Private School Vs.Public School: Which School Will Make Your Child More Successful In Life - Research Paper Example

Private school vs. Public school: Which school will make your child more successful in life? Roseanna Brown Ottawa LAS 30012 Writing and Critical Thinking in the Liberal Arts Date Private school vs. Public school There comes a time when the parents have to decide about their childrens education. The decision tree in their heads is similar to, public school is just around the corner or a religious school will lead the child in the right direction or no institute can compete with the high standard of education in private schools. This is not an easy choice. Accountability, curriculum, skills and qualifications of teachers, and costs are the primary aspects the parents consider before enrolling their children into a school. The most common debate in this context is about private schools versus public schools. This debate is crucial for parents as it is a matter of their children’s future. The idea of writing this essay is to find a reasonable conclusion to that debate. The research question is which school (public or private) will make children more successful in life? Private schools are better than public schools for children’s bright future. Since this is not an original research, therefore, the methodology is to review literature to support the thesis. Scholarly journal articles, books and online sources will support the arguments. Review of the Literature The free societies are built on the foundation of liberty. This gift proposes two broad templates for building institutions. For many businesses free markets offer the best tools for progressing individual and collective interests. The best way to do that is through the private institutes. For other tasks such as protecting and nurturing personal autonomy, government involvement is required (Lubienski, 2013). Government’s hand is mandatory to support and administer the essential services to protect the rights of freedom. Both these models offer their unique pros and cons. Both models cannot be applied in every situation. They might benefit one purpose and damage the other. Apparently the bureaucratic politics and economic markets have well-defined boundaries. But the reality is the boundary is smudged. Both models need each other for support. On the surface it seems like both models are opposite to each other but they need each other. For instance, government actions are required to support effective marketing policies whereas, private interests played a central role in the public domain. An example outside the field of education is the military or the federal courts. They can include elements of both markets and politics (Lubienski, 2013). Hence the government action and the private economic activity form synergies or an amalgamation. None of the models can exist in isolation. To solve a problem through one model the other model acts as the support. When this debate of free economic model and rigid governmental control is applied to education the conclusion is somewhat similar. The market style organizations cannot be wiped out as they have their own attraction. The common perception is that public schools are generally ridden with tensions and competing demands from the people (government) that fund them. For this reason, market offers an appealing solution. The owners of private schools offer something that the society needs - an autonomous educational Institute. One thing should be noted that oversimplification or mass generalization is never a solution. It is not a simple case of abandoning one model and accepting the other model. Education for all program, offers the best example as to why the society moves towards a market model in the first place. Schools were not a state function to begin with. This is especially true in the Western societies. Private owners, religious administration, charities and families used to run the schools. The nineteenth century reformers changed this trend and demanded that this model was making the quality of education extremely volatile. The inequality was unbearable and was hampering the abilities and development of children. The US public education system - as the world knows it - was a product of an escape from the perceived failures of how the schools were performing. These schools were receiving a backlash from the society as well as from the business community. Speaking specifically of the United States the debate between the private and public schools is not only a matter of affordability. The gaps in achievement between rich and poor and the white and minority students have been persistent (Lubienski, 2013). It is crucial to understand the root of this debate in order to make a more comprehensive decision. After about half a century of Brown versus Board of Education the situation is more or less the same. The conclusion of the case was supposed to break down the legal barriers in the way of a quick table education for all. Speaking of standardized tests the typical African-American student is still scoring about 75% to 85% lower than the white students (Lubienski, 2013). Among the Eighth graders one out of 20 English-language learners reads at a proficient level (Lubienski, 2013). These matters have lingered on for so long that this crisis in public education is considered a permanent mark of the United States education system. Theres a good reason why parents and policymakers as well as the taxpayers want to see improvement in the education system. The education reformers are trying to rectify the situation. The earlier generation tried to provide a solution with a new curricula. These efforts are being made at local, state and national level. Education is an important determinant of economic progress in an individual’s life. Which is why parents are concerned about the education of their children. The quality of education in