Study bolsters public schools
Students on par with private-campus peers; U.S. downplays data
11:55 PM CDT on Friday, July 14, 2006
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO / The New York Times
WASHINGTON – The Education Department reported Friday that, in reading and
math, children attending public schools generally do as well as or better
than children with similar racial, economic and social backgrounds in
private schools.
The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private school children
did better.
The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores
from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools in 2003,
also found that conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind
public schools when it came to eighth-grade math.
The study, carrying the imprimatur of the National Center for Education
Statistics, part of the Education Department, was contracted to the
Educational Testing Service and delivered to the department last year.
It went through a lengthy peer review and includes an extended section of
caveats about its limitations and calling such a comparison of public and
private schools "of modest utility."
Its release, on a summer Friday, was made without a news conference or
comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.
Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, the union for
millions of teachers, said the findings showed that public schools were
"doing an outstanding job" and that if the results had been favorable to
private schools, "there would have been press conferences and glowing
statements about private schools."
"The administration has been giving public schools a beating since the
beginning" to advance President Bush's political agenda, Mr. Weaver said, of
promoting charter schools and taxpayer-financed vouchers for private schools
as alternatives to failing traditional public schools.
A spokesman for the Education Department, Chad Colby, said he did not expect
the findings to influence policy. Mr. Colby emphasized repeatedly that "an
overall comparison of the two types of schools is of modest utility."
"We're not just for public schools or private schools," he said. "We're for
good schools."
The report mirrors and expands on similar findings this year by Christopher
and Sarah Theule Lubienski, a husband-and-wife team at the University of
Illinois who examined just math scores.
The new study looked at reading scores, as well.
The study, along with one of charter schools, was commissioned by the former
head of the National Center for Education Statistics, Robert Lerner, an
appointee of Mr. Bush, at a time preliminary data suggested that charter
schools, which are given public money but are run by private groups, were
doing no better at educating children than traditional public schools.
Proponents of charter schools had said the data did not take into account
the predominance of children in their schools who had already had problems
in their neighborhood schools.
The two new studies examined the backgrounds of children in the schools and
took into account factors such as race, ethnicity, income and parents'
educational backgrounds to shed light on the test-score comparisons. The
extended study of charter schools has not been released.
Findings favorable to private schools would probably have given a boost to
administration efforts to offer children in ailing public schools the option
of attending private schools. An Education Department official who spoke on
condition of anonymity because of the climate surrounding the report said
researchers were "extra cautious" in reviewing the study and were aware of
the "political sensitivity" of the issue. The official said the section
warning against drawing unsupported conclusions from data was expanded
somewhat as the report went through the review process.
The report cautions, for example, against concluding that children do better
because of the type of school they're in, as opposed to some unknown factors
that might influence performance. It also warned that there was great
variation of performance among private schools, making a blanket comparison
of public and private schools "of modest utility."
The director of reporting and dissemination for the assessment division at
the National Center for Education Statistics, Arnold Goldstein, said that
the review process was meticulous but added that was not unusual for the
agency. He said there was no political pressure to alter the report's
findings.
The report released Friday examined fourth- and eighth-grade math and
reading scores for students attending public, private and religious schools.
Students in private schools typically score higher than those in public
schools, a finding confirmed in the study. The report then dug deeper to
compare students of like racial, economic and social backgrounds. When it
did that, the private-school advantage disappeared in all areas except
eighth-grade reading.
entire story at
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/071506dnnatschools.1a367f8.html
Mary Croix Ludwick, Librarian K-5
Thomas Haley Elem, Irving, Texas (near Dallas)
ludwick@swbell.net (home address)
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