Really?

During the Kentucky Tonight February 12, 2024 broadcast on school choice, Brigitte Blom, president and CEO of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, who is not a fan of parental school choice, claimed that:

“There is no research to date when it comes to private school choice that shows that is a better strategy with taxpayer dollars.”

Is that really so? Well, not exactly.

In general, it’s difficult to get student performance data from private schools. Private schools generally are not required to provide such information and many choose not to do so. Many private schools decline to participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), for one example.

In addition, much of the reported information in favor of school choice comes from organizations that support school choice. Right or wrong, folks like Blom charge there is a bias in such reporting.

Never the less, there are some exceptions to Blom’s blanket assertion.

Parents favor schools of choice

It’s been well reported that surveys of parents show they like school choice. While most of those surveys have been sponsored by organizations favoring choice, that’s not always the case.

For example, the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) issued a report about parents and school choice titled “School Choice in the United States: 2019.” The NCES’ report included this graphic that shows parents’ levels of satisfaction with the schools their children were attending. It’s clear parents with private school students were notably more satisfied with their school across the board.

Certainly, parent satisfaction in the areas NCES surveyed provides an important, researched ‘plus’ for school choice.

Aside from notably higher parent satisfaction with private schools, there also is some information about how academic performance in some private schools compares to public schools. This comes from the federally-conducted National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

It turns out the Catholic private school system participates in the NAEP in sufficient numbers that nationwide score estimates of reasonable accuracy are available for this private school system.

So, how do the students in Catholic schools stack up against their public school counterparts? The tables below tell that tale.

Consider the Grade 4 NAEP Reading data in the top-most table. In every case, for white, Black and Hispanic students, Catholic schools outperform.

For example, whites in the Catholic system score 9 NAEP Scale Score points higher than whites in the nation’s public school system. There’s a rule of thumb (see here and here for some examples) that a difference in NAEP Scale Scores of 10 points is about a year of extra learning, so a difference of 9 NAEP Scale Score points is a notable difference.

But the differences get really large when we look at Black and Hispanic scores for NAEP Grade 4 Reading. Black students in Catholic schools outperform their racial peers in the public school system by a whopping 24 points. Hispanics do nearly as well with a 21-point advantage going to the Catholic Hispanic students.

All of those score differences are statistically significant, by the way. In fact, looking at all the score differences shown in all four tables, except for the Black Grade 4 Math difference, all the differences between Catholic and public school scores are statistically significant, as well.

The achievement gap picture looks much better in the Catholic system, as well. White minus Black and White minus Hispanic NAEP Grade 4 Reading achievement gaps are half the size of those in public schools.

There are clear advantages to Catholic students in the other three tables, too.

So, in the only case I am aware of where any notable private school education performance data is available, the advantage of the schools of choice is clear.

Better parent satisfaction and higher performance – this information is something every voter needs to consider when deciding if every student in Kentucky, regardless of family income, should be able to access schools of choice.