Major Flaws Found in Harvard Report’s Claim that

Private Schools Outperform Public Schools

August 30, 2006

For Immediate Release

Contact:

Teri Battaglieri, Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice

(517) 203-2940 (e-mail) greatlakescenter@greatlakescenter.org

Christopher Lubienski, University of Illinois, (217) 3334382 (e-mail) club@uiuc.edu

EAST LANSING, Mich. –A new report from Harvard’s Program for Education Policy and Governance (PEPG), “On the Public-Private School Achievement Debate,” claims that private schools outperform public schools. In a Think Twice review of this report, authors Christopher Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski of University of Illinois found that the evidence and claims in the PEPG report are critically flawed.

The PEPG report challenges the findings of two federally-funded studies, one authored by the Lubienskis, which found that public school students perform at least as well as those in private schools once demographic differences in student populations were considered.

The PEPG study resulted in a different conclusion than the two federally funded reports by using “alternate models” for its analyses. According to the Lubienskis’ review, the PEPG researchers did not control for key student demographic data. Further, the student-reported data on which the PEPG analysis is based creates problems because students do not provide key information. To arrive at their conclusion, the PEPG researchers had to exclude every socioeconomic indicator used in the federally-funded studies, including free/reduced lunch, Title I eligibility, and resources at home (e.g. books, computers). They also deleted a key measure of participation in special education.

Because private schools, on average, enroll fewer disadvantaged students, the failure to control for the characteristics of those students creates a bias in favor of private schools. “As the PEPG authors presented (statistical) models with fewer and fewer demographic controls, they moved closer and closer to a simple comparison of unaltered test scores,” according to the review, “thereby making the achievement of private school students appear to increase to the point where it is higher than that of public school students.” 

Find the Lubienskis’ review and a link to the Harvard PEPG report at: www.greatlakescenter.org

The Think Twice project provides the public, policy makers and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank publications. It is a collaboration of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University and the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder and is funded by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.