Public vs. Private

The New York Times piece on the results of the Educational Testing Service’s study of private and public schools would seem to investigate the true difference between them. At the outset, this is an odd comparison. Only 10% of American students attend private school for grades K – 12 and private schools are seldom seen alongside high performing, suburban public schools. Moreover, the results mostly confirm what we already know: wealthier, fairer-skinned children do better on academic tests than do their poorer, browner counterparts.

The ETS would do better to compare public vs. public. Why does the public school model work for wealthy children but not for poor children? If the value of an education were contained in the knowledge acquired therein, it would be enough to send every kid off with an encyclopedia at graduation, ensuring future success in the job market. But the most valuable aspect of an education is the credibility earned from meeting a standard of excellence. So the problem with the public school system for many poor people is not that they lack the ability to learn, or even that the system has bad teachers; it’s that it has too narrow a definition of success.

David Hawpe’s editorial suggests that the argument for vouchers rests on the supposition that it will raise the tests scores of poorer students. But the argument for vouchers is just that it will free public school teachers and poorer children from a system that qualifies them as failures. If you had to take tests that you perpetually failed, you’d lose interest too. We need to allow students to define success for themselves and seek out schools that support those goals. More of our public school teachers would want to start private schools for the poor if they knew they’d be judged by how well they met the needs of their students, not by how well their students met the arbitrary standards of upper class white folk.