to keep any student--public schools by and large must take students and can't just kick 'em out when they cause problems.

[Name removed]

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[DoYouEverWonder]

12. I went to a very small all girl HS

You can be damn straight they didn't have to take the 'problem' kids'. That wasn't our school's mission. You had to score in the top 5% of a city wide competitive exam for them to even look at your cross eyed.

[Bridget Burke]

14. But surely you don't expect vouchers.....

And somebody has to teach the "problem kids."

[Name removed]

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[electron_blue]

37. What about the problem kids with rich parents?

Seems to me I hear about problem kids even in the private schools. I always wondered how well that works - actually expelling problem kids.

[Name removed]

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[jmowreader]

46. They have ALWAYS had private schools for problem children

They're called Military Schools.

Let us all remember this little monologue...

"Son, your mother and me would like for you to cozy up to the Finkelstein boy. He's a bright kid...and he's going to military school...and you remember he used to be an Eagle Scout. God dammit Martha, we are not going to have a family brawl! You lift weights to build your God-damn muscles, huh? You could build your muscles pickin' strawberries. You know, bend and stoop, like the Mexicans. Shit, maybe I could get you a job at United Fruit. I got a buddy at United Fruit. It'd get you started. Start out on strawberries and you might work your way up to these God-damn bananas. When, boy, when are you going to get your act together? Anthony, I'm talking to you. Don't walk away when I'm talking to you. You get a God-damn job before sundown or we're shippin' you off to military school with the God-damn Finkelstein shit kid. Son of a BITCH!"

On edit: How can we possibly forget the Catholic boarding schools? They're for REAL problem children.

[silverojo]

6. Agreed.

Where I'm from, the only way I could get a half-decent education was to go to a private school. Fortunately, in those days, it was within my financial reach if I worked summer jobs...something I doubt is the case today. :(

[Dinger]

42. So What's Your Solution?

Get rid of those "pesky" public schools? Privatize everything?

[Dinger]

44. Still Waiting silverjo . . . tick . . . tock . . . tick . . . tock . . .

The "only" way to get a "decent" eduction? You are SO wrong.

[Yupster]

8. The key to that report was

that public school do as well as public among "comparable students." It measured for race and income level of families.

So what it was saying was that the local private school may have its average fourth grader reading at the sixth grade level and the nearby public school has its average fourth grade student reading at the second grade level producing a huge chasm between the two schools.

However, among students from white families making over $ 150,000 per year, their reading levels were close to the same.

That's nice, but it wouldn't do much to satisfy the principal of the public school who only has a handful of such students out of his 400 student school. His students are mostly minority students from lower income homes who are on the whole doing very poorly in school.

So the study was nice, but what's the sense of measuring "comparable students" if the two schools don't have comparable students?

[Goblinmonger]

32. I think the point of the study

is that private schools aren't really all that. Or, probably better stated, private schools are all that only because they have the select students not because they are doing anything special. Those same students would perform just as well in public schools.

[Goblinmonger]

31. I think the point of the study

was that a student will not do better in a private school compared to a public school. Their performance will not be that much different. But, since private schools can turn people down, the school ITSELF will LOOK like it is doing better than the public school. When, in reality, if the public school had just the students that were in the private schools (with no other changes) and the private school had the students the public school couldn't kick out, the performance of the schools would flip flop.

[Dinger]

43. Admins, Please PM Me & Tell Me Why My Post Was Deleted, And Yet

these public school-hating posters, with fairly low post counts, get to have their posts stay?
All I said was that private schools are not held to the same standards as public schools. What was the problem?
I would have pm'ed you myself, but this way, you know exactly which post I am referring to.
Thanks.

[Dinger]

45. WTF IS Going On With This Thread?

Just asking. Jeez.

[Dinger]

2. Not A Surprise, But

while I'm sure there are some excellent private schools, I'd never count them or any school as "excellent" if they were not held to the same standard as public schools, or, I'd simply say all schools should have the same level of accountability, or they ain't shit, and can't claim shit.

