An Overview of the Public versus Private School Debate

Running Head: The Education System; an Overview of the Public versus Private School Debate
An Overview of the Public versus Private School Debate
Ricky Portier
National University
English 240
Professor Reardon
10/15/2011
An examining of the topical issues in the school system debate
Introduction
The field of education has been a source of many debates through the history of scholarship. This is necessitated by the importance of education in society. In most cases, much of the debate centers on policies that can be applied to maximize the benefits accrued from schooling. However, one diversion from this general trend is the intermittent debate on public and private schools and the concomitant issues arising from the two. The main issue is the differences between the two branches of formal education. The differences in the two forms of formal education have been the subject of numerous studies and debates and many concur that it is an age old debate. The debate has been informed by the realization that though the government has a duty to offer education, this did not translate directly into quality. As the government tried to divest from provision of major services such as transport, there was the feeling that even education should be privatized wholly. The developments in technology which the government institutes have been slow in uptake have been a major concern among most scholars. While the private sector in education invested heavily in such modern technological developments, the public schools lagged behind and still used theoretical framework that had been surpassed by time, (Rouse, 1998).
One of the earliest researches in the area of private versus public education was done in 1966. Though there have been other studies in the area, this was a comprehensive study that was commissioned by government through the American congress. In the study, a battery of issues was covered to determine student’s performance in public schools. These issues included, per pupil expenditure, class size, teacher’s credentials, quality of school facilities among others. The importance of this research was to show what really affected performance in public schools in order to facilitate policy formulation. The results were varied including the assertion that school resources had little impact on performance, (Coleman, 1966). However, this research was not valued for its results but for the studies that it precipitated pitting Catholic schools which were the dominant private schools and their public counterparts. Shortly after the Coleman study, the Department of education initiated another study this time including more variables such as family background to compare the performance in private and public schools. As expected, the results were controversial as they indicated that students in private schools performed better than their counterparts, (Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore, 1982). The results were criticized over their methodology to a point of questioning the motives behind the study, (Coleman, 1989). This illustration is a clear indication that since the inchoate stages, this debate has always been controversial especially due to the level of interest that every stakeholder has. As a result, the history of the literature in this area is very varied as each study comes with its own assessment. It is obvious that any study on the two forms of formal education cannot just focus on which is better as most of the studies have done because there are more issues at stake than that.
The paper postulates that the current available research on the public versus private schools is not reliable and cannot thus be generalized in a wider spectrum. By pinpointing the pitfalls in researching the topic, the study wishes to help future researchers to avoid the same perils and thus increase the validity of their work
Background
The last decade has seen an increase in research on education issues. The public versus private school debate as usual has experienced a fair share of scrutiny with researchers trying to settle the issue once and for all. However, like any other area of research the education field is complicated and with every new study, there is a counter argument as regards the methodology, motive among a myriad other issues. To ground this paper, a researcher has to examine the main areas of diversion when it comes to the two forms of education because they form the basis of any study done in the area. The main differences between the private and public schools is the source of funds. Though this might seem like an obvious issue, the spiral effect of funding eventually encompasses all the other aspects of the schools whether positive or negative. Most public schools are tax funded either at federal or national level. This is the main reason of the government involvement in administration of the schools. This makes the public schools part of the larger government budget and as such, policies on any issues have to by the government. In contrast, private schools have to raise their own funding through whichever means they deem fit. This mostly hedges to the tuition. However, there are distinctions when different countries are compared. According to, Berends (2009) “the American system only contributes minimal vouchers in special cases but in Europe, countries like Belgium fund both private and public schools. However, it is important to note that even in cases where funding is made, special considerations are made as opposed to public schools whose funding is automatic”
Another unique distinguishing factor between the two types of schools is the admission criteria. The public schools Act in the US makes it mandatory for the schools to enroll and admit all children. Though there are variations where special needs are involved, the fact that education is regarded as a right more so in the universal declaration makes it imperative that as many children as possible are enrolled, (Shrosbre, 1988). In contrast, the private schools administer their admission policies as per their liking. This means that they are not eligible to admit any child and as such, their interviewing is always very competitive to ensure they get the best children as this will translate to higher ranking and thus popularity. The special education laws for example bind the school districts to admit such students or any other is advantaged learners,(NAIS). On the other hand, private schools practice what they call “counseling out” where children who underperform or who have special needs or learning disabilities are subtly told to look elsewhere. In essence, the private schools save their resources that would have been used to help these learners to focus more on what they consider perfect learners. The application process in a private school is characterized by in-depth multiple interviews, essays and testing which means they get the crème de la crème. At the same time, the school districts have to lower their standards and the process just involves filling a few forms, (Great Schools, 2011).
