A new study published by the peer-reviewed Educational Researcher by Professors Richard C. Pianta and Arya Ansari of the University of Virginia tests whether enrollment in private schools affects achievement when demography is controlled. The answer is no.
Here is the abstract:
By tracking longitudinally a sample of American children (n = 1,097), this study examined the extent to which enrollment in private schools between kindergarten and ninth grade was related to students’ academic, social, psychological, and attainment outcomes at age 15. Results from this investigation revealed that in unadjusted models, children with a history of enrollment in private schools performed better on nearly all outcomes assessed in adolescence. However, by simply controlling for the sociodemographic characteristics that selected children and families into these schools, all of the advantages of private school education were eliminated. There was also no evidence to suggest that low-income children or children enrolled in urban schools benefited more from private school enrollment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Poor kids love not having up to date books, infested school buildings, no internet, or certified teachers. Why would anyone want to go to a private school where you can achieve a real education.
According to this, they’d be fools to want that, because going to private school won’t make one bit of difference to them.
Of course, when I think of private school, I think of the ultra-exclusive $50-60k per year places that people like L. Haimson send their kids. “Private schools” is probably a hugely varied category. A lot of “private schools” probably are worse in many ways than public options.
“Why would anyone want to go to a private school where you can achieve a real education?”
I hope that was sarcasm. What is a “real education” — do you know?
Few children that live in poverty, in any country, can achieve a “real education” without support from parents, family, or guardians.
The child must be motivated and free from hunger and health challenges.
Poverty is a monster that gets in the way of that motivation unless the parents work very hard for their child to ensure the child learns to become a life-long learner. That child will learn in just about any educational environment private or public even when the public schools have been neglected due to budget cuts and overcrowded moldy, mildewed classrooms.
But it isn’t easy for the parents/guardians since they live in poverty and probably have jobs that pay poverty wages so they have to work two or three jobs and have little time to spend at home to make sure the child is learning.
Motivated parents/guardians of families that live in poverty don’t send their child to a private school for better teachers but for a cleaner environment — if there is one — since it has been documented that some or even many corporate charters neglect the school’s infrastructure to boost profits for the CEO and/or stockholders.
“The report also found:
https://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
Huh. So the smaller class sizes that you get in private school don’t end up making any difference.
My children attend private school. Their class sizes have always been larger than public school classes. We made the decision to send our children to Catholic school for a religious education, but I have always been painfully aware that in terms of academics, they would have received a stronger education at a public school.
If parents want their children to learn about religion, they should teach them at home unless the parent/guardian wants their child indoctrinated into the religion that runs the religious school.
When you send your children to a Catholic school, they will be indoctrinated into Catholicism and not be exposed to the rest of Christianity’s thousands of options and Bible translations.
I know, because that’s where my parents sent me when I started school at age 5, a Catholic school. A few years later, I transferred to a public school and my knees and knuckles were very happy to escape the raps across the knuckles when I wasn’t perfect and the endless prayers kneeling in a corner of the classroom because, again, I wasn’t a perfect Catholic at age 5, 6 and 7.
Bible study classes would be a better choice outside of regular school hours but Bible Study based on a standard Bible that was not translated by any individual Christian religion.
Decades later, when I was no longer a child and my mother died at 89, she left behind about 30 different translations of the Bibles she had been studying for most of her life to learn all that she could.
https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/which-is-the-best-bible-translation/
You obviously haven’t seen public schools in Utah. There is no way your children had classes of 38-45 students (in core subjects), as I just had as a Utah teacher last year.
Trust me when I say this: teaching a class of 25 or even 30 is WAY easier than teaching classes of 40, and I can actually get to know the kids in the smaller classes and help them more.
The importance of class size may not have shown up in this study, but trust me, it’s important.
Threatened Out West,
That’s shocking you are teaching classes of 38-45 students. How many classes do you have like that? And what subject?
Finally, is this a new thing that Utah has embraced as part of the beloved “education reform”, or have you had those kinds of class sizes for a long time? I’m just wondering when class sizes started to get so large in Utah.
