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Education Reform: Private Schools

In recent years, the era of school choice has provided the public with a vast array of new education options, including charter schools, home schools, magnet schools, and virtual schools. Before the advent of these ingenuities, the government-operated public schools had only one choice option with which to compete: private schools.

According to a U.S. Department of Education report, “[p]rivate schools are owned and governed by entities that are independent of any government—typically, religious bodies or independent boards of trustees.” Although one of the most established and highly respected school choice options, private schools are commonly bypassed by parents due to the seemingly high tuition rates that these educational institutions charge. Indeed, the high price tag of a private education has caused many to view private schools as elitist institutions which have no time or interest in caring for the scholastic needs of underprivileged children.

Although the out of pocket cost for a private education seem very steep, studies have shown that private schools are able to educate children with far fewer monetary resources than public schools. However, the lower level of financial resources does not affect academic standards in private schools; many children within their classrooms often outperform their public school counterparts in areas such as math and reading. Some might say that these academic returns are a result of private schools being filled with white, upper class children; but in reality, many private schools are increasingly serving minority and underprivileged children.

Private education gives individuals the opportunity to receive a high quality education outside of total governmental jurisdiction. This library section presents many of the positive aspects of private schools, but also offers a variety of objections that those in the public school sector commonly raise in regards to private education.

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Commentary or Blog Post

This piece highlights the positive benefits that tuition tax credits offer. According to Van Beek, private schools are more effective in providing a high quality education to the children they teach. Implementing a tuition tax credit policy would allow businesses to help the community and...

"Tradeoffs are an incurable part of reality. Unfortunately, many school choice supporters like to believe that there are no tradeoffs between school choice policies; public and private school choice, targeted or restricted, big or small, voucher or tax credits, it’s all choice and it’s all good. But some good things are better than others. And most things have some mix of positive and negative...

This article studies the most effective strategies for teaching reading. As expected, phonics education is the clear winner not only academically, but economically as well. In light of this fact, this article highlights the...

This piece discusses two studies which bring opposing viewpoints to the public vs. private education issue. Most studies normally show that private schools produce better academic results, but one...

This article discusses recent legislative action in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to Holland, the legislation seeks to enforce greater regulation on private school disciplinary measures. Holland...

Given the high level of Congressional resistance to school choice programs, this report seeks to discover whether or not Congressional members practice what they preach. According to this article, many...

Contrary to popular opinion, private schools are not as expensive as many people claim that they are. Salisbury admits that there are exceptions to this claim, but in general, a majority of private schools charge less than $5,000 per year. Salisbury also notes that market...

While reporting on President Bush’s attempt to regulate public school "civic education" through the medium of a "federal program," Marie Gryphon proposes that a wiser idea would be to encourage "state programs that improve access to private schools." In support of this...

For many people, a parochial school is the first thing that comes to mind when the phrase "private school" is mentioned. This article deals with the increasingly common occurrence of closed Catholic schools. As private Catholic...

This article describes the potentially damaging effects that the "Keeping Children Safe Act" could have on private education. If passed, this act could dramatically increase federal regulation and...

In this piece, Andrew Coulson gives a brief synopsis of a full length report on "Arizona's private schools." Coulson compares private schools to their public counterparts in a variety of areas, and finds that critics of school choice are unfounded in their claim of inept...

This article launches into the imaginative realm of wondering what the education system would be like if public education was abandoned in favor of private education. Rockwell concedes that the beginning stages of this experiment would result in utter chaos; however, the final product could...

Chart or Graph

This chart compares how long public school teachers work compared to other jobs across the economy. It should be noted that in the aggregate, public school teachers work fewer hours per week than white collar and professional specialty occupations. Public school teachers also usually work fewer hours than private school teachers.

The data in this chart shows the education choices of the members of the 111th United States Congress, Democrats and Republicans in general, as well as members of specific committees in particular.

This chart, compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics, contrasts the Science, Mathematics, and Reading scores by public or private schools.

This graph shows what percentage of the members of Congress send their children to public and private school. The graph points out that while many members of congress deny lower income families school choice options, they themselves practice school choice by sending their children to private schools.

