whoopie?!! this is supposed to worry me?
i tole ya max you're too easy....persuaded by evidence. this is your problem. it's supposed to be objective even? gotta get some grit in ya, a steely eyed desire to ignore empirical evidence in order to argue for your cause. coz you can't peel it off an orange without scars. sumpin like that. and rob schaap: who cares if these things go anywhere. gad. het men! s'all they think about, what's the outcome? will we get anywhere? does this have a point, a purpose, a goal? goal-oriented behavior. all gotta be useful.
godamn! it's all wanking, wanking, wanking. who cares?! get that yet? 'sides i thought k.m. was a marxist?
anyway, this is from some whoopdeedoo debate on k-12 school policy and inequity in school funding: jim follain, charter schools; yours truly, the mcdonaldization of schooling. all the data provided by jim, a wanker economist, who does rational choice policy research. he's no marxist but this is the data he used in his own argument for charters. kinda concluded that he had no evidence to prove he was right. so yours truly won b/c she knows how to put on a show. <snort> as i recall, chicago was a lab for testing whether charter schools would do any better and jim used this evidence too. still looking.....can't find that report. musta thrown it out.
1990-91
Public Schools: 40.1 million students Private Schools: 4.7 million students (55% catholic, 31% other denom., 14% non-sectarian)
catholic schools are typically taken as a proxy for non-elite private schooling and for an historical record of generally encouraging diversity of race/class compared to other denominations and non sectarian private schools)
so, the following *HAVE NOT* attempted to control for composition of student population ses, race, ethnicity, disability or to examine differences in school community, parental involvement measures and the like. once this is done the gains are generally minor, despite the fact that private schools had more freedom to select enrollment, tended to attract parents interested in their children's educations, have parents 2-3x as likely to be college graduates [which *significantly* affects children's ed achievement and attainment levels] and the like. all the things maxbaby noted that would seem likely to actually encourage better performance or achievement levels, indicated by testing.
1] national assessment of educational progress . % scoring at or above proficiency levels: reading, 1994. avg scores don't reach even proficiency levels in catholic schools
public catholic 4th grade 24% 36% 8th grade 26% 47% 12th 32% 44%
2] avg scale scores: reading. scale score required for proficiency: 4th 243 8th 283 12th 304
public catholic 4th 213 230 8th 258 279 12th 285 297
3]. % scoring at or above proficiency in math, 1992
[NOTE: public schools managed to prep 5% of student pop. for college level math; private schools, 4%. big whoop, eh?]
public catholic 4th 18% 22% 8th 23% 32% 12th 14% 22%
4]. average scale scores: math 1992. scale score required for proficiency:
4th 248 8th 294 12th 331
public catholic 4th 217 227 8th 266 277 12th 297 310
"in the "Fifth Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education" [10/95 Phi Delta Kappan] also reported in "Why Private Schools Are Rarely Worth the Money," 10/94 _Money_. businessweek's 5/10/99 issue examined the evidence too, though they were mostly concerned [of course] w/ suburban priv v. public schools where they found suburban public schools sometimes outperfromed private schools.
don mclaughlin, catherine o'donnell, and lynn ries,_Private Schools in the United States: A Statistical Profile, 1990-91_(wash, DC: U.S. Dept of Ed, Office of Ed Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statistics, 1995).
paul williams, clyde reese, jay campbell, john mazzeo, and garyphillips, 1994 _NAEP Reading: A First Look_ (Wash, DC: U.S. Dept of Ed, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statistics, 1995).
ina mullis,john dossey, eugene owen, gary phillips,_ NAEP 1992 Mathematics Report Card for the Nation and the States_ (Wash, DC: U.S. Dept of Ed, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statistics, 1993)
peter benson and marilyn miles mcmillen,_ Private Schools in the United States: A Statistical Profile with Comparisons to Public Schools_ (Wash, DC: U.S. Dep of Ed, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statistics, 1991).
milton friedman's briefing for vouchers: http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html
and from a friend in baltimore, some indication of what schools are like when run by for profit corps. spin control and p.r. teams would fix this problem no doubt. of course, the report is pumped out by the nasty and vile AFT so can't trust that either, can you?
http://www.aft.org/research/reports/private/trackrec.htm
Center for Governmental Research in NY: http://www.cgr.org/current/close_up/news2.html