Smaller class sizes are of significant benefit to all students, but don’t have much influence over test scores. Small classes in exclusive and expensive private schools are a big plus, if you can afford tuition. Private schools are of varying quality, but none have much influence over test scores. There are pluses and minuses about even the most exclusive private schools, but raising test scores should not factor into any decisions by parents or lawmakers. Students take tests, not schools. Income level is what’s being measured. A study that shows vouchers (or charters) don’t raise test scores is just mud in the faces of those who claim privatization raises test scores, and in the faces of those who claim testing data matters, not proof that large classes are acceptable in the richest country on earth.
I have to tell you, I don’t know what to make of any of that. In any event, the choice between private and public school is always a choice between a specific private school and a specific public school. So I don’t think there’s any useful guidance from a study that concludes that the choice of “public” versus “private” has no impact on students.
Hmm. I probably should’ve read the study BEFORE I read the comments. It was based on multiple “outcomes”, not test scores. Still, the point stands, though, that income level has a far greater impact on “outcomes” that do school factors like class sizes.
Just disagreeing that class size doesn’t matter. It very much does.
Nope. John Hattie’s metametastudies seem to show that size doesn’t matter much. Oh, and Gates has also found not much effect there either, if you believe them.
No, I don’t believe them.
The What Works Clearinghouse of the US Dept of Ed has found that reduced class size is one of the few interventions that does work.
Gates has yet to produce a single successful education reform, so I wouldn’t rely on him for verification of anything to do with education.
These results are not surprising since most attendees of private schools come from higher socioeconomic groups than similar public school students. Most private schools have no secret sauce or miracles to share with the rest of us, other perhaps smaller classes. It is no secret that affluent students will generally perform better than poor students. Where’s the challenge in this? It is much more interesting and challenging to find diamonds in the rough and polish them. Then, watch them shine.
All private schools are not equal which is why cheap vouchers to schools of questionable academics generally result in students performing worse than those in a comparable public school. The quality of academics makes a difference. Public schools outperform most cheap charters, and they are far more efficiently operated by professionals and authentic educators.
Yes the results are consistent with a massive body of evidence from twin studies showing that shared environment is of little importance in academic achievement or much of anything else. Shared environment includes the type and quality of schools attended.
There was no elaborated definition for private schools or for public schools. I looked at the data set used for this study. It is amazing and even more amazing that it has not been obliterated by the Trumpsters (at least not yet). It is a work product of the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health. Another example is this 228-page report–from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. It describes 40 indicators of child well-being based on statistics from federal researchers. This, the 20th report from the Forum (2017), presents key indicators of children’s well-being in seven domains: family and social environment, economic circumstances, health care, physical environment and safety, behavior, education and health.
You can read the full report at http://www.childstats.gov/pubs/.
We must remember, also, that wealthier schools where wealthier, mostly dominant culture kids perform better on standardized testing are schools NOT endlessly attacked with cuts to music, art, recess and gym, repeatedly rearranged and suddenly dismissed teachers, abruptly forced reform ‘programs’ and non-creative stay-on-the-right-page canned curricula.
Professor Paul Greyson’s research. When controlled for SES, public schools actually superior to private schools.
Christopher Lubienski’s research: public schools are better than private schools when SES is controlled.
By “performance” do we mean test scores?
In any case, last year we had one daughter in private (progressive) school and one in public school (and the high school kid in public school as well because there are no private progressive high schools in our area anywhere near our price range). I can’t say which of the littles got a better education – I think there was good and bad about both places.
But I’ll tell you why the public school kid is returning to private school. In her first week of school she got a detention because even though she had done her homework, her grandparents didn’t know they had to sign off on it, so it was considered not done. Kids can also get detentions for being tardy (even if their parents bring them to school), being out of uniform (including not having the tongue of your shoe inside your pant leg) and just about every behavioral infraction imaginable. But once my daughter got to be a “good kid” she was “rewarded” by getting to be a “teacher’s helper” which meant that at recess time she was responsible for watching the kids who were on detention.
Speaking of recess, it was 15 minutes a day, minus the time it takes to get out there in the first place and then get lined up at the end. Recess follows a fifteen minute lunch, again minus the time it takes to get there and get through the lunch line.
If public schools are going to follow the same abusive “no excuses” policies as charter schools, don’t be surprised that people seek out private schools. It’s really a shame too because my daughter’s actual teacher was a wonderful woman with a great understanding – and enjoyment – of young children. But her hands were tied by the adminimals. And good luck getting ahold of said adminimals to discuss such concerns. Democratic control of public schools? Not in my neighborhood!
