The Public School Advantage?

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Thursday December 12, 2013 · 10:01 AM PST

2013/12/12 · 10:01

A new study by Christopher and Sarah Lubienski presented in their book, "The Public School Advantage", shows that public students do better than their private school peers. Using data from the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly accepted as the gold standard for assessing student achievement, and a longitudinal study of student beginning in Kindergarten, the authors found that when controlling for demographic background, math scores were better for public school students than private school students. The authors chose math because it is the subject that receives less outside support than reading. The Lubienskis argue that any evidence of differences between performance of public and private school students can be explained by demographics. In other words, private schools cater to advantaged families who have the resources to provide more educational opportunity for their children. This, I think, is the most important point to glean from this study.

KyleNewton

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Tuesday December 03, 2013 · 6:47 PM PST

2013/12/03 · 18:47

The PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) scores are out, and it's no surprise that the U.S. continues to lose ground against it's international counterparts. The PISA, for those who haven't yet read the hullabaloo, is a standardized test given to 15-year olds in 65 countries. The test evaluates reading, science, and mathematics. For 2012, United States students ranked 26th in math, 17th in reading and 21st in science. This is pretty much on par with where we were in 2009, the last year the PISA test was administered. The interesting part of this story isn't that nothing has changed but really about what the PISA tells policy makers (well, those who are listening) about what successful education reform looks like.

KyleNewton

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Wednesday November 20, 2013 · 3:42 PM PST

2013/11/20 · 15:42

The disappointing outcomes of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is widely agreed upon by researchers, politicians, and educators. And really, it isn't surprising. No Child Left Behind has whittled the focus of U.S. education down to the ability of teachers to get students to achieve at some level on math and reading multiple choice tests. U.S. schools are not on target to be "proficient" by 2014, as was the goal of the policy. In fact, it is predicted that 100% of schools will fail to meet this goal, because no school will be able to get 100% of its students proficient, which was why many states applied for the restrictive NCLB waivers offered by the Obama administration. But, what if all the schools had met the goals of NCLB? Would the U.S. public think public education was doing a good job? Probably not.

Poll

32 votes Show Results

Which of the following is the most important education reform that the U.S. should implement?

32 votes Vote Now!

Which of the following is the most important education reform that the U.S. should implement?

New tests

1 vote

More testing

0 votes

Teacher evaluation systems

2 votes

Universal preschool

21 votes

After school programs

1 vote

Summer tutoring

1 vote

Common core standards

6 votes

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The Public School Advantage?

And the U.S. falls behind... again

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