PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Private Schools Vs. Public Schools

Abstract

There is a popular perception that private schools are superior to public schools. It is this perception that, at least in part, has led to the many school-choice proposals across the nation. Despite the pervasiveness of this opinion and these plans, researchers have struggled to confirm the existence of a private school effect using quality statistical methods. Over the years, numerous researchers have used numerous datasets and methods to address this question, but the results of these efforts have been underwhelming. At best, it appears that some private schools may benefit some students, but the effects are not large. The purpose of this study is to address this void in the literature. However, if private schools are indeed superior to public schools, our results do not indicate why. Private schools appear remarkably similar to public schools in terms of classroom processes and characteristics. Based on these results, we conjecture that if private schools are in fact superior to public schools, this is likely because of some aspect(s) of private schools that are not captured by our classroom variables.

Private schools vs. Public schools

Literature Review

In today's choice-oriented environment, the question of how public schools measure up to their private school counterparts is increasingly important. Many school choice policies, including voucher programs and charter schools, rest in part on the presumption that private schools are somehow superior to public schools. However, whether or not this is actually the case is an empirical question that has yet to be definitively answered. Perhaps more importantly, although researchers have made serious, but inconclusive, efforts to address the issue of private school effects, very few have delved into the schools themselves in order to examine if and how public schools differ from private schools. For example, there is virtually no evidence on how instruction in private school classrooms differs from that in public school classrooms. This article will help address this inadequacy. Using a novel dataset from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), we were able to ex-amine potential differences in classroom processes and characteristics by school type. Over the past 25 years, researchers have employed numerous approaches to determine the relative value of private school attendance. While it is fairly clear that private school students outperform public school students,1 the question remains whether this is a product of the schools or simply a reflection of the fact that private school students are a self-selected group (i.e., selection bias).

A review of related literature suggest that in the private sector, and the majority of public management measures are available in the same proportion. However, it can be observed some significant differences. The homeroom, mentoring and study periods, are scheduled, most popular in the private sector, while the tutoring is more in the public sector. There is another important difference, the supporting measures are present in junior high and tend to decrease from year to ...