A good way to generate a rousing and passionate debate is to bring up school funding and the roles of private and public schools in society. But until now there was limited research to argue for or against private schools. But a new study recently published has found that increased attendance in private schools improves student achievement in public schools as well as in private schools.
The research was conducted by Martin West, an assistant professor of education at Brown University and an executive editor of Education Next, along with Ludger Woessmann, a professor of economics at the University of Munich and head of the Department of Human Capital and Innovation of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research. Their work was international in scope, looking at 29 countries and their well-articulated research report unveils some valuable findings.
For example, having more students in private school not only improves student performance across the board, but reduces the cumulative educational spending per student.
Although their work goes far beyond the boundaries of the Canadian educational systems, the researchers examine closely the role of Catholic schools historically (remember, Catholic schools are private in the U.S. and many other countries) and credits the Catholic resistance to government-run schools for helping create the private school models that continue to succeed today.
One of the key conclusions is that the competition from private schools that public schools face spurs the public schools to work harder. Thus, performance increases.
Certainly this research won’t silence the debates over school funding and choice, but it certainly will be a powerful new tool for those advocating on behalf of private schools.
Photo of a Stanstead College classroom. ©Our Kids archives.
This is a great post, Josh.
Society benefits in numerous other ways thanks to private schools, of course.
One way that is often forgotten is the money that any society saves in taxes, thanks to private schools footing the bill for the education of children. The principal of the independent Christian school in our neighbourhood notes that, with an enrollment of over 200 students, the school easily saves local taxpayers over a million dollars: a bill they would otherwise have to cover, for teacher salaries, books, building and maintenance, etc.
This is tangential to your point here but it’s still worth noting.