Are private schools really better than public schools?

imagep said:

Your educational experience differs a lot from mine. I never once, not in public grade school or college, felt that I had a teacher who showed any type of political bias, or who taught any particular political ideology. I suppose that things are different in different areas though.

However, it's also not surprising that government employees tend value government services more than private sector employees.

gfm7175 said:

If so, then you're quite lucky... I mean, my Lutheran private school is obviously biased towards, well, Lutheranism haha... But my parents paid extra money (from their own pocket) for that type of upbringing. My public high school education was done by teachers who let their "left-wing" biases show, and their biases towards The Big Bang Theory show... Except for one teacher who I for the life of me couldn't figure out where he fell on the political spectrum. THAT'S the way education SHOULD be done...

But my college teachers (except for possibly one or two of my accounting/business teachers) were all hard core "left-wingers" and weren't ashamed to show it... One of my non-accounting related classes was literally just going through various "logical fallacies" and they always used anti-Christian examples, and many of their examples weren't even actual logical fallacies to begin with... My college Economics teacher on the very first day ranted about how much he hated the textbook because it was written by a "right-wing" economist. College for me was pure indoctrination attempts. I obviously did not fall for that indoctrination BS.

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Red:
What a bizarre thing to say....My science teachers were "biased toward the Big Bang theory," as well they should have been: the Big Bang theory is the strongest one science had and has yet developed for explaining the manner in which the universe was formed. What would you have a science teacher do? Present and propone a weaker scientific theory for the universe's formation?


ETA:

• How Anti-Religious Bias Prevented Scientists from Accepting the Big Bang

imagep said:

So do you think that the methodology at the private school you attended was better, or was it the students (and their families) at the private school who were more academically inclined?

The thing with this debate is to figure out whether private schools have some sort of better teaching methods. If they do, then it seems that public schools would simply copy those methods and greatly improve. I have limited knowledge of this, but I feel that there is no real difference in methodology.

Sure, if you can afford you child to go to a private school, that child may be better off because he/she is surrounded by better students and that may tend to "rub off" on your child, or at least there may be fewer disruptions in the classroom, which would also benefit your child. But if ALL students were to attend private schools, then private schools would no longer have the "good student" advantage and I doubt that overall student performance would increase.

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Red:
I haven't any quantifying input on what pedagogies are used by what schools, types of schools or within different programs within a given school/school system. I can say without question that among schools that obtain the highest performance outcomes, there are different pedagogical approaches used. For example, some of the nation's top schools use the Harkness method and others don't.



I didn't go to a Harkness school. One of my kids did and the rest didn't. All four of them have what I call "impressively boring transcripts." So did I. In light of that, while I think pedagogy can and does make a material difference, I think other factors can and do too.

My gut tells me that the scholastic culture fostered in a kid's home and social settings are pivotal, without regard to pedagogy. My sense is that environments antithetical or indifferent about scholasticism can easily traduce the virtues of any teaching approach.


ETA:
Reference materials I haven't yet read but that seem useful as sources of (and guides point to additional sources) information re: the idea you've posited about pedagogical impact(s) and germanity:

• Teaching Practices andPedagogical Innovation
• Teaching Methods
  
  
  
• Teaching Paradigms/Pedagogies
  • Paolo Friere
  • Student Centered Learning
  • Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
  • Psychological Theories
  • Educational Transformation
  • On Course Success Philosophies
  • Creating Powerful Classrooms
• Pedagogies and Strategies
• Developing pedagogic research methods -- I think this paper is useful as a guide for structuring one's inquiry beyond what's provided in this bulleted list of documents

I went to a private high school, to a public university, and work now at a private university. I had maybe about 300 students in my high school and so the student to teacher ratio was amazing, living on campus helped you make close friends, the curriculum was challenging, and the student body was incredibly diverse. Our teachers wouldn’t share their personal opinions about hot button issues unless we asked. Their opinions had influence of course but I don’t remember them ever being pushy or intimidating. I can’t compare it to a public high school since I didn’t go to a public high school but some public high schools here have close to 3000 students. I’d have to think that it makes a difference especially with the student to teacher ratio. My college was a public university and it was massive compared to what I was used to with over 13,000 students but it was a great experience too and I’m glad I went there. I had one professor that made her politics known since at the time it was during an election season but it didn’t influence grades or anything like that. I can’t say if private is better than public but for me I liked both in different ways.

Xelor: Thank you for your informative posts (starting with the one on the second page). Everyone has an opinion on education, but most of us are not acquainted with the facts about it.

