A new large-scale research study found that, after adjusting for socioeconomic differences, public school students outperform their private school peers on fourth- and eighth-grade standardized math tests, The New York Times reported. In fact, the study found that students at self-described conservative Christian schools were as much as one year behind comparable counterparts in public schools.
Vouchers and charter school supporters point out that the study gave only a snapshot of performance and didn’t show how students progressed over time. But that snapshot at least tries to address an argument that Wichita public school officials have long made: Unless you adjust for student demographics, school comparisons are not very comparable.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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13 Comments
An other agnda pushed by the religious right. They want the tax payers to pay for their kids to go to privet religious schools so they won’t have to.A VERY BAD IDEA !!!!
“Conservative Christian schools behind by a full year!”
Watch for the source to get “swiftboated” soon . . .
VOUCHERS– It’s just another dishonest, sneaky way to get religion taught in schools at the taxpayers expense
“Conservative Christian schools behind by a full year!”
Methinks that the jew york times is making things up, AGAIN! rotflmosao
V.L.R.B!!
The following is a link to a pdf of the original study.
http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP102.pdf
HLM and jackknifing are a little complicated, but these authors did a good job of explaining their findings so that non-stat dweebs could grasp their results.
Their results simply say that when you statistically control for the effects of SES the achievement differences between private and public schools largely disappear.
I am sending a link to Bob Corkins and asking him to put it in his pipe and smoke it. Him smoking anything can only improve his thinking ability.
Vouchers are an insanely bad idea, thankfully the legislature doesn’t seem to be as taken with the idea as the B of Evangelism is..
The above linked study in essence says to Corkins that his position on vouchers/private schools and basically his life work is a steaming pile of manure.
There is also more data collection of this scale planned.
The old saying goes, “You can make statistics say anything.” Basically the researchers attempted to account for socio-economic factors in student achievement. The real question is, how? Based on the results presented some kind of expected score must have been defined and then scores are ‘normalized’ to ‘level the field’. So basically if you come from a particular background you are expected to do better (or worse) and your score is adjusted accordingly. What this is saying is that “You come from this group and therefore your score is X”. Therefore the results of such a study are entirely dependent on the adjustment factors used. Something easily tampered with.
This type of thinking sounds just like Ian Santiago, define someone’s race, sex, and income so that you degrade them accordingly.
You have to wonder why educators all ‘feel’ that the raw data averages just aren’t good enough of a comparison. Perhaps because they don’t like the results?
What’s the difference between the public and non-public schools? Parents. Parents who send there kids to non-public schools are involved and those forms of education systems grant a lot of power to the parents. Those kids are always going to do better.
OneSh*t–
Please send your kids to private school.
Thank you.
Public school backers
oneshot,I doubting if you have read the study; your accusations that the authors are like Ian is completely ludicrous.
These results were obtained empirically. Sorry if science busts your set of biases – but it happens to bigots every day. Good luck with living in your make-believe world.
oneshot,Global warming is a myth, too. Right? You can prove anything with mathematical models – so let’s not believe it.
Pathetic.
Ah, the champions of public education speak out. You know not of what you speak in dissing the sacrifices of folks who are willing to pay double for their own childrens’ education. If not for disaffection with public schools you would not have the exodus that has occurred. You can sling mud at some guy in the Kansas Dept. of Education, but if you think that a study on math scores (”adjusting for socioeconomic factors”) proves that public education is to be preferred…well, where to begin? I’m not here to speak either way on vouchers; just realize that those choosing educational options freed from institutionalized constraints are growing in numbers and political force, and that is something you all will need to get used to.