I’m curious—is the public school child returning to a non-progressive private that is in your price range, or did you figure out a way to afford the progressive private?
Dienne77, The study is not limited to test scores. It is about childcare beginning at two weeks, preschool if any, and multiple measures of family and child wellbeing, with academic achievement only one of many considerations as children enter school.
I am surprised to find an ally in you, Dienne. Same here: 4- minute breaks not enough even for a visit to a restroom, metal furniture bolted to the floor like in prison, fenced off perimeter like in prison, U-shaped small inner yard like in prison. Basically, it is a prison.
BA, if you are talking about a public school, then this is exactly why I believe the lies of Eva Moskowitz do such damage to so many children. And not just the many children who she demands be publicly humiliated and attacked if they are poor enough to let her get away with it. (Coward that she is, Moskowitz hasn’t dared publicly attack any middle class or affluent parents or their children and the fact she didn’t demonize the staff member who videotaped her model teacher showing the model Success Academy tactics that are used to get rid of low-income students who don’t make the grade makes me wonder if that staff member was also someone who she knew she couldn’t get away with demonizing the way she demonizes the vulnerable at-risk kids she wants out of her charters.)
Moskowitz has been given tens of millions (probably hundreds of millions by now) to run no excuses charters like this. She gets rid of low scoring students and has nearly 100% passing rates.
And THEN Moskowitz’ right wing billionaire-subsidized public relations arm — which includes the now defunct Families for Excellent Schools and other pro-charter organizations run by people who do her bidding — promote her no excuses charters as guaranteeing 100% success and say that her claims that she will take any child and turn them into a high performing scholar with barely trained teachers are absolutely true.
This big lie has pervaded America. And as Moskowitz grows — but only in NYC where she can have 10,000 students and have it be less than 1% of the students in the school system — her PR arm keeps promoting this disgusting lie.
And so public schools treat children the way Eva Moskowitz tells them works except that they can’t ruthlessly shed the low performing ones. So they end up turning off everyone because without doing what Moskowitz also does — shedding huge number of kids and flunking huge numbers of students — they can’t match her results.
If you want to know why some public schools act like this, just look to the woman who made it her personal mission to have Betsy DeVos as Secretary of State who is backed by the right wing PR machine that says that treating children like that works.
Eva Moskowitz says that this is how you treat kids — especially the kids who are at-risk. Moskowitz claims it turns them all into scholars. And if you believe Moskowitz when she says that Betsy DeVos is a terrific choice for Secretary of Education, you will believe Moskowitz when she says that she only suspends violent 5 year olds but she just gets so many. And you will believe her when she says that this no excuses curriculum will turn them all into high performing scholars.
And why wouldn’t you believe the woman who claims Betsy DeVios is a terrific choice? If the reform movement didn’t have this dishonest CEO’s schools to point to as “proof” that treating children this way works, far fewer public schools would feel pressure to copy those “best practices” that most of us find to be so awful.
Off topic, but I hope (but sadly do not expect) that people will stop saying that there’s “no evidence” that “Russia” interfered in the 2016 election. We will never know what impact Russia had on the election. And Mueller may not (likely won’t, IMO) unearth evidence of “collusion.” But we need to stop denying that Russia was actively working to interfere in the 2016 election.
Click to access full.pdf
(And yes, an indictment is not “evidence” of the type that juries weigh. But if you think the Justice Department is just making all of this up, and has no evidence to back these allegations, you are living on another planet.)
FLERP,
I listened to the Rod Rosenstein press conference about the indictment. This is very serious.
It should–but probably won’t–stop the blathering about a “witch hunt.”
Trump has said he will “ask” Putin to stop. Schumer has called on him to cancel the summit. Of course, he won’t. He will politely ask Putin if he did it, and Putin will say no, then Trump will ask how they can be best friends and whether he did sufficient damage to NATO.
So the DNC/DCCC (including the chairman!) fell prey to phishing? My, how embarrassing! My employer has security protections to prevent such things, not to mention frequent employee education (and penalties) regarding recognizing and dealing with such scams. Who doesn’t know better than to click on a link in an email from “Google” saying you have to change your password? If this is how the Russians “hacked” the DNC, they had it coming.
