Can Public Learn from Private?

A new report on high schools rubs some educators the wrong way

"Scientists will argue for years about this report." So said Sociologist Robert Grain last week at a Washington meeting of 400 educators and lobbyists, called by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to scrutinize "Public and Private Schools," the latest report issued by University of Chicago Sociologist James S. Coleman. Also under review: "Minority Students in Catholic Secondary Schools," a study by Coleman's colleague, Sociologist Andrew Greeley.

Coleman has been issuing hotly debated reports since 1966, when he concluded, after doing a nationwide survey, that black pupils learn better when they go to school with whites, a finding that aided integration. Now he has completed the first part of a federally funded study of U.S. high schools. His conclusion: even after allowing for differences in family background, private schools do a better job than public schools--largely because they maintain better discipline and provide more challenging academic demands.

Predictably, that conclusion stirred the ire of public school educators, who are already concerned about President Reagan's endorsement of tax credits for private school tuition payments. They listened warily to the conclusions Coleman drew from a survey of 58,728 sophomores and seniors in 1,016 high schools. Public school sophomores appear twice as likely to disobey, fight or commit acts of vandalism in schools. Only a quarter of the public school sophomores said they spent more than five hours a week on homework, in contrast with nearly half in Catholic and other private schools.

The finding that hit hardest, though, was Coleman's comparison of educational achievement, based on test scores. He found that in reading, vocabulary, mathematics, science, civics and writing, the nation's 1.4 million private pupils notably outperform the 13.5 million public schoolers. Greeley's study made a similar point: students from minority low-income families do much better academically in Catholic schools than in public schools.

Many of the assembled experts challenged the findings, declaring that Coleman had overstated his conclusions. Among the critics were staff members from NCES, the Government agency that sponsored the study. Their main point: some of his performance comparisons are invalid because 70% of private school students are college bound and pursue academic programs, compared with about a third of public school pupils (the rest are in vocational and commercial courses).

In response to NCES criticism, Coleman re-analyzed his data and agreed that pre-collegiate public school seniors, for example, do at least as well on tests as Catholic school seniors. While public and private college-bound programs may yield comparable results, Coleman insists that the school systems on the whole are not equal, if only because public schools channel so many students into nonacademic programs. In that practice and others, public schools can profit by private school experience. Said Columbia University Education Professor Diane Ravitch: "Coleman suggests a model in which the climate of learning is conditioned by good behavior and effective discipline. There are powerful lessons to be learned by public educators from these papers."

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