Students who attend private schools tend to perform “significantly better” on international achievement tests, so stories like the recent Toronto Star investigation about the so-called soft standards in some schools should be taken with a grain of salt, says Paul W. Bennett of Schoolhouse Consulting. A new August 2011 report, commissioned by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), confirms this while painting a more complicated picture, factoring in a socio-economic analysis of the results.
