Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Public Education and Poverty

Interested in seeing public schools improve?

Then join the battle today against poverty and its deepening impact on the nation.

Chris and Sarah Lubienski, University of Illinois professors, report in a new study that the money spent to send children to private schools does not insure that students receive a better education than students who study in public classrooms.

The Lubienskis analyzed the math scores of tens of thousands of students who took part in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. When these scores are reported each year, students from private schools always produce higher scores overall than students in public schools.

But the Lubienskis wondered why.

Were the private school scores higher because the instruction was better, thus justifying the tuition payments? Or were the scores higher for some other reason?

In their research the couple created a grid to control for class and economic status of students and their families. They dug deeper into the family life of the students who took the test. The asked a series of questions to help in determining just who these students were.

How many qualified for free school lunches? How many lived in a household with access to a computer? How many had parents who dropped out of high school or completed college?

With controls in place for socio-economic status, the project compared public and private test scores.

The result?

Public schools out performed private schools nationally. Further, the public school students reported scores higher than private school students at all class or economic levels.

One conclusion seems obvious, as Joshua Benton of The Dallas Morning News puts it, "The reason private schools look better on paper is because they serve more middle- and upper-class kids" ("Can cash buy good schools?" Monday, June 27, pages 1 & 6B).

The bottom line is clear here. The most important indicator for educational success in this country is socio-economic status.

The Lubienski's findings square with the facts. Private schools typically don't have all of the institutional resources of public schools. They do have one thing public schools generally don't have: a more affluent student body.

So, the next time you hear someone touting the superiority of private education from an educational standpoint or when you hear someone comparing the public school district of a more affluent suburban area to a poor urban area, remember what is underneath such comparisons.

Want to see public education improve?

Get involved in the battle against poverty.

Remember as you begin that adult illiteracy, inadequate housing, underemployment/poor wages, inaccessible health care, drug addiction and a lack of community economic development are all extremely important issues for the improvement of public education.

2 comments:

Larry James said...

Thanks, Ed. It is good to hear from you. What you observe is not so much a circular argument as it is a cultural reality that acts as a strange, in ways anti-social, self-destructive feedback loop.

Take a look at Beverly Daniel Tatum's interesting book, "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" She describes and comments on the phenomenon you have observed. In many ways this counter-productive rebellion is predictable in view of the experience of African Americans in this nation. I believe it is some of this that Bill Cosby's recent speeches have taken on.

It is important that we make the effort to understand the behavior and acknowledge what is back of it. Racial identity and how it is formed is fascinating and important.

At the end of the day, economic status remains the key. Currently, in my opinion, our nation is moving in the wrong direction. All we have to show for current public policy are isolated "Horatio Alger" stories rather than broad-based social movement like we observed in the 1950s and 1960s.

These are matters that ought to fill out a genuine national values discussion that would be much broader and more important than what passes for such right now.

Don said...

Larry - thank you for your comments on public education. I am a committed Christian educator teaching in a public school, and believe that my calling is to be right where I am - not separated and cloistered away from the world, but right in the middle of the circumstances that young people face each day. Sometimes I grow very discouraged - the political climate of education is stressing me out! We are charged with making all society's ills go away while parents frequently abdicate their role to educators. Other parents are unable to respond to the needs of their children because they are ill equiped to do so, being overly busy trying to make ends meet, to provide for their families. This past year, I had a young man who was more than just difficult... when I spoke to his mother, I found out that she was working 2 jobs just so they could have a place to live and ffod to eat - she did not have health care, and was desperate to know what she could do to support me and her son. My heart goes out to this dear woman. I made her son a special project, and we made progress. Nevertheless, this dear lady was in need - we must advocate for people such as this woman - thank you for urging us all to do our part!