This chart measures the effect that certain sociological situations have on the likelihood of a student dropping out of school. According to this chart, a student is most likely to stay in school if both parents live at home and if that student attends a private school.

This chart shows the effect certain sociological variables have on students' math score growth from 10th-12th grade. According to this chart, children attending private schools increase their math scores by a greater margin than children who did not attend a private school.

This chart compares race relations between public and private schools. Private school students across the board believe that fights between members of different racial groups happen less frequently than public school students.

This chart, provided by the National Center for Education Statistics, gives the high school enrollment data throughout the United States, in public and private schools. This chart does give us a fairly accurate estimate as to the number of students attending private schools in the late 19th century.

This graph shows the trends of private school enrollment based on the type of private school. Catholic private schools continue to dominate the enrollment landscape, but recently Catholic school enrollment has decreased relative to other schools, notably the nonsectarian and unaffiliated Christian schools, which have both seen moderate increases.

"In 1999–2000, approximately 27,000 private schools, with 404,000 full-time-equivalent (FTE) teachers, enrolled 5.3 million students (table 1). These schools accounted for 24 percent of all schools in the United States, 10 percent of all students, and 12 percent of all FTE teachers."

"Overall, 44 percent of private schools had at least one participant in an ESEA program. But participation varied widely by religious affiliation. Eighty percent of Catholic schools had ESEA program participants, while 28 percent of other religious schools and 25 percent of nonsectarian schools had reported participants. A similar pattern of participation was...

"At all grades and in all subject assessments included in this report, private schools overall had a higher percentage of White students than public schools, and public schools had higher percentages of Black and Hispanic students than private schools. Within the different types of private schools, Lutheran schools generally enrolled a higher percentage of White...

"As shown in figure 5, among the three types of private schools, there were no significant differences in reading performance at grade 4 in 2003. The average scale scores in 2003 for students at grade 8 in both Catholic and Lutheran schools were higher than the average score for those in Conservative Christian schools.

Students in all types of private...

This chart categorizes the types of private schools in the U.S. and then offers their average tuition rates. "Government figures show that the average private elementary school tuition in America is less than $3,500 (Table 1). The average tuition at private secondary schools is $6,052."

"In Table 2, public and private school teachers are nearly identical in their years of experience, but private school teachers are more likely to have taught in public schools than vice versa (33 percent versus 12 percent). The average salary of a private school teacher is lower than the average salary of a public school teacher by a difference of about one-third....

This chart compares the average hourly wages of both public and private School teachers. On the whole, public school teachers' hourly wage is 1.6 times higher than the hourly wages of private school teachers.

Analysis Report White Paper

According to the findings of many studies, the question asked in the title of this paper is normally answered in the affirmative. This paper goes against the common consensus on the superiority of...

Touted by the NEA, this study seeks to adjust achievement data for private and charter schools based on their student demographic information. The authors declare that,

"Overall, the results of this study suggest that, despite the many difficulties faced by public...

The Condition of Education summarizes important developments and trends ineducation using the latest available data. The report, which is required by law, is an indicator report intended for a general audience of readers who are interested in education. The indicators represent a consensus of professional judgment on the most significant national measures of the...

This study examines data from a government survey of public and private school teachers. The researchers discovered that private school teachers generally express much more contentment about their salaries, professions, and surroundings than public school teachers do....

"Education policy discussions often assume that public school teachers are poorly paid. Typically absent in these discussions about teacher pay, however, is any reference to systematic data on how much public school teachers are actually paid, especially relative to other occupations. Because discussions about teacher pay rarely reference these data, the policy...

"This study presents new findings comparing public and private high schools using top-quality data from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS), a long-term research project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. The ELS project tracks individual data on thousands of students, allowing researchers to conduct much better analyses than are possible with school...

This paper calls into question the analysis methods used for a recent NCES study on private and public school achievement levels. The authors examine the NCES study and conclude that the techniques it used were not consistently applied to both types of schools. Peterson and Llaudet explain some of the reasons for these mistakes and conclude by saying, "Based on the...

This study takes a look at private education with regards to the international scene, particularly in various high poverty countries like India, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria. Although private education in these countries is much more underfunded than government education, these...