If you don't know about it already, you will be interested in the Michaela School, in the UK. It's a "free school" (sort of a super-charter, in US terms).

I think an overlooked dimension of teaching is the question of the social class background of the students: different teaching methods may be best for different types of student. It seems obvious to me that a child with an IQ of 85, and one with an IQ of 145, are not going to respond equally well to the same methods of teaching. But most educational research seems to ignore this. (Not that I'm deeply familiar with most educational research, and I'm going to spend a few hours now clicking on your links. Thanks again for providing them.)

How bad is American education? You may be surprised by the findings of one of my favorite economists, the Swedish/Iranian/Kurdish Tino Sanandaji. Read them here.

Grand Mal said:

Yeah, but is university intended to be job training? Technical school, yes, trade school definitely but university?
Finland has one of the most successful education systems in the world. They have a population of about five and a half million and about a dozen universities, which says they must be hosting a lot of foreign students. If they can do it, maybe a look ought to be taken at how.
Find a system that works and do it like that. Sounds simple to me.

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This sounds like common sense, but ... you have to take into account 'culture'. Singapore has a pretty good education system. But ... it's 85% Chinese, and it's the Chinese who do best in that system. If you tried to implement Singapore's system in South Chicago, you would not get the same results, unless you also imported Singapore's students. And contrariwise, if you exported South Chicago's student population to Singapore, you would get ... perhaps better than South Chicago's results now, but probably way below Singapore's results now.

I have a friend who is a math tutor in Singapore, who told me that what you are not told about their methods is that almost every Chinese student has a private tutor ... plus two parents who make sure their kid works hard.
the
This is not an argument against studying other education systems, just one that says we have to take into account the 'culture' and maybe the genetics as well, of the student body (and the teachers) before trying to adapt the methods of these systems.

Doug1943 said:

This sounds like common sense, but ... you have to take into account 'culture'. Singapore has a pretty good education system. But ... it's 85% Chinese, and it's the Chinese who do best in that system. If you tried to implement Singapore's system in South Chicago, you would not get the same results, unless you also imported Singapore's students. And contrariwise, if you exported South Chicago's student population to Singapore, you would get ... perhaps better than South Chicago's results now, but probably way below Singapore's results now.

I have a friend who is a math tutor in Singapore, who told me that what you are not told about their methods is that almost every Chinese student has a private tutor ... plus two parents who make sure their kid works hard.
the
This is not an argument against studying other education systems, just one that says we have to take into account the 'culture' and maybe the genetics as well, of the student body (and the teachers) before trying to adapt the methods of these systems.

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Yeah, very interesting about the cultural difference between Singapore and the US but I refered to Finland. This list will work as well as any...

https://www.master-and-more.eu/en/top-40-education-systems-in-the-world/

South Korea
Japan
Singapore
Hong Kong
Finland
The United Kingdom
Canada
The Netherlands
Ireland
Poland
Denmark
Germany
Russia
The United States
Australia

There's 8 European countries and Canada between the US and the top of the list. Choose from them whatever works for them. Shouldn't be any huge cultural differences. If it's insurmountable, I guess nothing can be done.

I think there are actually two educational problems in the US, probably not closely related with respect to cause and cure: education for Blacks and Hispanics mainly in the inner cities of the North, and in the South and Southwest, on the one hand; and all the others, on the other hand. In the latter case, the experience of (indigenous) Europeans is no doubt relevant, but not so much in the former case.

In the former case, I would examine Cuba, which actually has excellent results educationally.

I also believe that the arguments for vouchers/charter schools are often driven by ambitious Black and Hispanic parents, and those white liberals who care about them, who want schools where the uneducable wasters and disruptors are excluded. I've been impressed by attacks on charter schools that get good results in which their critics make the argument that, well, of course charters get better results, because they exclude the troublemakers. Well, why can't the state schools exclude them as well?

I admit my views here are just impressions based on a small non-random sample of the enormous number of writings about American education, plus my own real but minimal experience teaching in working-class state secondary schools in Britain, which have some of the same problems American schools do.

Skeptic Bob said:

It is very difficult to compare the effectiveness of private schools to public schools. Public schools have to take in everyone. Private schools can be picky about who they admit. So before private schools ever even teach the kids a thing they are starting off with a group of kids who are more academically capable.

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Good post! A person's success in life is very much a function of who their parents are. Kids with successful parents by and large are going to teach, encourage, and instill those values into their children. The probability that those children are going to succeed is going to be much higher than that of children born to poor and/or parents who have not been successful.