[aquart]

3. George W. Bush is the product of private schools.

George W. Bush is the product of the best, most expensive private schools.

That alone should end the discussion.

[crim son]

5. The private (Catholic) schools in our area are notably worse

both academically and socially, than our pretty fine public schools. I wouldn't consider sending my kids to a Catholic school, but I have several Catholic friends who would, but won't because the schools don't accommodate either gifted students, or students who struggle a bit. IOW, you can't make assumptions about private or parochial schools.

[Finder]

9. Not sure if it depends on the diocese but Catholic schools do have...

programs for the gifted. They do not call them that though.

[crim son]

25. Not here they don't.

My neighbor tried for a year to work with the school because her son was gifted. The response: one curriculum for all students. Our public schools have three levels for math, english, science and social studies. We are very lucky in that regard, because two of my children are very gifted and the little guy is... sorta slow, in a cute kind of way! He's been well taken care of though, and I'm grateful for that.

[Finder]

7. I am not for vouchers per se, but the study sucked.

I do not consider many rural christian schools(for example those who teach from the bible only)as private schools. If they were removed from the study the results would have been very different.

[Goblinmonger]

33. So

if you get rid of all the shitty "private" schools, then private schools will perform really well. Interesting statistical method you have. I think we should then remove all urban public schools from the mix, too. Then public school performance will go up substantially.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

35. Your suggestion makes far better sense than you think.

If there are systematic ways of categorising schools beyond "public" and "private", then giving the breakdown of results along those lines will make for a more meaningful study than just giving those two categories.

[theoldman]

10. My experience with private schools is that they are not equal.

The religious schools in Texas are well below the public schools. The expensive private schools that are not religious are above the public schools. The problem with private schools is that the religious schools far outnumber the non religious schools.

[sgxnk]

13. last i checked

the majority of private schools are "religious". am i wrong?

this is not to say they are the fundie type of school that you are referring to, but most private schools on the high school level have some sort of religious founding, at least in the area i am familiar with (new england).

[ProfessorGAC]

16. It Depends On The Definition

I went to a private academy run by Carmlite brothers and priests. But, their mission was clearly one of excellence in education. The catholicism was there, but the emphasis did not exist. I took chemistry, physics, biology, etc. I took all the advanced math classes. The history classes were not filtered through the lens of religion.

In fact, my first year there, the last quarter was all about the expansion of empire through the inquisition, and there was no sugarcoating! It was bad, and it was taught that it was bad.

We read Catcher in the Rye in Lit class, etc. No banned books, or things like that. I NEVER saw a Bible opened in a classroom!

So, it was a "catholic" school, but religion just wasn't a priority. In fact, after my first semester of my frosh year, i told my parents i wasn't going to church anymore. (That went over big in an italian catholic family!) So, the school sure wasn't making any effort to indoctrinate me!

In fact, in my third year (my last year before college), my "religion" class was an off-campus thing where i went to a small parochial school and played chess and word/math games with the brighter kids while the teacher could focus on the kids who needed more help. Other guys went to nursing homes, to the hospital, to retirement centers and the like and just kept old folks company for a few hours per week. There was nothing religious about it. But, it was a good thing!
The Professor

[sgxnk]

19. yes

that's my point

i went to more than one private school

one was a quaker school (quakers are pacifists). quaker class was required, but that was about the sole extent of the religious instruction (1 semester course).

another school was episcopalian. chapel every morning

regardless, both were religious schools

so, i think my original assessment was correct, absent evidence to the contrary, that most private schools ARE religious

to what extent they incorporate that (mandatorily or otherwise) into a curriculum is another matter entirely

[ProfessorGAC]

23. I Agree With You

I wasn't arguing. I was just pointing out that religious organizations may run the school, but it doesn't mean that religion has anything to do with the curriculum. But, sure they are still religious organizations.
The Professor

[sgxnk]

28. works

for me.

