Sherry Chandler » Should we privatize education?
Should we privatize education?
I am a great supporter of public education, so I was interested to see this highly sensible post by Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly:
The Department of Education has released a new report on the quality of education offered by public schools vs. private schools. The release was timed for Friday and, according to the New York Times, “was made with without a news conference or comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.”
If this suggests to you that public schools came out OK in this new study, you’d be right. Basically, it was a review of NAEP scores in math and reading that was controlled for things like gender, race, English proficiency, poverty level, etc. Here are the average scores for public schools compared to private schools:
4th grade reading: +1.1 points.
4th grade math: +4.1 points.
8th grade reading: -5.7 points.
8th grade math: +0.6 points.This obviously suggests that private schools haven’t discovered a magic bullet for educational reform, despite what their supporters might sometimes claim. Still, I don’t think this report is exactly cause for breaking out champagne among public school champions.
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I don’t have any answers here except for a guess: namely that the pedagogy wars don’t really matter much. Phonics vs. whole word? New math vs. old? Open classrooms vs. strict discipline? Without disparaging the people who work hard trying to figure this stuff out, it seems as if practically any of these approaches can succeed or fail depending how well they’re implemented.
But what does seem to show up over and over again is the effect of concentrated poverty. Nearly everything I’ve read suggests that when the number of kids in poverty reaches about 50% in a school, teaching becomes nearly impossible — and that this matters much more in secondary school than in elementary school.
Unfortunately, nobody has any good answers for this, so instead we mostly fuss around on the edges.
- The way of education…
- An argument against gutting our system of public education
- Mommy Track
- The Myths of Reading Aloud
- Now appearing…
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3 Comments
1. JimT replies at 16th July 2006, 7:40 am :
I’m not any sort of expert when it comes to education, Sherry. But I do know about statistics and the easy falacies they can inadvertently seem to support.
Parents have reasons (or beieve they do) for choosing a private school, many having to do with their child’s attentiveness, perceived ability to learn, natural proclivities, etc. Even screening test results for socio-economic factors doesn’t exclude this influence. Student populations are “self-selected.” They’re different at the start.
Any statistician worth his salt would be reluctant to infer much from small differences in later test results, ones not equivalent to begin with. People with strong beliefs, on the other hand, have no problem drawing firm conclusions based on reading such numbers. Hell, I do it myself, when it’s my issue being argued.
2. sherry replies at 16th July 2006, 10:30 am :
I agree, Jim T. My kids did have some private education — in pre-school. My fears about the widespread privatization of education in this country are first that the more we take affluent children away from public schools, the more we abandon the disadvantaged to a second-class education and second that by encouraging private education & home-schooling, we will create a fractured society in which we no longer all operate on the same set of “facts.”
3. JimT replies at 16th July 2006, 11:32 am :
I share those fears, Sherry. While people focus easily on what they believe is best for their kid today, they are less inclined to look at what’s best for the future of their society as a whole. Such concerns are low on people’s radar, if they show up at all. (A pervasive sense of powerlessness loose on the land these days, I believe, that a whole ‘nother rant.) Which is why I’m happy to find the issue being discussed on blogs like yours.
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