Public Schooling or Private Education Vouchers?

Parents today have faced countless decisions when deciding on how to educate their children. One of these decisions is whether to see their children attend private school or send them to public schools. There are many factors that have to be examined and considered in order to make these decisions in a way that will allow the best possible education to be offered.

In Public schools: Do they outperform private ones?,
Teresa Mendez writes that extensive tests evaluating the quality of education available in public and private schools showed that the results were debatable. The National Assessment of Educational Progress tested 28,000 fourth- and eighth-grade students from 1300 public and private schools in mathematics related subjects and found that although the average test scores showed a “small to moderate” difference of 1 to 9 points higher than those of the students in public schools. She also wrote however, that “When children of similar socioeconomic status were compared, the public school children scored higher.”

One issue that is important is that the difference in scores between white students and minority students in public schools were much greater than the difference in scores between students of private schools and students attending public schools. In consideration of these differences in race demographics, perhaps the scores are much less different than what the numbers portray.

Although test scores and level of quality in education are important, many parents feel that other factors are worthy of consideration. Many prefer to also consider proximity of location, as well those surrounding the backgrounds of students who would be attending classes with their children. Given the fact that the majority of social interaction of school age children is focused on and stems from the children that attend the same schools as themselves, many parents believe that this consideration alone is enough to be a deciding factor. The reality is that the social and psychological development of younger children is not yet matured and, therefore, they are unable to understand these kinds of abstract concepts. Mr. McTighe of CAPE (the Center for Advanced Partnerships in Education is quoted in saying “When parents make decisions about schools. They look at a particular school in a particular neighborhood and ask: Is that school the right match for my child?” Clearly, a child is most comfortable around peers who come from the same socio economic background as themselves. While most school segregation activists would argue that this kind of an attitude is a flimsy mask for prejudice, what is really important is to consider each individual child and whether or not they would be comfortable in a given school.

With so many local school committees involving public opinion in the formation of curriculums and the educational philosophies embraced by teachers in the classroom, one can arguably claim that public schools have the advantage over their private counterparts in regard to proactively accommodating parents in their wishes when making policy affecting decisions.

When it comes down to the bottom line, it is really nothing more than a matter of preference even though parents like to think otherwise. Henry Levin, a professor of economics and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York, and director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, states

“We would conclude, on the basis of perhaps 15 years of research, that there’s nothing magic about privatization.”