Flutterby™! : Public schools

The Atlantic: Are Private Schools Worth It? is an interview with authors Sarah and Christopher Lubienski, authors of The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools.

Studying the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, they have found that, when controlling for demographic factors, public schools are doing a better job academically than private schools. It seems that private school students have higher scores because they come from more affluent backgrounds, not because the schools they attend are better educational institutions.

Someone in my Facebook feed today had one of those someecards pictures with a quote attributed to Joseph Sobran: "In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greein high school to teaching Remedial English in college." I suspect we can probably attribute this change to the fact that we're sending more kids through high school and into college, and most of the actual learning is either innate or taught at home.