This report highlights the major components of Arizona's private schools. The authors declare that "[t]he purpose of the Goldwater Institute survey is to help provide basic answers to the questions most frequently raised during public policy debates, including admissions practices, enrollment, standardized testing practices, tuition, financial aid, school size, and...

Among other things, this report from the U.S. Department of Education discusses the enrollment trends in private schools across the country.

This factsheet, provided by The Heritage Foundation, countains bullet-point style information regarding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program.

This piece explores the relationship between private schools and school choice. Salisbury examines the cost of private education in several U.S. cities and then compares those prices to the cost of public education. In most cases, private schools are able to provide a high-quality...

The authors of this report suggest that since teachers are the "experts" in the field of education, then finding out where they send their children to school would be a good indicator of where to find the best education experience. Compared to the general population, public...

Video/Podcast/Media

"School choice advocates use terms like 'education marketplace,' but should they? It's not entirely clear that a real market for education services exists at the K-12 level. So says John Merrifield, a professor of economics at the University of Texas. He's also editor of the Journal of School Choice. Merrifield argues, in new policy analysis of the Cato...

In this video, Charles M. North, Associate Professor of Economics at Baylor University, discusses the Private Education Tax Credit system in the State of Arizona with Deborah Sheasby of the Center for Arizona Policy.

This news clip comments on private school study done by a public school think tank called the Center on Education Policy (CEP). Whereas most public vs. private schools studies show that private schools give children an academic advantage, the CEP study reached a vastly different conclusion. This clip gives a brief overview of the results...

"Find out why some believe a higher moral standard to be the one of the reasons behind private, Catholic schools excelling over public schools."

"Colonel Nathaniel Green, Commandant of Cadets at Eagle Military Academy, addresses South Carolina state senators about the pressing need for School Choice in South Carolina."

"An overview by the Council for American Private Education (CAPE) on why religious and independent schools are good for students, good for families, and good for America."

"Despite a struggling economy, the number of children in private schools is reaching record numbers."

"AEI's Program on American Citizenship presents scholars Gary J. Schmitt and Frederick M. Hess discussing why private schools are doing a better job than public schools when it comes to preparing students for the rigors of citizenship. 

This video is based on a new survey, High Schools, Civics, and Citizenship: What Social Studies Teachers Think and...

"The poor in Hyderabad, India face a lack of quality education in government schools, despite the Right to Education Bill, which was recently passed to ensure free and compulsory education for all children in India."

In this segment from Fox and Friends, Steve Doocy interviews Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who explains why private Catholic Schools typically perform better than public schools.

This video features a segment of an early debate for the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates. Each of the candidates explain whether or not they send their children to public or private school and why they choose either of those education options. The responses are mixed, for some of the candidates proudly highlight the years their...

Primary Document

"Since 1989, the U.S. Bureau of the Census has conducted the biennial Private School Universe Survey (PSS) for NCES. The PSS is designed to generate biennial data on the total number of private schools, students, and teachers, and to build a universe of private schools in the 50...

This recent bill deals with behavior correction issues in school situations. Rather than simply applying to public schools, this bill also extends to private schools that receive federal funds, insisting that they comply with the behavioral procedures laid out...

According to the authors, "[t]his report describes participation of private school participants in federal education programs, the consultation process between private schools and public school districts, and public school district allocation of federal funds for services for private school participants." The report offers interesting facts about which private schools accept federal help or...

This report seeks to describe a variety of characteristics of American private schools. The authors study the types of private schools, student demographics, teacher perception, and many other elements related to private education. The report concludes that, "[p]rivate schools...

In this letter to the U.S. House of Representatives, the executive director of the Council for American Private Education makes the case for why the "Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act" would cause numerous problems for private schools. McTighe argues...

This report chronicles the differences between public and private schools in areas such as race, class, and academic achievement. This piece specifically focuses on student achievement in private schools and finds that "[s]tudents at grades 4, 8, and 12 in all categories of private schools had higher average scores in reading, mathematics, science, and writing than...

"Most persons agree that children need the protection of the law against potential abuse by parents. But evidence shows that only a small minority of parents turn out to be delinquent. In practice it is very seldom indeed that governments remove children from their family home. At the end of the 1980s fewer than two children per 10,000 below the age of 18 were...

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