Low-income students perform no better in private or magnet schools than in traditional public high schools, when eighth-grade scores and family characteristics are taken into account, concludes a Center on Education Policy study.
Low-income students who attend private and public magnet schools outperform low-income students who go to comprehensive public high schools, the study found. (Charter schools weren’t prevalent enough when the data was collected to be included.) But, except for Jesuit schools and other schools run by Catholic orders, the school itself makes little difference. The low-income private school students start out ahead both in achievement and in the “cultural capital” their families can provide. From the Houston Chronicle:
In trying to determine whether the type of high school attended by a student made a difference academically, the new study tried to separate out the effects of income; earlier eighth-grade test scores; parental expectations; whether parents discuss school with their children and whether parents participate in school activities.
Family income, parental discussion, parental expectations, parental involvement and eighth-grade scores were linked with higher 12th-grade reading scores. In math, parental discussions and involvement had some correlation with 12th-grade achievement, but the big predictor was eighth-grade scores.
Researchers concede private schools may have improved parents’ involvement. Parents weren’t surveyed until 10th grade, when their children had attended high school for two years.
I’ve got a question in to CEP about drop-outs. Since the study looked only at students who filled out surveys in eighth, tenth and 12th grade, plus two post-high school surveys, it didn’t look at whether similar students are more likely to graduate at some types of schools. If the lower-achieving public school students dropped out by 10th or 12th grade and the lower-achieving private school students were more likely to persist to graduation, wouldn’t that skew the results?
If the study holds up, the lesson is not that nothing helps low-income students succeed. The questions become: How can we do a better job teaching in K-8, so more low-income students enter high school with the skills they need to succeed? How can we get low-income parents to set high expectations, discuss school with their children and boost their involvement? What are the Jesuits doing in their schools that other schools could emulate?
Update: Columbia Education Professor Harold Wenglinsky, the lead researcher, answered my question on the drop-out issue and threw in an answer to the question of non-respondents:
I think there are two parts to your question. First is, how did we take into account the higher dropout rate in public high schools. Second, how did we adjust for the fact that certain students are less likely to respond to the survey then others, both because they are drop outs and for other reasons. The answer to the first
question is that, we needed to limit the analysis to those completing high school to gauge the full impact of attending high school; those who did not attend all four years would not have had the potential impact. Through regression analysis, we took into account many of the factors that would influence dropout rates and ensured that we compared like students to one another. In other words, our comparison was limited to non-dropouts, but among those non-dropouts we only compared students of similar background to one another. And when we did so, there was little difference between public and private schools.With regard to the second issue, non-response, the Federal database, the National Educational Longitudinal Study includes “weights” which adjust the students under study so that they look like all students, both those responding and not responding.
All I know about statistical analysis I picked up on the streets, so to speak, but I find this unsatisfying. How do they know that the factors that influence drop-out rates have the same influence in different types of schools? I wish they’d looked at the number of low-income eighth graders vs. 10th graders vs. 12th graders at public and private schools to see if the drop-out rate is the same when previous performance and family characteristics are considered. Maybe so. You’d certainly assume previous performance and parental expectations would have a large influence on a student’s persistence in high school.
This is consistent with the earlier econometric work of economist Joseph Altonji who found a strong school effect for Catholic schools but not for other privates.
Since even the best Catholic schools are more willing to enroll low income students, usually spend less, have fewer electives, and have larger class sizes than elite private schools, this indicates that the critical variables are school focus, instilling a sense of purpose, and the willingness to discipline students/control behavior. This is also consistent with the positive effect the military has traditionally had on many youngsters.
Of course, it is precisely this behavioral control/discipline that public schools have studiously tried to avoid since the 1960s. In addition, public schools avoid the sort of academic competitiveness/high standards that used to be common in the best systems prior to WWII.
The old is new again.
The authors of this study disagree with you, they concluded:
“Title I” is Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which was reauthorized as NCLB. NCLB adopted all of ESEA and merely added the much-hated accountability provisions and distributed additional funding to pay for implementing said accountability measures, i.e., testing.
The study did not find higher performance for poor students enrolled in most Catholic schools and other religious-affiliated schools, once prior achievement and family characteristics were taken into account. Only Catholic schools run by holy orders, such as the Jesuits, made a difference in reading and math performance.
However, the study never mentions the drop-out rate. Perhaps the rate is the same in all types of schools, when the other factors are considered, but the study doesn’t make that claim. Many low-income students are gone by 10th grade and many more by 12th grade.
“These findings suggest a need to maintain the focus on improving schools while also bolstering supports for low-income families, such as providing adequate health care and preventive care, better wages, and high-quality child care and preschool programs.”
It is with great surprise that a hint of partisan politics are noted in this research.
KDeRosa,
NCLB is a reauthorization of ESEA, but with so many changes and regulations it is far removed from the original intent of the law. The original intent of the law was to provide additional funding to schools serving large populations of low income students.
The purpose of NCLB . . .well my feelings on that have been stated plenty of times before.
What did the Jesuits do for me and my classmates?
1) They kicked our butts, both metaphorically and literally, when we slacked off and did not work hard.
2) They did not tolerate a bit of disrespect, disruptive behavior, or other classroom nonsense. We were expected to act like adults.
