I hope there aren't only private schools. Those places produce more assholes than any other place I know. Sad part is people from public schools come out usually are more intelligent.

Intelligence has nothing to do with where you went to school (or even if you went to school).


As far as knowledge however, the opposite is true:


nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2006461.pdf

That's not true at all.  Private schools have been shown to consistantly produce smarter children.

Except for Evangelical Private Schools.

Catholic and Lutherian schools are fine... but Evangelical schools....

Fun study.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2006461.pdf

Then again my public school was in the top 100 of Newsweek every year, so guess that's just anecdotal evidence. I just know I loved scoring higher on every single competition (math/scince/coding mostly) than the people from the local private schools. As did just about everyone who went to those from our school.

Anecdotal evidence ftl.

Although if you look at Georgia Institue of Technology, it's in the top 10 schools in the US for several categories.

Well the problem is you've got a bunch of "poor" schools pulling you down.  Which is the main problem of public schools.  Not that the good schools aren't good.

It's that the bad schools are bad... and there is little incentive to really fix them.  Since nobody really loses their jobs over it... and they have a monopoly.

I mean on every standardized test we took in my public school we scored higher then the district, which scored higher then the state, which scored higher then the country.

The problem was... I could drive 15 minutes to a crappy school, that spent way more money per student then my school yet still didn't have enough desks let alone competent teaching of any sort.

That's true. That's why I beilve that a merit pay system is REALLY needed. Also the upper tiers of pay should definitely be competative with other careers.

@Mafoo

That very study recognizes the largest issue when comparing public versus private schooling: parental involvement.

As a public school teacher myself, I, along with many other colleagues, would tell you that the highest correlation in regards to student achievement and external factors is undoubtedly parental involvement.

I don't think anyone here would doubt that there would likely be a significantly larger amount of parental involvement both at school and at home in the private sector. The family types are simply different. Similarly, in Canada, we have two language streams: English and French Immersion (late and early). The French classes nearly in every school outperform the English classes. Is it because of the teachers themselves? Do French teachers have some inexplicably grand teaching technique that they're holding out on us? A much more likely explanation is that of family involvement and background. And studies in pedagogy support this nearly unanimously.

From your very own source:

"NAEP data are collected as part of an observational
study rather than as a randomized experiment. In
particular, families choose to enroll their children in
private schools, and it is possible that there are systematic
differences between those families and the general
population of families that are not captured by the
student characteristics available for analysis. If such
differences are correlated with student achievement,
then the estimated average difference in achievement
between public school students and private school
students (even after adjusting for observed student
characteristics) will be confounded to some degree with
the unobserved differences between the families of the
children in the two school types. This is usually termed
“selection bias.” Although this study employs a powerful
statistical tool, hierarchical linear models, it cannot
fully compensate for the lack of relevant data. The
implication is that the estimated effects obtained should
not be interpreted in terms of causal relationships."

Edit: Kasz, I posted this before your latest post. No longer directed toward you.

I'm not sure i agree there.  I mean getting a teaching degree takes a lot of time... but it's just not as much effort as comparative degrees.  Neither is the workload.

Teachers just don't work as hard as microbiologists and the like.

Interestingly private school teachers get paid less then public school teachers.

The fact that they have to fight for their career i think helps that.

Gee, thanks.

For secondary school, you need at least two degrees here in Canada. A B.Sc or a B.A as well as a B.Ed.

For the primary/elementary schooling, it's more focused and you need a 5 year B.Ed degree.

I'm really not sure what you need in the US.

About the same amount of education you need to be a microbiolgist.

Most of the jobs that require the same amount of education are really a lot harder.

Unless you disagree that a teachers job isn't as tough as things like microbiology.