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Oct
29
This post by Megan McArdle at The Atlantic.com completely collapses and deflects the real problems in public school education, which have very little to do with whether vouchers exist or not.
I don’t know anything about the D.C. voucher program (I don’t even know if D.C. has a voucher program), but there’s nothing in the post to indicate that vouchers are solving any problems anywhere in D.C. and therefore should be expanded beyond what currently exists. How can you argue that everyone should have them if you don’t provide evidence that anyone is benefiting from them?
The author of the post complains,
…every time I see some middle class parent prattling about vouchers “destroying” the public schools by “cherry picking” the best students, when they’ve made damn sure that their own precious little cherries have been plucked out of the failing school systems, I seethe with barely controllable inward rage. It is the vilest hypocrisy on display in American politics today.
Really now? And how often do you see that happen – you know, the prattling about vouchers “destroying” the public schools by “cherry picking” the best students?
That accusation alone indicates how little McArdle seems to know about how vouchers work, at least in some communities.
But the most outrageous insinuation is that private schools do a better job than public schools. Anyone who has studied anything about private versus public school education knows that the difference between the quality of the outcome actually goes in favor of the public school education. I just received more news on this very topic over the weekend:
“Contrary to popular belief, we can find no evidence that private schools actually increase student performance,” says Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy.” Jennings’ statement is based on the results of a recent CEP study, “Are Private High Schools Better Academically Than Public High Schools?” issued in October 2007. The report questions the assumption that “private schools on the whole are better” and finds that, for the most part, it is not supported by evidence.
[snip]
The CEP report shows the effect that poverty and socioeconomic circumstance have on student performance. According to the report, once these factors are controlled for, students perform at similar levels in public and private schools.
The National Access Network reported on similar conclusions drawn by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, in “Public and Private School Students Perform Similarly in NAEP Study” in August 2006. This report used the Hierarchical Linear Modeling technique to account for multiple covariates simultaneously, including gender, race/ethnicity, students with disabilities, English language learners, computer in the home, eligibility for free-reduced-price lunch, participation in Title I, number of books in the home, and number of absences. Although the NCES supports the findings by the recent CEP report, the article concluded that “it is impossible to determine how self-selection in private schools affects the data.”
There’s more info in the original article about methodology and other findings so I would suggest people interested in these results read that item first.
However, there’s no news in poverty and socio-economic standing being the problem. But handing people money to put their kids in a different school solves nothing long-term.
Solving poverty, on the other hand, would.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:30 am October 29th, 2007 in Blogging, Education, Government, Parenting, Social Issues
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8 Responses to “Attention to vouchers deflects attention from what we really need to fix”
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Jill,
FWIW, your trackback at BB has a lot of weird stuff in it.
Anyone who has studied anything about private versus public school education knows that the difference between the quality of the outcome actually goes in favor of the public school education.
Yours is the first time I have EVER seen anyone (that would be you, not those you quoted) claiming superiority. Parity often, superiority, never. This NYT piece says “nearly.”
You also ignore the values-related reasons why people often choose private schools, probable lower presence of crime, etc.
“Solving poverty?” Even according to the strange measurements of the Census Bureau, at most 25% of kids are in poverty (yes, way too many, regardless of the measurement nuances). But at least 70% of kids (probably a lot higher) are in public schools.
I get the distinct impression that the studies that look at public v. private tend to pick the suburban, non-poor public schools and put them up against the privates, just to get the results reasonably close.
From local experience, that seems intuitively obvious, because if you put Cincy’s or Cleveland’s PS’s vs. the area Catholic schools, it’s a total rout, and you know it. Mixing in Cincy and Cleveland’s PS’s with the suburban PS’s would dilute the overall PS results to the point where it would still be a rout, and you should know that too.
The larger point is that public schools need some kind of competition, and the paid-private alternative isn’t providing enough of it.
And you can’t escape the irony that public school teachers are notorious for disproportionately enrolling their kids in ….. private schools.
1) “Yours is the first time I have EVER seen anyone (that would be you, not those you quoted) claiming superiority.” Glad to be your first.
2) “You also ignore the values-related reasons why people often choose private schools, probable lower presence of crime, etc.”
That’s because she didn’t write about that, Tom. This post is a post off of hers, not intended to be an extensive review.
3) ““Solving poverty?” Even according to the strange measurements of the Census Bureau, at most 25% of kids are in poverty (yes, way too many, regardless of the measurement nuances). But at least 70% of kids (probably a lot higher) are in public schools.
Tom – you are taking that out of context, or something. The point is that the study says that when they control for poverty, the results are that public has the same or better performance. Thus, if you were to eliminate poverty, imagine how well publics would do.
4) “I get the distinct impression that the studies that look at public v. private tend to pick the suburban, non-poor public schools and put them up against the privates, just to get the results reasonably close.”
5) Did you look at the USDOE 2006 report that came out with this info last year? That’s not who they looked at, Tom.
Tom – that’s crap about public school teachers disproportionately put their kids in private schools. Where on earth are you getting that?