Finally there is the issue of teachers and their certification. The public school system is very particular about the quality of teachers. The training is regulated by the government and in many states; the teacher must be certified to qualify for any post. On the other hand the private school sector emphasizes on subject specialization for the teachers. This at times has been argued to be the better option but the issue of teaching theories and their applications blurs the matter, (Laura, et. al, 1997). Having examined the main distinguishing factors between the two schools, it is imperative to lay emphasis on the contemporary research.
Statement of the problem
A close examination of the contemporary research as regards private and public schools reveals a discrepancy in the approach. This is the gap that has led to incessant arguments over which form of schooling is better. However, all this time, little emphasis has been laid on the issue of methodology and the validity of these studies. This paper seeks to track the development of these studies with an aim at coming up with a solution as regards the best approach when comparing the two forms of schooling. The hypothesis of the paper is that the current research on the public versus private schools has not encompassed all the relevant areas in the education environment including social, political and economic backgrounds. As such, these studies cannot be expected to form a comprehensive generalization.
Literature review
The development of education research has been phenomenal over the years. The emphasis in this area has been precipitated by the inherent importance of education and its place in societal development. In comparing the public versus private schools, the researcher is in no way trying to indicate which is superior. Instead, such work emanates from the desire to improve both aspects of formal education to an acceptable level. It is no surprise then that most of the studies carried in education circles are funded by departments of education or even universities that want to broaden their understanding. In most of the incipient studies, the results were flawed because the researchers concentrated either on one area in their assessment or the study did not take into account the progress. According to Llaudet and Peterson (2006), the research by Coleman in 1966 was very insightful. However, the two scholars were categorical that the results of the comparison that gave the results showing that private school performance was better were flawed. The argument against the study is that with only one battery of results, a comprehensive conclusion could not be attained. As such, these tests could not measure the growth of a student in terms of performance from one year to the other. In essence, a student in a private school could perform better in the one class and fail in the next owing to various factors. The idea of regressing the levels of performance on school resources and family backgrounds was bound to fail from the beginning. In the consequent early studies, there were attempts to rectify these flaws by the use of longitudinal testing. For a long time, longitudinal tests have defined educational research due to their ability to gauge progress over time and when the US Department of Education commissioned Coleman to take another study, there was still criticism when the catholic private schools were found to outperform their public counterparts. Over time, more studies tried incorporating the longitudinal aspect in trying to get new findings but the results always came in indicating that the Catholic private schools were better in terms of student’s progress Alexander and Pallas (1985), Willms, (1985), and Bryk et. al (1984). With time though, another dimension was added to try and explain the cause of this difference and as one political researcher remarked, the private schools superiority was a function of less bureaucratic encrustation than greater political autonomy. This view was a response to persistent complaints from educational institutions at that time that political interference from various bodies was impeding the full potential of the schools. These findings were accepted due to their validity but with time, new theories emerged. It was argued that despite the longitudinal data being used, there was a weakness in that if students in a particular school differed in their predisposition to do well in school then differences are not captured by the variables used; the findings would not reflect the real picture. There was need to use experimental data collected in randomized trials where the students’ groups or schools studies are similar in most aspects (Glass and Mathews, 1991). The randomized field trial (RFT) had been used in other education areas such as determining the efficiency of preschool interventions and class size reductions, Barnet (1985). The resulting studies borrowed heavily from others in the area of equality and education including on urban voucher programs, evaluation of charter schooling and impact of teacher ethnicity.
With time, the RFTs became the gold standard of evaluation Mosteller and Baruch (2002) but the problem lies in their costs. There are a lot of resources more so in terms of money in carrying out these random trials. The number of personnel at any time will always surpass the budget of a private researcher and at times, the findings might be disputed based on the sample size. Despite these early positive strides, the comparison of public and private schools has still continued eliciting co...