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May 13, 2005

Study: Public schools outperform private schools

There's a growing buzz about a recent study by a pair of University of Illinois researchers that found public school students outperform private school students in math after accounting for students' socioeconomic differences. The researchers reviewed 4th graders' and 8th graders' math scores from the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). An NSBA summary of the study can be found here. Read the full study here. A Phi Delta Kappan article by the study's authors is here. And the Christian Science Monitor looks into it here. Christopher Lubienski, one of the authors, told the newspaper that the findings challenge the conventional wisdom that "the private-school model is better and more effective, and can achieve superior results. It really undercuts a lot of those choice-based reforms." Do the findings surprise you?

Posted May 13, 2005 12:00 AM