The Private School Choice Throughout the United States - Essay Example

Running Head: English Private School Choice: A Public-Private Education Controversy An Argumentative Paper Submission Introduction Private school choice was the core of the education program of the Bush administration, and it was the sole education agenda campaigned by the President during the presidential election of 1992. It has been the target of a growing number of referendum proposals, legislations, and education hearings (Hakim, Seidenstat, & Bowman, 1994). The argument of ‘private school choice’ states that students in private schools perform much better than students in public schools (Cookson, 1992). This paper argues against this prevailing assumption. Hence, this paper tries to answer two major questions: (1) is the argument of private school choice advocates well-founded; and (2) do private schools actually cater to the same students and achieve much better outcomes? The Public-Private Education Debate The private school choice is not the first education program to ask the public to finance the tuition fees of students who are selected by private schools (Cookson, 1992). This should be expected. Private schools do not have desegregation directives, teacher unions, red tape, affirmative action, or tenure to deal with; they are vulnerable only to the regulation of the market. Hence, so as to solve the problem in education and on behalf of equality, parents, particularly low-income parents, should be permitted to make use of public resources to enroll their children in private schools. According to Alrdrich (2004), what differentiates this program for public assistance to private education from other education agendas is that it is being promoted almost entirely on account of education reform and development; certainly, as the education program that would render any others futile. James S. Coleman, whose study in 1981 on the differences of public schools and private schools in terms of performance is regarded as the leading source of empirical substantiation of the superiority of private schools, cautioned that “one should not make a mistake: Our estimates for the size of the private-sector effects show them not to be large” (Cookson, 1992, 137). Few researchers have reported that the slight private school advantage discovered by Coleman vanished when differences in pupils’ course preference and family context were considered (Cookson, 1992). John Chubb and Terry Moe are the current sources of ‘impartial evidence’ of the superiority of private school. Numerous policymakers and opinion-editorial writers have reiterated their argument as dogma, and large numbers of people have been convinced of public assistance for private schools on their influence (Hakim et al., 1994). As analytical writers and peer analysts have emphasized, the study of Chubb and Moe of private and public high schools falls short in locating a private school lead when pupils’ course preferences and background attributes are examined. The failure of the investigation of Chubb and Moe to provide them substantiation for their arguments is not that unexpected. The proof they draw upon originates entirely from the ‘High School and Beyond Study’, the information that also botched Coleman’s study (Hakim et al., 1994, 66). Furthermore, in spite of the many pages they used on justifying why their treatment of this information is superior over the methodologies of other researchers, Chubb and Moe disregard almost all that has been taught about how to ethically deal with significantly erroneous, otherwise insignificant, information (Cookson, 1992). Yet, they chose to work unconventionally. Some of their questionable methods are (Hakim et al., 1994, 66): (1) developing a school organization instrument consisting of a large number of factors, making it practically unattainable to isolate the impacts of any one factor; (2) merging private and exclusive private schools alongside Catholic ones in a manner that involuntarily awarded a private school lead in their study; (3) and disclosing findings in terms of average disparities between schools in the lowest quartile to the highest quartile, which comprises disproportionate comparisons. As convincingly emphasized by John Witte, “They never directly test the differential effect of public and private schools on achievement… [P]rior studies either ran separate regressions for public and private school students, or analyzed all students together but included a variable indicating whether the student was in a public or private school. They did neither” (Hakim et al., 1994, 67). Valerie Lee and Anthony Bryk referred to the “popular acceptance of this book as a source of scientific evidence to support its policy recommendations… unfortunate” (Hakim et al., 1994, 67). The risks entailed by public assistance to private education are considerable, and they are not counteracted by any proof of educational gain. Indeed, the findings of national studies such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveal that if the American government aspires to gain top-notch education outcomes, then converting tax resources to entrust them to private schools will be useless. If private schools fail to do better than public schools, then groups or individuals who have argued that democratic regulation or teacher unions or red tape is mainly accountable for the problem in American education had to consider other factors because private schools are not held back by any of these forces. In contrast, it also implies that public schools cannot charge their poor outcomes largely on the weakening of communities and families. According to Alrdrich (2004), although they were to acquire the sorts of learners private schools admit, specially selected and with parents who are quite highly educated and encouraged to invest on education, and even though, similar to private schools, were to gain greater flexibility in getting rid of nuisances and smaller number of students in every classroom, performance of private schools in national examinations show that academic performance would remain at a point that is far lower global standards. The findings of comparative studies between public and private schools may be unexpected, but they are in fact not astounding. Private and public schools generally have similar curriculum, workbooks, monitoring procedures, internal structures, and similar unsympathetic values and norms. The dismal performance of both private and public schools suggest that there is not a lot to the assumption that the rivalry which school choice would generate would function as a remarkable accountability mechanism. The assumption is that parents would make educational choices based on first-rate academic performance; thus high-performing schools would thrive and be emulated and low-performing schools would not succeed. As argued by Hakim and colleagues (1994), there are parents who prefer private education in spite, as NAEP reveals, of their average performance, and this indicates that if school choice generates accountability, it is not constantly or largely based on educational performance and value. Conclusions School choice could be an exceptional encouragement for schools to strive more to draw the attention of customers but it is no replacement for planning educational motivations where in there are incentives for enhancing academic performance and sanctions for failure. The notion of an accountability mechanism for education institutions that includes incentives and sanctions is contentious and unconventional. The notion of an accountability mechanism founded on private school choice is contentious and unconventional too, and the NAEP and other findings reveal that it would fail. It is quite evident that even though the people refuse to accept private school choice, it will not cope with the existing situation in public education. There are two possibilities: one, there will be a novel form of accountability process in education that the educator and the people can trust, or, second, some unwise accountability program that will only harm education will be enforced. The private school choice programs that are being promoted throughout the United States will not assist students in realizing that they have to exert a lot of effort in school to achieve their goals. They will fail to motivate schools to concentrate on enhancing academic performance and to explore other strategies of doing so. They definitely will fail to eliminate the impacts of childhood poverty. They will fail to alleviate the predicament in education because that predicament troubles both private and public schools. References Aldrich, R. (2004). Public or Private Education? Lessons from History. London: Woburn Press. Cookson, P. (1992). The Choice controversy. The University of Michigan: Corwin Press. Hakim, S., Seidenstat, P. & Bowman, G. (1994). Privatizing Education and Educational Choice: Concepts, Plans, and Experiences. Westport, CT: Praeger. Read More