a country determines its progress. Allocating funds in education is always driven by such economic concerns. In developed countries allocation of significant amount of funds to education is the norm while developing countries do what they can. Some countries even provide free education to their citizens because they understand the important role their students will play in the future of the country. Broadly speaking, schools are either funded publicly or privately (U.S. Bureau, 2014). The judgment regarding private versus public schools depends a lot on the perception. Who is judging and by what standards? These questions are less significant in the wake of preconceived notions. The public sentiment about both education channels runs deep. The Gallup Work and Education Poll of 2012 revealed that 70% of Americans believe that independent schools provide excellent or good education (Dolin, 2013). One of the many reasons why Public schools suffer notoriety is their abuse of authority. Public schools sideline private religious schools from becoming potential partners in contributing to solutions such as bridging the achievement gap (Jeynes, 2014). In addition, a preconceived notion is that public schools do not respond to competition the way private schools do, and hence, they are inferior to private schools in educating children (Tatsiramos & Polachek, 2012). Interestingly, sufficient evidence supports this notion. Private school students routinely perform better in standardized tests and have a better chance of graduating from high school to attend college than students of public schools (Tatsiramos & Polachek, 2012). A study focused on scores in mathematics of 15 year old students in Ireland showed the raw average score in private schools was higher than of students in public schools (Pfeffermann and Landsman, 2011). A brief overview supports the thesis statement that private schools are definitely better for the future of children. Here are a few points to discuss about private and public schools. Funding Another reason why private schools must be the preferred choice of parents is that public schools are generally underfunded. Furthermore, they rely on the policies set by the politicians that run the government. Usually the public schools are part of a larger school system. It means that they are not completely independent. The public schools are not supposed to charge tuition fee, which is a great relief for the poor sector of society. But these schools are also subject to political changes and shortfalls. However, no one can deny the benefits of public schools. According to a research by National Center for Education Statistics public school teachers are more qualified on average than their independent counterparts (NCES, 2014). They have better experience and education. Public schools tend to have a general requirement for teachers to have a master’s degree and a significant number of hours in studying. The admission procedure An important factor in the parent’s decision regarding their childrens education is how easily they can get children admitted into an Institute. By law, a public school is bound to accept all children (Keefe, 2015). The basic requirements such as proving a valid home address and filling out a few forms is supposed to be sufficient, in reality it is harder than it seems. The process becomes even more complicated when the student is disabled or has a mental disorder. Not every public school has the means to facilitate such a student. The admission procedure is tough in private schools public schools are bound to accept all students. Parents need to also consider this fact that once the child gets to a private school he or she will be constrained to a uniformly high demand. Private schools have leverage of expelling students and also choose not to give admission to certain students. At the high school level many districts have a competitive admission system where a certain GPA or an artistic portfolio decides if the child qualifies for admission. These factors are significant in the choice of school and where the child eventually gets admission in. Time spent on core subjects It is hard to evaluate whether it is a strong point or a weak one but public school students spend more time on core subjects. Social studies, science, math and English are the subjects that the public school students generally focus more. Public schools can support more extracurricular activities Sports and clubs are easier to facilitate in a public school. The reason is not the funding it is the sheer number of students. Public schools tend to be bigger therefore it is easier to form an active club, group, or any student body. The teacher’s salary Private school teachers generally get paid more. The income varies across different states. The result of variable income is that the teachers with low salaries or low annual increments tend to seek employment elsewhere. This is true for public schools. When the teachers leave an Institute the school has to hire more teachers. This requires time and financial means, in other words, an overhead cost. It also depends on teachers preferences regarding salary. A research found that regarding the teacher turnover science teachers consider salary as the strongest factor and were willing to compromise on classroom autonomy (Ingersoll and May 2012). The Size of Bureaucracy It is understandable when the size of the bureaucracy is huge it is difficult to get things done through them. One file needs to go through several departments and signed by several people before it finally gets the approval. Public schools are notorious for having bloated bureaucracies due to union contracts and political affiliations. Private schools have more efficient bureaucratic structure. There are less people administrating and therefore, it requires less time to complete a task that needs admin’s approval. The reason for an efficient