3) They piled on hard work. College was easy compared to high school. The teachers all had degrees in their subject matter, not “education with a concentration in.”
4) Because they had high expectations for everyone, they did not let “I’m no good at ___________” determine an academic plan.
5) We felt that we belonged to a community. Fights were practically unheard of.
6) As far as I could see, parental involvement was relatively low. Unlike my Catholic grade school, where the kids of wealthy parishioners got special treatment, parental influence was invisible.
7) We had the worst physical facilities of any high school in the city. Classes of 25-35 were the norm. I would not have traded it for all of the many palatial public high schools in our city.
Thaprof: I think the Jesuits did a couple more things.
9) They wouldn’t put up with parents who opposed their tough disciplinary methods.
In other words, just being in that school meant most of you students were selected for discipline at home and family support for education. (Some of the richest kids may have been an exception – some parents will hire out the entire upbringing of their kids if they can afford it – but when the vast majority of the kids in a school are brought up right at home as well as in the school, peer pressure actually helps keep the brats in line. At least, your school was rarely burdened with the offspring of poor and irresponsible parents, while public schools do have to contend with too many kids whose parents neither bring them up nor hire someone to do it.)
I have some serious disagreements with the study in general. I did some tutoring at the school in Joannes book. Based on those kids the conclusions in the study justs don’t ring true. Aside from that, it doesn’t pass the smell test. What I believe is that given half a chance, the vast majority of parents will seek a good education for their children. I will grant you that if the barriers are high, they turn away. However, that means that the barriers need to be, to the extent possible, eliminated.
“Only Catholic schools run by holy orders, such as the Jesuits, made a difference in reading and math performance”…if this is true, then it raises the question of whether we can create “virtual Jesuits,” who run schools with the characteristics that make Jesuit schools successful but without necessarily having the religious focus.
A key point is that the study does not really include charters because they were not prevalent enough at the time of the study. Unfortunately, this study does correlate with my experience with standardized scores that I had as a graduate intern (99-00) with data about Indianapolis area schools. The strongest factor influencing individual test scores was not the school that the student attended, but the address of the students, and coming in second was parental income. Unfortunately, this data was not officially published since it was not the main purpose of the study that the professor was conducting and also not published due to student privacy issues, but seeing the raw numbers of education data profoundly affected me at that time. What I also remember is that the “charter†schools (that were still brand new at that time and I can’t remember anymore if they were official charter or considered quasi charter) and schools that had charter-like qualities were the exception and those scores were better than comparative students, but they were too new and too few students at that time to make much of an impact on the overall numbers. Focusing on the few schools that were able to make a difference, I discovered “charter†schools and I became a fan of charter schools. My professor at the time, thought that a major reason why schools played a lesser role in test scores is that many low income students constantly switched schools between school years, and because students were tested in the fall instead of the spring, that students were actually being tested on what they had learned (or not learned) at a previous school, but their scores were counted to a new school that had not had the time to teach them yet. Also, in my personal opinion, at least some of the low income students attended Catholic schools based on sports reasons instead of academic, so academics was not the top priority, even at some private schools.
MarkM, only some of what you say is true. First, there were a handful of students who went for free. They and others who had income-based tuition reductions were expected to do some work (sweeping up, raking leaves, manning the switchboard, etc.) It did not in any sense add up to the monetary value of the tuition, but it did make them aware that they were getting something of value. Second, although the majority came from fairly well-ordered homes, you would probably be surprised at the number of undisciplined hellions from completely wild family backgrounds (at both ends of the economic scale) who matured very quickly when treated like adults and expected to act as such. For some of those students, the Jesuits provided the only non-chaotic environment they had ever known.
Another big factor: no girls.
About those “virtual Jesuits:” the Jesuit priests staffing those Jesuit schools are highly capable and educated men who, for religious reasons, are working for the equivalent of small salaries. If we wanted “virtual Jesuits,” highly educated and motivated teachers who were not teaching for religious reasons, we’d have to pay them a lot more.
It’s the same story with Joanne’s school. DCP uses highly educated, unpaid tutors (such as Joanne). But there aren’t enough of those volunteers to tutor all the struggling students in the community. DCP is a great school, but it’s not obvious how its success can be generalized.
How can we get low-income parents to set high expectations, discuss school with their children and boost their involvement?
That is indeed the profound question, one deserving of great exploration. It appears that most of the high performing elementary schools in low socio-economic areas are able to create a parental link. Perhaps that is just one of the reasons why there is such a need for smallness, that way each student and even their parents are well-known by multiple adults in the school building?
Tom Hanson
Open Education.net
As the public school students had completed high school, it could be a reasonable assumption that the group had been ‘weeded out’ by way of drop-outs. [This may or may not be significant given that we do not know whether the dropout rate in this group is any different in the private schools.] This group could therefore be seen as a higher then average group of performers. As we know, higher performers often achieve that level because of parental support.
But, if the public high school sample is not included in the regression analysis because it is the basis of analysis, is any adjustment made to account for levels of parental involvement/discussion etc for these students?
Is it not reasonable to assume that the public school students who have overcome the difficulties inherent in the public school system to graduate and go on to college also had the support of parents? Was this taken into account in the study?
Debra