Are DNC/DCCC staffers also hoping for a windfall from a Nigerian prince?
C’mon, Dienne, you have been the most persistent commenter saying that there was no Russian hacking. Better to remain silent.
If you think this is laughable, then you are laughing away our democracy and accepting the Russian hacking as a joke. It is no joke.
Will this be Glenn Greenwald’s response too?
First of all, as FLERP! admits, an indictment is not a conviction.
Second, as I posted in the thread above, what Glenn will say is that this is still not evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, which is the subject of the Mueller investigation.
Third, as I’ve said all along, even if the Russians hacked the emails, no one has claimed that they forged them. It’s the content of the emails that is damaging, not the provenance. It’s the same as with Chelsea Manning. We can argue whether or not the “Collateral Murder” video should have been released, but none of that changes how appalling the video itself is. The DNC were caught with their thumb on the scale in favor of Hillary. Whether that was revealed to us by a disgruntled DNC staffer who leaked the emails or Russians who hacked them, Bernie supporters have every right to be upset at how the primaries were handled. If they then chose not to vote for HRC because of it, well, too darn bad. The DNC does not own the votes of all left-leaning citizens.
No evidence!!! Haha.
More than having the right to be upset at the way the primaries were handled by the DNC. we should expect that more be done to make sure that in 2020 and 2024, the Democratic candidate is chosen by popular vote instead of by the establishment having the ability to pull strings and having oversized superdelegate authority. We need real reform. Ocasio is the beginning.
“Who doesn’t know better than to click on a link in an email from “Google” saying you have to change your password?”
At this point, pretty much everybody but the little old lady down the street. Two-three years ago, that wasn’t always the case. Since then, I’m sure hacking has continued to get more sophisticated. In any case the hackers were sophisticated enough to leak information when it would do the most damage, especially when context was removed. We saw the attempts to sacrifice the FBI agent yesterday by playing fast and loose with facts and their context.
If you are waiting for a tape showing Trump accepting help from a Russian general, it ain’t gonna happen. That’s not how it works. My mother finally caught my red crayon happy, little sister when she learned to write her name (backwards). She never saw her scribble on the wall, but after awhile the circumstantial evidence was just too great not to “indict.” Mueller is building a strong circumstantial case, which is why it is taking so long. Trump may very well come out “smelling clean,” so to speak, (if that is possible) but the evidence that the Russians have been “messing” with our election process is pretty damning, and it is clear they weren’t trying to help Hillary.
I don’t think you are doing the progressives any favor by continually undermining those who will most likely be their allies at least on some issues if not always on tactics or timetables. Bernie Sanders knew that. Ocasio Cortez seems to as well.
Hackers can also get to you through your friends and family. If they hacked a friend or family members and you open an e-mail from them, then the virus spreads.
How many people refuse to open an e-mail from their spouse, a close friend or one of their children?
There are many ways to invade another person’s computer and e-mail files.
“If this is how the Russians “hacked” the DNC, they had it coming.”
“I guess they had it coming???” Boy are those words something I have certainly heard by people who like to blame the victim. “She had it coming. She didn’t protect herself enough and she had it coming.”
Just this week I read about yet another major data breach — on-line customers at Macy’s and Bloomingdales.
Wired Magazine tracked some hacks this very year! Including major universities.
I guess they all “had it coming”.
“The DNC were caught with their thumb on the scale in favor of Hillary.”
I noticed that the hacked e-mails from the DNC were just like the texts between Pete Strzok and his mistress about Trump. They said some nasty things about Trump. But there was never any evidence that any ACTIONS taken by Strzok were specifically designed to undermine the Trump campaign and make sure he lost.
In fact, the facts proved that just the opposite happened. An Inspector General who tried very hard to please Trump interviewed everyone and could not find any evidence whatsoever that Strzok’s actions were anything but proper. Strzok made sure to keep all the evidence of the Russian hacking and the Trump campaign quiet even when Trump himself lied through his teeth about it during the campaign.
If anything, the FBI went overboard to be fair to Trump.
The hacked e-mails from the DNC were very similar. Some people ranting about Bernie that people with the same interest in facts as the House Republicans claimed was clear and convincing evidence that the entire campaign was a sham.