administration is that the revenue comes from operations and endowment funds. The administration knows that they have a limited amount of funds and they cannot waste it in useless innuendos. In addition, a private school administration hardly ever has to deal with teachers union. Budgets Public schools generally have variable funding for their operations. They depend on the government grants. In poor areas this process can get more complicated. After meeting all the other public necessities, the local government is usually left with small funding to give to schools. Business communities and foundations can give grants and therefore, public schools significantly rely on funding sources, which by their very nature are variable. Private schools have the advantage of raising money by raising tuition fee. They also have other developmental funds that they can channel to their operations. Also the leverage of appealing to alumni puts them in a strong position when it comes to raising funds. Mass generalization will be unjust; not every public or private school performs the same as the lot. There are good public schools and unsatisfactory private schools. Hence, people living in states that offer good public schools consider those options. Presenteeism and Burnout The concept of presenteeism is also a contributing factor in judging private schools from public schools. Presenteeism refers to the productivity loss in an organization. A study by Ferreira and Martinez (2012) revealed that public school teachers showed an increased inclination towards presenteeism as well as burnout. A similar study performed on Italian teachers by Benevene and Fiorilli (2015) discovered that consecrated teachers exhibited additional likelihood of burnout syndrome. In comparison, the lay teachers of private catholic school showed lower level of burnout than their lay colleagues (Benevene and Fiorilli, 2015). It is hard to label one school from the other based on burnout syndrome and presenteeism. Impact of Autonomy On the other hand, the critics of private schools claim that the autonomy that the private schools enjoy is in fact a bane in the pedagogical sense; private school teachers make use of their freedom and do not bother to update themselves on the latest research (Sikkink, 2015). Autonomy in schools is desired by parents. They think that more autonomy a school has the less involvement of politicians and other governments departments. High-SES parents are more likely to enroll their children into schools with strong accountability and autonomy over certain decisions or under private management (Schuetz, Luedemann, West, and Woessmann, 2013). On one hand it is a blessing while on the other, it is a curse for private schools. Adherence to Vaccination Requirements School immunization is another standard that determines the better school for children. A study by Lai et al. (2014) revealed that private schools were not better when it came to vaccinating. The researchers stated that “medical and religious exemption rates increased over time and higher rates were observed among New York State private schools compared to public schools” (Lai, Nadeau, McNutt, and Shaw, 2014). Low exemption rates are vital for controlling infection outbreaks in schools. Style of Teaching One thing worth discussing is the style of teaching. Private schools tend to have a market-driven approach in setting the curriculum and teaching methodology. Referring to the studies across the globe private education tends to be market-driven hence, when the students graduate from private institutes they are more readily taken by companies and hospitals as doctors, managers, consult etc. India has a large private medical education sector that reflects the market-driven growth in private medical institutes (Diwan et al., 2013). The Third Option A third option between public and private is nongovernment schools that cater to the children from low income families. These schools are prevalent in developing countries (Heyneman and Stern, 2014). The difficulty with the nongovernment schools is they also enjoy autonomy that comes under question at certain times. In Australia there is a heated debate going between the contest space of fund distribution and the accountability of nongovernment schools (Gurd, 2013). This debate is not unique to Australia. Miscellaneous Factors The debate about privatized schools should also consider the differences in teaching staff and relative pay (USBLS, 2014). The variations in pay can be due to factors such as teacher cohesion and student achievement. The teachers generally settle with a tradeoff between pay and safer work environment or class size. It is hard to label one as superior or inferior to the other. A study by Berliner and Glass (2014) explicitly states that private or charter schools are better than traditional public schools. Logically it does not make sense to send one’s children into private schools. If the citizens are paying taxes then why should they pay more money for the children’s education? However, the equation has several other elements that even out. For instance, in certain states tax breaks are awarded if parents send their children to private schools. But in the end the debate should not be about private versus public schools. Educators, school boards and parents should focus more on the inquiry that how they can make all the schools more productive. In the end, affordability can be the final deciding factor. Parents tend to have a bias that private schools are better education centers for their children. But they also dont want to overwhelm the family with high tuition fee. The choice of college also offers this dilemma. Student debts are on the rise. After graduating a student that took a loan for tuition has to work a lot to pay off the debt. The credit ratings can be damaged and can ruin the potential career of a student in case he does not