From: bolden@beta.math.unc.edu (Jeffrey Bolden)
Subject: Re: The New Education President
Organization: University of North Carolina
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 18:13:29 GMT

In article <1ihlitINN591@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
>In article <1993Jan7.152850.26792@cbnewsk.cb.att.com> jrmo@volta.att.com (J.R.Moore) writes:
>>Well, since you asked, a good private school in my area charges about $4000.
>>A crappy public school gets $7500.  Yeah, yeah, special ed kids, I know. 
>
>No, you don't know.  You can't blame the difference in price or results on
>simply special ed kids: you must place it where it belongs-- on the selection
>process which allows private schools to choose the most economically educable
>students.  Because the teacher's job is so much easier with these students,
>teachers are willing to accept lower salaries, and teachers with less
>experience can still get results.  Unfortunately, this strategem will not
>scale up to deal economically with the rest of the distribution of students.
>
>>A parochial school gets about $1300 for elementary and $2000 for
>>high school.  In Philadelphia, many non-Catholics are willing to pay
>>such a reasonable price because the quality is there.
>
>Catholic schools are sometimes good (they have always been inferior in the
>school district I grew up in.)  However, they too are subsidized: by their
>parishioners, who certainly wouldn't scale up their subsidies to deal with
>a huge influx of former public school kids.
>
>>It's the idea that people feel that it someone else's duty to provide their
>>kids with a quality education that keeps them down.  Get the parents paying
>>each month and I'll bet you'll start seeing some involved parents out there.
>
>We have the model of all those parents non-involvement with private schools
>already.  Please cite some real figures for parental involvement in private
>and public schools.  Anecdotes and pie-in-the-sky claims like yours are cheap.
>There are some private and public schools with high parental involvement.
>Back your bet with information.
>
>Mike Huben
>
>"One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls
>and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with
>each other than with the players.  Suddenly one loses all interest in who will
>be champion."  Anatol Rapoport in "Strategy and Conscience" 1964.

Mike -
	I can't give much more than an anecdote, but in my opinion it is
not unrepressentative.  The private school I graduated from, worked to
have 10% of the student body be disadvanteged (they didn't pay anything
for tuition, books, and received a free breakfast and lunch).  While the
droppout rate was higher for these students, than the other tuition paying
students, of the ones who graduated they consistantly outperformed their
more advantaged peers.  For example the three who were left went to:  Harvard,
U of Penn., and some well recognized Liberal arts school (Vasser,
Trinity...  I can't remember which).
	This results from this class were not atypical, as no one
commented on them at all.  Finally I should note that I never saw any of
the poor kids in any of K-12 engage in violence.  They were much more
concerned and patriotic towards the school than there peers.  So basically
its a poor school environment, not a group of "bad" kids that leads the
problems.
	
	As another anectdote, look at military academies.  I would bet
that 75% of their student body is there due to being troubled students in
the public schools.  And they keep there operating costs just a little
higher than the private schools and yet manage to provide room and board
in addition to education.

--JMB


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