[Finder]

27. Similar to my experience as well. n/t

[Cleita]

30. Your experience was quite different than mine.

Sure they worked on college prep, so we had to have the math and science whether we planned on going to college or not, but our history classes were Church history and nothing else. Even American history was all about the Catholics settling in Maryland and hardly anything about the other colonies and the revolutionary war.

[Finder]

26. Catholic schools have a secular curriculum actually...

and religion classes are separate. I am also focusing on New England.

[Bridget Burke]

17. Some of Houston's finest private schools are religious....

Strake Jesuit College Prep? St John's? These are expensive schools with stringent admissions policies. They offer fine educations to students of any religion.

Then, there's Redeeming Grace Christian Academy, The School of the Good Shepherd & other similar establishments. Small class size is good--but a student body of 55 for grades 9 through 12 ?

Various sites compare data on Private Schools--but there's more information about the Public Schools.

[Igel]

18. It's because there are fairly few conclusions that can

be drawn from the study. It's nice for averages, but it assumes that the students are randomly distributed within the populations sampled.

But they aren't. The parents putting their kids in private schools want their kids to do better. Better than what is the question. In poor areas, they get a disproportionate number of kids whose parents are scared they'll fail out; the parents of kids doing average don't make the same decisions. Control for socioeconomic status, race, almost everything except skill level versus perceived capability, and the groups are the same. Some private school kids are smarter than average, some are underperforming. But they don't take the absolute worst kids, those that are intractable.

In other words, both sets of schools in poor areas have bimodal distributions of students, overall. This makes the averages difficult to interpret.

Moreover, the working class and middle/upper class areas have similar bimodal distributions, selected for the same kinds of reasons, but with different baselines.

Drawing conclusions is difficult. It's why there are so many caveats in the report itself; its authors, and those reviewing it, knew that drawing further conclusions based on their report was difficult.

[Goblinmonger]

34. But one conclusion can be

that those things are what makes for the student doing well, not the school. Parents caring about an education will make the child a better student, usually. Income, race, all play a factor. The schooling itself didn't seem to make as much of a difference when those other things were controlled.

[Cleita]

20. I went to private parochial school from the sixth grade up.

However, I failed to see the advantage. My parents sent me to parochial school because the public primary school had become dysfunctional for a short time because of some failed experimental program they were trying at the time and I wasn't learning the basics they wanted me to. They didn't want me to get behind while the school straightened their curriculum out.

It's true we were pushed harder to do better in parochial school and that was because the nuns could discipline us in ways the public schools didn't dare. But the public schools had far better facilities, teachers, sports facilities, cafeterias, libraries and a wider range of curriculum in the higher grades than the private schools.

If the public schools got the funding they needed to take care of the disruptive and special needs students, they would be superior to any private school.

[kineneb]

21. so many factors

1. income level of parents - looking at the report, it seems to say that no matter what type of school they attend, the children of the more well off do better.

2. mix of students in classrooms - are all the students at the same intellectual level/capability? Trying to teach to a too-broad range of capabilities means "teaching to the middle" and both slow and fast learners are left out. The slow learners/disabled never quite catch up, and the quick learners get really bored.

I am not a fan of "mainstreaming" because teaching to all three groups (slow/average/fast learners)in one classroom is almost impossible. No group gets the attention they really need.

One of the problems of some private schools is the lack of a middle level. A friend of mine taught music in a Catholic school. She noticed her classes were made up of really bright students and students with learning problems.

3. school philosophy - is the school there to teach or indoctrinate? Public schools and good private schools (religious or not) are interested in teaching facts and thinking skills. The inadequate religious schools seem to be in the business of indoctrination first and teaching academic skills second. It therefore shows up in the comparisons.