But when you looked at the evidence — what did the DNC actually DO and not what did some people rant about? — there was almost nothing. No dirty tricks. No lies. The ridiculous suggestions by some low-level staffers were never done. The supposed inside information that the Clinton campaign got (“OMG someone told the campaign that they’d ask about water in Flint”) never actually got asked. (Instead it was an obscure question about water filtration systems that -mysteriously – only Bernie seemed to have a lot of knowledge about.)
Or this is my very favorite: “They scheduled the debates against NFL football”! Like we are living in 1980 and there is only one chance to see a debate and then the footage is never available again. That is the “corruption”. Debates against football.
The Russians hacked what was probably tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of e-mails, and the very worst they found were ridiculous suggestions that never once led to any specific actions taken.
I noticed that the Republicans – when they grilled Strzok — ignored all the texts where he insulted other candidates, too. You would think that Strzok did nothing all day for an entire year except talk about how he was going to “get” Trump based on what the lying Republicans grilled him on yesterday. The corrupt Republicans took a very few of Strzok’s worst texts — written after Trump attacked the grieving parents of a fallen American soldier — and claimed that was all the evidence they needed to know that Strzok was corrupt and evil despite not being able to find a single specific action Strzok took that proved how evil he was except for that text.
And I see that with the people who are still convinced that there were no e-mails that said nasty things about Hillary Clinton among all those hacked DNC e-mails. Does anyone really believed that throughout the DNC no staffer ever said nasty things about Hillary in an e-mail ever? Of course we didn’t see those because the point was to prove a narrative through innuendo that you could not prove through any actual actions. Someone ranting in an e-mail is NOT evidence of a crime when that person never actually did anything wrong.
Just like the nasty Republicans took only the very worst texts of Strzok and ignored all the texts that proved he wasn’t in the tank for the Clinton campaign and ignored the fact that despite the claims the lying Republicans make about Strzok’s corruption, he took no action that hurt Trump! Ever.
It is very similar. The DNC had rules that they had always had. It is a very good thing that it looks like they will get rid of super delegates. But they didn’t invent the idea of super delegates in 2016 for the sole reason to help Clinton. They did not “put their hand on the scale”. They ran the primary the exact same way they had run the primary when Obama ran. No one could ever point to a single practice by the DNC that was suddenly invented in 2016 that was not used in 2008. Just like the Republicans could not point to one action committed by Strzok that was not proper and typical for an investigation.
And in both cases, there was plenty of evidence that if anything, people put their personal opinions aside even when they knew it might not lead to the result they wanted. It’s a shame that there are still some right wing Republicans and left wing Bernie supporters who will always be convinced of real corruption and wrongdoing by Strzok and the DNC based only on someone’s e-mail or text rant and not on any actions.
I don’t see this research as being anything for choice opponents to crow about.
If you’re a traditional public school advocate who puts your OWN kid in a private school while insisting that EVERYONE ELSE’S KID goes to her zoned public school, no exceptions, and you justify this position by saying that you’re just fighting for public school kids to have the same conditions as kids in private schools, well, you just lost your excuse. There’s no difference at all in outcomes, so you must confidently advocate for public schools with your own children enrolled in them.
Choice opponents frequently claim that the widespread expansion or adoption of voucher programs would be doomed to failure because the caliber of private schooling that would become available to disadvantaged children will necessarily be substandard. This research, which involved a heterogeneous group of private schools, fully eliminates that concern. There are many reasons why a parent who cannot otherwise afford it would want to have their child attend a private school—safety, type of curriculum, location, etc. If a private school can educate a child for a fraction of the cost of the district (see, for example, parochial schools in NYC), then why wouldn’t taxpayers support vouchers if there is no discernible difference in outcomes?
Everyone has an obligation to support and pay for public schools. There is no obligation to attend them. If you enroll in a private or religious school, it is your own obligation to pay for it, not the public’s.
Don’t forget about the funding drain and inequality caused by having two systems competing for funding, winners and losers. Many people erroneously take the “what’s best for me” instead of the “what’s best for my neighbor and me together” approach. And that’s not even mentioning fiscal and educational transparency and accountability regarding public funding.
Hello, I read of such a study thirty years ago. Wasn’t there a Senator who pushed for social change because the only variable than meant a damn in education was the number of parents at home (parent-child ratio). Didn’t his study eliminate the “advantage” of a private education (literal, not the political advantage gotten from prejudiced employers)?
