Public Education is Better for Society than Private Education

In response to Con's arguments: "You have to understand the reasons parents send their kids to private schools. A huge amount of the reason is because of religion." There are Roman Catholic Public Schools. "Private schools do not always promote different social classes" So Con is acknowledging that private school do promote social classes. My opponent"s source cites that there are 13% of people whose income are over $750 000 who attend private schools. This statistic could actually argue in my case, as the present inequality in America stems from the division between the wealthiest few percent with the rest. There are 117 million households in the USA - about 30% are households have children - so there are around 35 million households with children in the USA. 8.8 million (according to Con"s statistics) of 35 million households have income over $750 000, and only 13% of those attend private schools. Given that America"s private schools are some of the most expensive ones in the world, there seems to be a strong correlation between the percentage of the wealthiest Americans and the percentage of students attending private schools. "Private schools generate a far better learning experience" Con"s statistics have confounding factors present. In a determined society, richer students tend to do better than poorer students. Con"s source is also biased, as it is from the Council for American Private Education, which can present misguided information. For instance, a paper from the Ohio State University Research Foundation wrote that students from higher income families are the ones mosts likely to use SAT preparation tools such as classes and tutors, and these students average scores far higher on their SAT tests compared with those who didn"t take the classes. Thus it cannot be argued that students do better on the SAT are better academically than those who do not. Learning through SAT prep tools is not a good way to learn, as it promotes short retention spans, and some of the strategies used on the SAT is not applicable to one"s future endeavours. Additionally, marks of private schools are inflated. Is it a good system if a school"s potential to earn money is positively correlated to the marks their students receive? In fact, once public and private school students are put into the same environment, public school students often do better than private school students. The International Journal of Science Education looked at the academic performance of more than 4,500 students in a first-year physics class at the University of British Columbia between 2002 and 2006. They found that those who graduated from public schools in the Metro Vancouver area outperformed their peers arriving from private schools. Again, I will reiterate that generally, the pay and welfare many public school teachers receive is greater than private school teachers, which gives teachers incentives to move towards public schools. And while public schools have certain minimum requirements for teachers (certificates and degrees), private school teacher may not need those requirements. In fact, in most of the Canadian provinces and territories, independent schools are not even required to hire certified teachers. This is rampant in the United States as well. "80.5% of parents who send their kids to private schools think that the smaller class size is important (3), so I'd say that aspect gives flexibility as well." This is obviously the case, but is it better for the public for everybody in the public to be a part of a smaller class? Of course not. There would be not enough teachers. It wouldn"t be practical. Con cannot argue that private schools would be better for the "public" because it has smaller class sizes, simply because it wouldn"t have a big enough impact. Even if it did, there are magnet schools. http://www.prb.org... http://researchnews.osu.edu... http://712educators.about.com... http://www.theglobeandmail.com... http://www.theglobeandmail.com... http://www.moneysense.ca...