As I wrote on Tuesday, James Tooley, author of “The Beautiful Tree,” visited public, recognized private schools, and unrecognized private schools in the slums of India, China, and Africa to compare the quality between these different school environments.
Tooley and other researchers visited the schools unannounced and took copious notes on the size of classes, whether the teacher was actually teaching, and the condition of the building and facilities.
All in all, private schools came out on top on almost every measure. Private school classes were smaller, teachers at private schools were more committed to teaching (as determined by more time on task), private schools were more likely to provide the curriculum parents wanted (such as teaching English), and the condition of the building and facilities were of equal quality. The only input where public government schools ranked higher was on the provision of playgrounds.
Tooley found that class size was a key factor in parents choosing private schools. Parents view classes in government public schools as “simply too big.” The data supports this belief with public school class sizes being either twice or three times as large as private schools.
Tooley was also able to gather information on the level of teacher training, teacher salaries, and student learning. He found that government schools were more likely to have better trained and educated teachers and better paid teachers (in some cases seven times more than teachers at private schools). Yet more training and higher pay doesn’t necessarily lead to higher teacher performance in the classroom, better student results, or a better school.
He explains, “When critics dismiss private schools for not having extensively trained teachers, the key reason they do is because they assume the teachers will be less effective. We’ve already seen that these untrained teachers are far more likely to show up and teach then their more heavily trained counterparts in government schools. Does their lack of training make any difference to student achievement – a key indicator of their effectiveness? It turns out it does not. Private schools again turn out to be superior to government schools.”
Students in private schools also scored higher on standardized tests in key subjects than students in government schools even when controlling for background differences.
Private schools serving poor children in the slums actually receive no government funding and no international aid and yet are of a higher quality because market forces are at work and they are accountable to parents.
– Brooke Terry