For years the Republicans have treated us to the argument that parents require school vouchers so they can get their precious babies out of those terrible horrible public schools (where they might have to encounter an increasingly diverse peer group and diverse ideas). A new study shows that at fourth and eighth grade levels, private and public schools perform equally well, with private schools having a slight edge in eighth grade reading.
This peer reviewed study was released by the Education Department on a summer Friday afternoon during the outbreak of WWIII (or whatever the current middle east unrest amounts to).
Therefore, Republicans will effectively ignore this finding and what it means for their "privatize at all cost" program. Public schools are still keeping up with the private schools, despite several years of NCLB chipping away at the time and resources teachers have to teach outside of what's on the big test.
Interestingly:
The report...also found that conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind public schools on eighth-grade math.
In this article the Times does look critically at possible political motivations for the timing of the report.
Its release, on a summer Friday, was made with without a news conference or comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.
Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, the union for millions of teachers, said the findings showed that public schools were "doing an outstanding job" and that if the results had been favorable to private schools, "there would have been press conferences and glowing statements about private schools."
"The administration has been giving public schools a beating since the beginning" to advance its political agenda, Mr. Weaver said, of promoting charter schools and taxpayer-financed vouchers for private schools as alternatives to failing traditional public schools.
A spokesman for the Education Department, Chad Colby, offered no praise for public schools and said he did not expect the findings to influence policy. Mr. Colby emphasized the caveat, "An overall comparison of the two types of schools is of modest utility."
"We're not just for public schools or private schools,'' he said. "We're for good schools."