I just discovered this education article, and all I can say is Amen, Amen, and Amen!
The title is "Are Private Schools Really Better?"... but note what the article is really about :)
*Particularly note the comments on testing and why there is a gap (I guess I agree with those Democrats and teachers unions!)
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2 comments:
Unfortunately, the study done by the CEP that the article cites will not be discussed by any serious education researchers because it has the sophistication of a sophomore term paper. Without being too technical, it 1) applies OLS while violating assumptions required by OLS (they even admit this but apparently without knowing it is a problem). This means the results are wrong. and 2) does not report standard errors. However, she does draw statistical inference from her results which requires the standard errors. This is extremely suspicious since no econometrician would not report standard errors.
But, all this aside, there is another subtlety overlooked in the time.com article. Many folk's choice to send kiddos to private or home school isn't fundamentally based on academic quality. In many cases people know that public schools have better chemistry labs, for instance. The issue is not in who can make kids learn 2+2 better but the worldview being disseminated by the educator. By focusing ONLY on outcomes as the secular progressives like to do, they can say that there is no difference between the choices on anything that matters (to them). If such a viewpoint is allowed to take root then the consequences to parent's right to choose their kid's education could be severe.
That said, it is not a bad thing to compare outcomes as long as it is not treated as the only important thing. What often happens is that what is measurable is what becomes important and what is not measurable (e.g. spiritual nurture) is not. But, when we do study such things we need to make sure they are done well and honestly.
I also read an interesting article on education (though haven't yet gotten to look at the actual report):
http://www.economist.com/world/
international/displaystory.cfm?
story_id=9989914
I think if you hook all the lines up you can get the URL.
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