Actual Data Trumps Ideology in Privatising Education

Charter schools are ideologically designed to undermine and detroy the public school system. There's a "charter school industry" in which universities give cover to private companies to take public monies, skim executive compensation, then pay sub union salaries to teachers who couldn't get public school jobs. [PS: BrooklynDodger is not a public school teacher.]

School vouchers are a similar weapon.

The Dodger concedes that some private schools, at grievous expense, provide smaller classes, less hostile bureaucracies, teachers who sought a quieter environment than public schools, and maybe teachers with good academic backgrounds who didn't get licenses.

It should be a no-brainer that enrollment in charter schools, and private schools, would bias results to better scores, because of confounding with parental involvement in their children's studies.

Testing and punishment of schools and students also cornerstone this movement.

That is, until the tests contradict the conservative ideology, then tests only provide a "snapshot."

That said, the Dodger wonders a bit about the publication of this study. Going to google, and google scholar, the investigators are findable, although it appears somewhat thinly published.

Notably, Sara Lubienski has published on math education frequently, including a study which says that elementary school teachers who know more math are more effective than those who know less [even though we've all passed through elementary school math.]

Since the Dodger doesn't know this literature at all, maybe there are other sources than the websites below.

http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k_v86/k0505lub.htm#aid1

http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP102.pdf

In addition, these reports go back to 2004, echoed on the AFT and NEA websites then, and now in 2006 it's news for the first time. Maybe these results were echoed somewhere else with authority?

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/education/28tests.html

Public-School Students Score Well in Math in Large-Scale Government Study

By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

Published: January 28, 2006

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 — A large-scale government-financed study has concluded that when it comes to math, students in regular public schools do as well as or significantly better than comparable students in private schools.

The study, by Christopher Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski, of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, compared fourth- and eighth-grade math scores of more than 340,000 students in 13,000 regular public, charter and private schools on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The 2003 test was given to 10 times more students than any previous test, giving researchers a trove of new data.

Though private school students have long scored higher on the national assessment, commonly referred to as "the nation's report card," the new study used advanced statistical techniques to adjust for the effects of income, school and home circumstances. ...

The study found that while the raw scores of fourth graders in Roman Catholic schools, for example, were 14.3 points higher than those in public schools, when adjustments were made for student backgrounds, those in Catholic schools scored 3.4 points lower than those in public schools. A spokeswoman for the National Catholic Education Association did not respond to requests for comment.

The exam is scored on a 0-to-500-point scale, with 235 being the average score at fourth grade, and 278 being the average score at eighth grade. A 10-to-11-point difference in test scores is roughly equivalent to one grade level.

The study also found that charter schools, privately operated and publicly financed, did significantly worse than public schools in the fourth grade, once student populations were taken into account. In the eighth grade, it found, students in charters did slightly better than those in public schools, though the sample size was small and the difference was not statistically significant.

...

The study was financed with a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences at the Education Department, but was independent. The federal government is expected to issue two more studies looking at the same data and using similar techniques. Those studies are still undergoing peer review, but are expected to be released in early spring.

The current study found that self-described conservative Christian schools, the fastest-growing sector of private schools, fared poorest, with their students falling as much as one year behind their counterparts in public schools, once socioeconomic factors like income, ethnicity and access to books and computers at home were considered.

...