Disproportionate to…whom? Private school teachers? Parochial?
Look – if people want to argue about PRIVATIZING education, just do that.
But stop using all these other arguments.
You know where the legislators send their schools? I’ve been trying for two years to get them to tell us.
Shalom Jill,
I’m reading the study now, but I have to say I find the results astounding and counter-intuitive. Is it really possible that a student at Hawken or Laurel performs no better than a student at John Hay or Collinwood?
I found this passage enlightening.
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).
I think the focus on achievement tests, while perhaps the only universal measuring stick, skews the results because these test measure against a minimum standard. And students are aware of that. (Ask me about the Beachwood fiasco of a few years ago.)
Finally, I think we are talking about four classes of schools, not two: public, parochial, for-profit (charter) and elite.
I would suggest that by lumping the last three together, the study further muddies the waters.
B’shalom,
Jeff
[...] Attention to vouchers deflects attention from what we really need to fix digg_url=”http://havecoffeewillwrite.com/?p=5309″; digg_skin = [...]
Jill, you’re pretty lonely if you think public schools on the whole generate better results than the privates, objectively or subjectively measured.
I think privatizing education should be explored, with some kind of minimum test-score achievement required before you can either go to college or get into the workforce.
As to the public-school teachers enrolling kids in private schools, surprised you didn’t know. Stuff about it is pretty plentiful:
HERE (Hawaii)
HERE (nationwide)
HERE (Balt-Wash)
Legislators:
How Members of Congress Practice School Choice
This guy, a hard lib, talks about how bad it’s gotten.
Jeff – agreed: “Finally, I think we are talking about four classes of schools, not two: public, parochial, for-profit (charter) and elite.”
But the numbers in the last three are miniscule for the overall population. I mean, it’s almost impossible to even compare. The NAEP study from last August is probably the best study out there that even tries.
Tom – Like I said, people want to argue that education should be privatized, do it.
You are my first on this, Tom: “public-school teachers enrolling kids in private schools, surprised you didn’t know.” The items you list fail to ID whether the schools are private independent or parochial and two of the items are from agenda-driven think tanks that seek to privatize education.
Re: where elected officials send their kids: I wrote “You know where the legislators send their schools? I’ve been trying for two years to get them to tell us.” The implication being the Ohio state legislators, not congressional. Only the Ohio statehouse folks vote on Ohio education law (as opposed to federalizing vouchers etc).
Tom – I’m sure that’s the SFGate writer’s experience. I’m not arguing that the education received in all public schools is good or bad. I’m addressing the myth that private schools are by definition better. That is the focus of my post.
The fact that public schools do as well as or better than private independents and parcohials is something that indicates that what I’ve learned about private schools on my own is in fact true: it depends on the needs of your child.
If you go to any private school admissions staff, they will tell you the same thing. In fact, many private schools don’t meet the needs of many kids.
I don’t know if you’re aware of the matriculation level in private schools, but less than 10% of all primary and secondary students are enrolled in private schools. And that number includes parochial, not just independent.
See here (USDOE numbers for K-12):
As of 2003-2004, approx. 5.1 million, which is 9.7% of all students enrolled in primary and secondary.
Last: read this from the Wall Street Journal. The NAIS was none too happy with it.
Jill:
I don’t necessarily want schools to be privatized, at least not in the sense of allowing them to be operated by for-profit organizations. But I do want the artificial barriers between school districts to be eliminated so that any kid can attend any school which chooses to be, and qualifies to be, a public school.
Poverty is not so much a position at the bottom of the economic ladder as it is a point on a self-perpetuating circle.
People in poverty live in sequestered areas of the community with other folks in poverty. The role models are drug dealers, rappers and pro athletes (again, please don’t read racism into this). No value is placed on high school graduation because there are few jobs available where a HS diploma makes that much difference. The kids don’t care about school, few of the best teachers want to work there, and the community has little in the way of financial resources to support them.
So we put up a nice fence around the urban poverty areas, and throw enough money over to placate our sense of justice.
If we want healthy cities, we need to have well paying jobs that can be held by people with high school diplomas. The choice to get an education and work has to be better than to drop out and live off welfare.
But we’ve painted ourselves into a corner. Most manufacturing jobs have gone overseas. They certainly have left Ohio. That leaves a big sucking hole in the middle of the economy. Sure there are many office jobs for people with high school diplomas, but I’d suggest that most of those are taken by women, leaving the urban male without much in the way of job choices other than working at Wal-Mart or McDonald’s.
Except that’s not true. In the last decade, millions of local jobs have been filled by immigrants from all over the world. Those jobs were always there, but apparently not as attractive as taking welfare.
So we’ve created a permanent, state-supported poverty class, with little motivation to change. It’s an ugly situation that’s is incredibly hard to fix.
Send all the immigrants back home? Gee, what’s the statute of limitations on that one?
Raise the minimum wage? To what – $25/hr? There goes those jobs too.
Crank up school accountability with more testing and more attention to graduation rates? Okay, but are there jobs for all those graduates?
??