[tinfoil tiaras]

22. In, Mississippi at least, the only public schools that are equal

to the private schools are the public schools in predominantly white, suburban areas (e.g. Madison, Ocean Springs, Ridgeland, etc). The public schools in those places is just a very large private school (socio-economically, etc). The public schools everywhere else (especially the Delta) are considerably worse than the private schools (with the exception of the fundie Jesus schools, but I'm not gonna count those as private schools. Or the white-flight academies. Those (especially the ones in the Delta) are on the same level about as the public schools). I go to a religious private school, but it's like the best school in the state and it's like the 100th best school in the country.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

24. It's not like this is some surprising new study.

The results of that study have been known for years.

[LostInAnomie]

29. I don't think this study touches on the most important factor...

... for most wealth suburban parents. Private schools, for the most part, get their precious little ones away from all of those poor minorities.

The quality of your education will always depend on the effort you put into it, not upon the exclusivity of the school you attend.

[jerry611]

36. Students of private schools have better test scores

We can argue all day why that is, but the fact remains that the private schools sends more students to college.

The public schools are nothing to be proud of. They are a fvcking disgrace in my opinion. We don't have enough teachers. Classes are too big. There isn't enough money, and the money they have is being spent wrong. Parenting is absolutely horrible these days.

Teens in India score better on Math and Science than teens in America. And they spend less than a 1/3rd of the cost per student.
So something is seriously wrong with our entire public school system. My cousin is a teacher and she's now going to be leaving the profession because it has turned into a joke on every level.

[electron_blue]

38. Do you have a reference to back up your first claim?

just wondering... And I'm talking about all private schools, not just the official college-prep private schools.

[Dinger]

40. I'm Waiting For An Answer Too

Still waiting . . .

Still waiting . . .

Still waiting . . .



Starting. . . to . . . nod . . . off.

[jerry611]

41. It's common knowledge

I know from personal experience....
My brother had a learning disorder. He's smart and can do anything but he learns very slowly. When he was going through public school, it got to the point where the schools and the teachers just gave up. They didn't want to spend any extra time with him. They just kept failing him to a point where they just pushed him through to get rid of him. When he got to high school, he was so far behind that they basically told him to drop out.

My mother got so frustraded she pulled him out of the public school at 9th grade and put him in a private school. Not catholic. Not college-prep. It was a normal private school with private teachers and private faculty. He was able to go because he got a scholorship from an organization that helps students struggling in school with learning disorders. He not only graduated but finished with high enough scores that he is now in college and doing well. They taught him not only the information, but they spent extra time with him after class every day. They taught him how to study and concentrate. And class size was MUCH, MUCH smaller. 15 was the average size...compared to 40 in the public school.

I don't need fancy statistics to tell me that the public school system in America sucks a big one. I went though it and hated every damn minute of it. But then I got to college, paid a ton of money, and I really enjoyed it learning then...
Education is just like everything else in this country. You get what you pay for. The more money you pay, the better the quality.

[electron_blue]

48. That's what the study disputed - this 'common knowledge'

Of course this doesn't mean you can't find an excellent private school out there, that is better than the public ones in your district, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't go for it, but the data shows that private schools do not produce higher test scores or better prepared students ON AVERAGE. Your mileage may vary ...

[Gormy Cuss]

49. I don't need fancy statistics to tell me that many private schools stink

I went to public schools only until college. At my private competitive college I noted that some of the least prepared students had gone to boarding schools and some of the best prepared students were graduates of public schools. Therefore, I know that all private schools are inferior.

Well no, in fact. It may have had more to do with the fact that those of us from public schools were also more likely to be there on scholarship and the lackadaisical private school grads had parents who could buy their way through college by throwing lots of extra money to the college development efforts.

All I really know is that my anecdotal evidence suggests that private schools aren't necessarily any better than public schools, just as your anecdotal evidence suggests that some public schools are terrible.

[Finder]

47. Here is the study...

Be sure to read the executive summary.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20060715report.pdf


It is interesting to read how they came to some of the conclusions. The raw data shows private scores higher. They also note that conservative christian private schools did lower than public.