Is the Grass Greener?

Do private schools really serve students better than public schools?  This is a complicated issue.  We all know that private school student achievement scores are higher than public schools.  Is this because they are institutions of higher quality learning and instruction?  I think not.  Taking students from their local public schools and allowing them to choose to attend a private school does not guarantee that they will achieve any more than they did in the public school.  

In an article I read called Public vs. Private, the author suggests that the scores from private schools are not better when adjusted for out of school factors.  This means that basically, private schools' scores on achievement tests are higher because their student populations tend to be higher- income, have involved, educated parents, and less special needs.  This article suggests that when you break down students' individual scores and compare scores of private school students who are low-income with the rest of the student body, they are not achieving like their counterparts.  The private schools are not meeting their needs, so what would happen if we suddenly started flooding private schools with students from the public schools who are low-income, full of special needs, and lacking in parental support?  My guess is that those private school scores would start to drop.  

I have a lot of personal experience within the private as well as public school settings.  I attended a private school for my elementary school years, then entered the public school setting in middle and high school, and went back to a private institution for college.  In addition, I taught at an urban private school for five years, and I currently teach in an urban public school.  As a student, my experiences in the private realm did not adequately prepare me in math.  I have some personal issues relating to my ability to process numbers and number relationships, so I was always a challenge for my teachers.  Most of my memories of the private school I attended relate to the fact that I was so unsuccessful at math.  I remember being drilled endlessly with flash cards, being moved to a grade level below me to participate in their math class, being berated in class for "not trying hard enough", and being given detention for not learning my decimal to fraction conversion facts fast enough.  When I entered public school for middle school, I was tested to see which classes I would be in, and I scored a full five years below grade level in math.  It wasn't until I entered the public school setting that teachers started to try to explain to me why 3x5=15 and why we might need to find the area of a shape.  Consequently, I started to very slowly learn math.  (Now, the public schools did immediately track me into a low group, which caused all sorts of problems later on when applying to colleges and disqualified me from AP classes in other domains.  These math tracking problems made me ineligible to enter public universities straight out of high school.  But that is a whole other soapbox...)

I saw another article called Public Schools Outperform Private Schools in Math Instruction which immediately drew my interest.  In this article, they talked about research being done that shows that the two biggest factors for public schools outperforming private schools in math achievement are teacher certifications and instructional practices.  The researchers decided to look at student scores on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) assessments and tried to explain the results using five factors: 1. parental involvement, 2. school size, 3. class size, 4. teacher certification, and 5. instructional practices.  According to the article, all of these factors contribute to student achievement, and they wanted to find out which one had the biggest impact on higher math scores for students.  The results show that parental involvement and school size (more positives typically in private schools) were not factors in achievement scores.  They also noted that class size, which is also typically noted as a benefit of private schools, does not explain the public school scores being higher either.  

Teacher certification is a factor though.  Why?  Public schools require certifications of their teachers, whereas private schools may not.  In addition, public schools have a history of setting aside funds for teacher training, professional development, and curriculum development, whereas private schools do not.  Another factor was the instructional practices of the teachers.  In public schools, teachers tend to use more methods that benefit students' understanding of math.  Many private schools operate on a "back to basics" approach that does not benefit students.  In addition, many private schools do not pay as much attention to the current trends in instruction and curriculum.  The article also suggests that the autonomy and lack of accountability to a public body in private schools is not a good thing.  

I can't help but relate to this.  I have no way of knowing whether my teachers in elementary school were certified or not, but I can imagine that some weren't.  If I had gone to a public school, would my learning disability have been identified and addressed earlier?  I will never know.  In addition, when I taught in a private school, I did work with uncertified teachers.  I saw firsthand how this impacted students.  When I moved from working in a private school to working in a public school, I did not feel like the quality of education being received by the students was any less.  What I did find is that the needs of my public school students were much more severe.  

I think that instead of flooding private institutions with students they aren't ready for, any money that would be used for a voucher program may be better spent in improving local schools.  Why should students have to be bussed to a far away school to get a "good education"? In addition, I can't help but think that there is a conflict of interests when including religious schools in on this.  The school I taught at was religious, and one of their main missions was to teach religious doctrine to students.  One year I literally had the parish pastor come into my classroom on the first day of school and tell my seventh graders that he didn't care if they learned anything that year "as long as they became disciples of Jesus".  (You can imagine how that year went!) Religious institutions, while wanting money that would come from vouchers and high enrollment, do want students and parents who are serious about the religion in their schools.  Where does that fit in?  Are parents prepared to have their students indoctrinated in a religion that is not their own?  

In addition, I think the lack of oversight in private institutions is scary.  I was never accountable to anyone the entire time I worked at a private school in terms of what I was teaching and how I was doing it.  We spent all of our inservice times talking about the religion curriculum and "housekeeping" issues.  The day I started, I asked about the curriculum for the other subject areas and was handed my textbooks.  At least in the public schools there are the state learning standards and ways of being held accountable.  (And aren't we all about accountability now?)  

In defense of private schools, I have had and worked with many dedicated teachers who hold themselves to a high personal standard in the classroom and deliver an excellent education to students.  I just think that when talking about public money, it is better spent on improving the public system which does have an element of transparency and accountability in how money is spent.  Shoving needy students off on private schools may just bury their statistics in a system that doesn't need to publicly report its goings-on.  I don't believe that is servicing students.