National Study Comparing Public and Private Schools
On July 14, 2006, the National Center for Education Statistics released a study titled "Comparing Private Schools and Public Schools Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling" that uses a sophisticated statistical analysis to examine the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores of public and private school students.
The goal of the study was to examine differences in mean (NAEP) reading and mathematics scores (grade 4 and grade 8) between public and private schools when selected characteristics of students and/or schools were taken into account. Among the student demographic characteristics considered were gender, race/ethnicity, disability status, income and identification as an English language learner.
Among the school characteristics considered were school size and location, and
composition of the student body and of the teaching staff. In particular, if the student populations enrolled in the two types of schools differed systematically with
respect to background characteristics related to achievement, then those differences would be confounded with straightforward comparisons between school types.
The full report from NCES can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006461
The National Catholic Education Association points out that this study looks at results on one test score at a given time – it does not measure progress over time. The NCEA argues that the single-year snapshots of test scores provide limited information about student achievement and nothing about the relative quality of public and private schools.
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