Re: Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study

[Csubstance@aol.com]

July 16, 2006

The attack on public schools has been a fraud since "A Nation at Risk" (or, 
if you follow Jerry Bracey's studies, as far back as Sputnik). 

The current attack(s) date to "A Nation at Risk". 

The study that just came out should have raised a different question. If 
average and above average (usually suburban) public schools are doing so well, why 
do so many wealthy individuals insist on sending their children to expensive 
private schools?

Perhaps it is to insure that their children don't mingle too intimately with 
the children of lesser parents. You may not be able to buy your kid a 34 ACT 
or a 2400 SAT by spending $20,000 or $30,000 a year on private school, but you 
certainly can insulate that child from the kind of economic and racial 
diversity that comes in most public schools. Many private school choices are really 
based on thinly veiled prejudices of one kind of another. But those who are 
wealthy enough to make those choices rarely have to submit to the kinds of 
sociological and other scrutiny that are the lot of the poor and working class.

And that's one of the main reasons for the private school choice -- snobbery. 
If challenging academic and extra curricular programs were really what people 
wanted, they wouldn't be wasting all that money on places that have little or 
none of either. And to be honest, most of Chicago's most expensive private 
schools offer less in terms of academic challenge and equally less in terms of 
extra-curricular. They do self-promote madly (like Chicago charter schools). 

One of the ironies of the Ed Dept report is that they proved what we already 
knew, but are unwilling to admit it. 

Part of my summer I'm spending with some student athletes (baseball) on a 
team that combines very high quality ("Babe Ruth" level) players from public and 
private schools. Both academically and athletically, our public school kids 
from Chicago are doing as well as their teammates from the private schools. The 
big difference is that the private school families are spending tuition and 
fees at five figures a year for a high school education for their children.

George Schmidt
Editor, Substance