Class size matters, period.
And at the same time nearly all public and private schools in high demand are packed to the gills right now, I believe.
Overall, education is as multifaceted as the children and adults it serves. No easy panaceas, no simple shortcuts. All facets matter. The socioeconomic one though can come with powerful potential derailments and downward spirals, despite the extraordinary resilience of so many. Hunger, loss of a parent, fear and bad influences can have devastating effects that can lead to other problems.
All high-demand private schools have high class sizes?
Maybe bigger than they’d like. Nearly all. Maybe. Anybody have stats on it? Private, so not so easy to gather.
In my NYC-centric mind, there’s just one type of private school. The Dalton, Choate, Collegiate, etc. And out of state, the Exeter, Andover, St. Paul’s, etc. I don’t think they’re struggling with high class sizes. But these are for the super-duper elite, not regular folks like you and me.
12-15 per class
Yeah, think percentages here. If they serve only the top 1% or less, they probably represent something like 1 or 2% of private schools. 98% would be nearly all private schools. I wonder what their class sizes are like and what their ideal sizes are — what their expectations have been for size.
What sizes they have been prepared to accommodate.
But those super duper elite schools with very small class sizes still have quite a large number of parents hiring tutors to help their kids. Can you imagine how much worse those students would perform if they didn’t have private tutors? It would be interesting to factor that into student performance.
There are numerous drawbacks to private schools, one is attracting the brightest and best teachers, especially in upper level math and science, at a substandard pay. If they are lucky, a student gets a certified retired teacher from the public schools (you know, those “doddering”idiots that those young inexperienced teachers with fresh ideas are supposed to surpass in skill), if not, I’d suggest a tutor prior to starting college.
Private schools do control the people your child is exposed to, weeding out the “riff raff” whether by religion or color or socioeconomic status. Hey, you are paying for it so you get to choose.
The problem is when charter schools take up the mantle of private schools allowing some parents to believe their child is getting an elite education since the environment here is controlled. Better yet, it’s all on the public dime. Look, feel proud, you got yours at the expense of those lesser fools forced to attend those schools which have rigid guidelines to follow. (But Surprise – that “dreg” of a public school is a better choice if academics are your chief concern. Then again, your goal might be somewhat different than mine.)
I know a former teacher that worked in a private school for about a dozen years. She left to open her own business, a health food restaurant, and her business, after another dozen years or so seems to be doing okay. She told me she’d never return to teaching. Too much demand on her energy and hours, too much stress, and not enough pay.
I eat there often. Her little lunch spot is a place to gather and talk with her friendly employees and other customers. It is a feel-good place.
When I was a boy, a wonderful private school let me attend for practically nothing. It was a great experience filled with investigation and discussion of poetry and literature. I had to forgo a wonderful public school in our community, and I count myself lucky to teach in the descendant of that school.
There were many things I learned in my private school experience that would have evaded me at the community school. Likewise, I sacrificed some important things I never realized until later. I think I was a better fit for the private school. What I got there from its emphasis on humanities could not be duplicated, and I love my alma mater. The point is that generalizations are usually wrong.
This is why I steer clear of the phrase “a good school.” Schools of all types are good for some and not for others. This is why I oppose the testing regimen that seeks to define the public institutions out of existence. These test impose narrow definition to an impossible situation. The relationship between a student and the school defines the experience.
This is not, as some might suppose, a polemic for choice. Note above that I admit that I might have gotten important lessons at my public institution. The argument I am making is that you never know the future, so your judgement is clouded. Thus we must support a public system that is capable of finding a place in the school community for a maximum number of students. Private schools have a place too, and the beneficence of those institutions toward people who are poor, like I was, should not be disdained. Public taxes, however, should never be used to send students to private schools. That might corrupt both traditions.
Roy,
There are indeed wonderful private and religious schools. The issue of our present era is who should pay for them. Since neither the federal nor state governments are willing to increase spending for School Choice, every dollar for charters and vouchers is taken away from public schools.
Thanks. Diane. You summarized my point. I would add that the problem with school choice as policy is that the subtle reasons for parent’s choosing are not always really good ones. Success or failure of a choice is, like all educational outcomes, indeterminate for years, even generations. Public money for private choices sounds like bad policy to me.