pay. After all it’s a matter of children’s future. Regardless which school is better overall the fact is that a certain number of students will end up in that school which will not be as productive for his/her future. The need is to bridge this gap where the best of both the private and the public schools should be accounted for in every school. Conclusions and Implications Academics have been debating the merits and demerits of private and public schools. To gather and analyze primary data is beyond the scope of this paper. The implications for future research is to focus on a few questions. The primary question is do private schools actually give better education to students? To answer this question there are a few complications in the way. The first is the researchers need to identify a location on the map of the world where they want to carry out the research. The debate of public versus private would be different in the United States as compared to England or Ireland. Public schools greatly rely on government support and funding. They are also subjected to a lot of constraints and regulations by the same governing body. In addition, the research design that is comparing the outcomes of private and public school needs to be well defined. The design is important because in a comparison technique a level playing field is mandatory. Second, what exactly does better educational performance mean? Does it mean that students have to score better marks in core subjects such as science and mathematics? For the sake of debate if it is assumed that private schools are indeed better than public schools does that mean they are better by a significant margin? When the topic of schools is under discussion is it the elementary or secondary school? What does it actually mean to be a private school? Are private religious schools truly private? The debate about public and private institute goes far and dates back to the foundations of the education system. It is not really about labeling one school better than the other. Both public and private schools have their unique benefits and drawbacks. To recommend a school that can provide better education and career opportunities for children is a difficult task. The suggestion depends mostly on the circumstances of the families. In simpler terms if the parents can afford public education for their children than they should. Private schools are not subjected to governmental favors and politics as much as public schools are. Therefore, they can focus more on training children in skills that are in demand in the market. But efforts should be made to find common grounds between the two models of education. References Berliner, D. C., & Glass, G. V. (Eds.). (2014). 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten Americas Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education. Teachers College Press. Benevene, P., & Fiorilli, C. (2015). Burnout Syndrome at School: A Comparison Study with Lay and Consecrated Italian Teachers. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(1), 501. Diwan, V., Minj, C., Chhari, N., & De Costa, A. (2013). Indian medical students in public and private sector medical schools: are motivations and career aspirations different?–studies from Madhya Pradesh, India. BMC medical education, 13(1), 127. Dolin, A, K. (2013) A guide to private schools: The Washington, DC, Northern Virginia and Maryland addition. iUniverse. Ferreira, A. I., & Martinez, L. F. (2012). Presenteeism and burnout among teachers in public and private Portuguese elementary schools. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23(20), 4380-4390. Gurd, B. (2013). Rising accountability of Australian non-government schools. Public Money & Management, 33(6), 415-420. NCES (2014) Public and private school comparison. National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved April 19, 2015 from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=55 Heyneman, S. P., & Stern, J. M. (2014). Low cost private schools for the poor: What public policy is appropriate?. International Journal of Educational Development, 35, 3-15. Ingersoll, R. M., & May, H. (2012). The magnitude, destinations, and determinants of mathematics and science teacher turnover. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 34(4), 435-464. Jeynes, W. (2014). Policymakers should embrace greater school choice to include private and faith schools to address the achievement gap. LSE American Politics and Policy. Lai, Y. K., Nadeau, J., McNutt, L. A., & Shaw, J. (2014). Variation in exemptions to school immunization requirements among New York State private and public schools. Vaccine, 32(52), 7070-7076. Lubienski, C. A. (2013) The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools. University of Chicago Press. Pfeffermann, D., & Landsman, V. (2011). Are private schools better than public schools? Appraisal for Ireland by methods for observational studies. The annals of applied statistics, 5(3), 1726. Schuetz, G., Luedemann, E., West, M. R., & Woessmann, L. (2013). School Accountability, Autonomy, Choice, and the Equality of Educational Opportunities. In Integration and Inequality in Educational Institutions (pp. 123-152). Springer Netherlands. Sikkink, D. (2015). The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools by Christopher A. Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski: (2013). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 304 pp., 50.00(cloth), 18.00 (paperback). Journal of School Choice, 9(1), 161-163. Tatsiramos, K., & Polachek, S. W. (Eds.). (2012). 35th Anniversary Retrospective (Vol. 35). Emerald Group Publishing. USBLS (2014) Teacher staffing and pay differences: public and private schools. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved April 19, 2015 from http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2014/article/pdf/teacher-staffing-and-pay-differences.pdf Read More