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08-20-09
Washington,
DC
Are Private High Schools Better Academically
Than Public High Schools?
Policymakers, parents, and other interested
citizens often assume that private schools, on
the whole, are better academically than public
schools. But is this empirical assumption
actually supported by evidence?
For the most part it is not, according to a
study of urban public and private high school
students compiled by the Center on Education
Policy.
About the Study . . .
This study, commissioned by the Center on
Education Policy (CEP) and conducted by
researcher Harold Wenglinsky, was based on
statistical analyses of a nationally
representative,
longitudinal database of students and schools
(the National Educational Longitudinal Study of
1988-2000, or NELS). The study focused on a
sample of low income students from inner-city
high schools. This focus was chosen because
policies for private school choice often target
low-income, urban youth, on the grounds that
these students should have the same advantage of
a private school education that more affluent
students already have. The study compared
achievement and other education-related outcomes
for students in different types of public and
private schools, including comprehensive public
high schools (the typical model for the
traditional high school); public magnet schools
and “schools of choice;” various types of
Catholic parochial schools and other religious
schools; and independent, secular private
schools. Most importantly, the study took into
account key background characteristics,
including students’ achievement before high
school, their family’s socioeconomic status
(SES), and various indicators of
parental involvement.
To test
various assumptions made in this study, another
researcher, Dong Wook Jeong, performed a series
of sensitivity and replication analyses using
the same group of students.
These analyses included reorganizing the data
quasi-experimentally using propensity score
analysis (a statistical technique that estimates
the effects of an educational “treatment” on a
group of students when the treatment was not
actually done). They also included testing the
data for clustering (looking at whether the data
converge around certain variables) and
introducing
other non-school controls, such as the influence
of peers on student achievement.
All of these analyses produced the same results
as Wenglinsky’s initial analysis—namely, that
the private school effects, in most instances,
could be explained by the demographics and
family characteristics of the students.
Core Findings
The study found that low-income students from
urban public high schools generally did as
well academically and on long-term indicators as
their peers from private high schools, once
key family background characteristics were
considered. In particular, the study determined
that when family background was taken into
account, the following findings emerged:
1. Students attending independent private high
schools, most types of parochial high
schools, and public high schools of choice
performed no better on achievement tests
in math, reading, science, and history than
their counterparts in traditional public
high schools.
2. Students who had attended any type of private
high school ended up no more likely to
attend college than their counterparts at
traditional public high schools.
3. Young adults who had attended any type of
private high school ended up with no
more job satisfaction at age 26 than young
adults who had attended traditional public
high schools.
4. Young adults who had attended any type of
private high school ended up no more
engaged in civic activities at age 26 than young
adults who had attended traditional
public high schools.
Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that
students who attend private high schools receive
neither immediate academic advantages nor
longer-term advantages in attending college,
finding
satisfaction in the job market, or participating
in civic life.
This study did identify two exceptions to this
general finding. The primary exception is that
students who attended independent private high
schools had higher SAT scores than public
school students, which gave independent school
students an advantage in getting into
elite colleges. (These independent private
schools enroll many students from affluent
families
and are often expensive and fairly elite
themselves, with tuitions as high as $30,000 a
year.) This finding suggests that while these
schools are no better at teaching the subject
matter, they may provide students with
test-taking skills that help them further their
education,
or they may enroll students with higher IQs
(aptitude tests like the SAT are a better
measure
of IQ than achievement tests are).
A second exception is that one special type of
private school, Catholic schools run by
holy orders (such as Jesuit schools), did have
some positive academic effects. There are
very few such schools, however; most Catholic
schools are run by their diocese, not by
an order (Meyer, 2007).
Article courtesy of Center on Education Policy |
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