“family culture and history, and support for education” are much more important for the children success than anything else no matter what recognized experts in the field of education say.
It’s not what the experts say, @Tanbiko , it’s what the data says. Do you have conflicting data?
I do not have any data - I only have my personal experience and experience of other countless immigrants who arrived in this country poor.
You should do a study to find out if your anecdata is meaningful. Thankfully academia has higher standards than “I just know it!”
I will as soon as I retire. I already have a title for my study: “Family Culture and History, and Support for Education Affects Kids’ Success More Than Public Vs. Private School”
Ah, you see, in addition to the subject-verb error in your proposed title, what you’re proposing is the opposite of how scholarship works. Your study will be unpublishable and justifiably ignored (or worse). But now I see why you accuse dedicated, impartial scholars of presupposing their conclusions: because that’s what you would do.
What do you mean “or worse” Red Guards will come after me?
No, that’s not going to happen.
Wow how about stating the obvious, if I have more money to start with I’ll have more money. Better to compare families with like income who go to different colleges. Then you would have a better idea if it helps to go to a “better” college.
@CU123 - I think you misunderstand the study’s conclusions.
Probably since I just went with the headliner.
Yeah–“success” in the hed isn’t financial–it’s academic (as I tried to make clear in the pull quote I selected for the OP).
Thanks @marvin100! Also, I realized I left the wrong link in my first comment. Here’s where you can read the article: https://www.aera.net/Newsroom/Does-Attendance-in-Private-Schools-Predict-Student-Outcomes-at-Age-15-Evidence-from-a-Longitudinal-Study. There’s no paywall there, if you click on the article in the right sidebar, then click on “Download Article” on the left side bar on the next page.
That’s not how social science statistics works (not by ethical scientists, anyway. Accusing a scientist of manipulating data to get results they want is a pretty serious allegation). Their statistical method is laid out in the article itself. This is a national, publicly available data set. (https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/DSDR/studies/22361/summary). Anyone can request the data and do the analyses themselves, if they have the requisite statistical knowledge. I’m a quantitative social scientist, and reading the methods, this study looks like a pretty standard and well-done longitudinal study. It makes sense, since the parent study was funded and coordinated by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (your tax dollars at work!)
That’s the conclusion made when controlling for socioeconomic status and family income. Probably what the mechanism is is what many parents already mentioned here - that wealthy parents that can afford to put their kids in private school can also afford to move to areas in which the public schools are really good, with all the “art and literature.”
A very common misconception is that private schools are universally better than public school, but that’s because people are often thinking of tony, expensive private schools and urban, low-income public schools. There are lots of public schools that are well-known for having tremendous resources and excellent education (think Stuyvesant High, Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, Boston Latin, Acton-Boxborough, etc.) There are also lots of small private schools that aren’t very good, and don’t have the art and literature and resources available even in the public schools right around them.
Again, studies like this don’t claim that no students who come from low-income backgrounds can ever be hyper successful. Studies like this only show that on average, students from higher-income backgrounds have better life outcomes than students from lower-income backgrounds. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of studies over decades that have corroborated such findings; it’s pretty well-established that wealthy kids have better outcomes on average than poor kids. There are always some students who beat the odds and do really well - but that’s why it’s called “beating the odds.” Low-income students have the deck stacked against them; it’s remarkable when they do succeed at high levels, because there are so many obstacles in their way to that success. On the flip side, money can buy children so much and remove so many obstacles. Money’s also correlated with a bunch of other things that will help children have good educational outcomes.
The level of pushback against these findings is pretty interesting.
Right?
@marvin100, @menloparkmom , @romanigypsyeyes
https://nypost.com/2017/12/23/obamas-lax-discipline-policies-made-schools-dangerous/
of course, i also saw report said the drop of suspension rate help performance of kids of all races, but I don’t agree.
@lemonlulu - those articles do not support your claim that any schools have stopped disciplining students as a policy. The NYPost piece is pretty awful journalism (and the Post is a tabloid) with literally nothing but anecdotes and sensationalism, and the Atlantic piece also fails to support your accusation. You’ve brought nothing meaningful to this discussion except for conspiracy theory and race-baiting.
Perhaps that is part of why schools may have zero tolerance rules that leave no room for judgement calls, since judgement calls may result in unfair discipline (by race or other irrelevant characteristics) for the same offense committed by different students.
@juillet , that’s a great point. Now I am really curious what subset of private schools was in the study. Typically, when debating the merits of public vs private schools, we are looking at “results oriented” (for lack of better definition) private schools that have a good track of delivering high test scores, getting the kids to colleges, etc. However, even in my community there are private schools where the priorities are different. If schools like that are mixed in, then I wouldn’t be surprised if for lower socioeconomic status the public schools prove to be better.
It is probably the nature of these forums that parents considering private K-12 schools are mostly considering the academically elite ones, even though most private K-12 schools are not academically elite. It is analogous to the tendency for people on these forums to write a lot more about Harvard than Hofstra, even though private colleges like Hofstra are far more numerous than private colleges like Harvard.