Shh, don't tell anyone

According to a recent study commissioned by the Department of Education, children in public schools score virtually the same as their private school counterparts, once socioeconomic factors are taken into account. My favorite part of the New York Times article about the study is this:

"Its release, on a summer Friday, was made with without a news conference or comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings."

The Bush administration is famous for burying bad or controversial news on Fridays. Revisions to the Clean Air act and other environmental changes frequently have been announced late Friday on three-day weekends. Apparently the administration thinks that good public schools are shameful.

UPDATE: blogger/pundit Matthew Yglesias sees things in a different light:

"Once you control for demographic factors, nothing seems to make a dramatic
difference. The trouble here, obviously, is that it would be really fantastic to implement some education reforms of some sort that would dramatically improve poor and minority students' performance. But there don't seem to be any really great solutions in the offing. That, in turn, highlights the vital importance of trying to directly tackle poverty and inequality rather than hoping that the school system -- even an improved version of it -- can redress inequities that arise elsewhere in the social and economic system."

While I think he's right that we can't expect education to magically level social opportunities, or create a pure meritocracy (assuming that is desirable), he's being too pessimistic here. He overlooks the huge range within the larger categories of 'public' and 'private' schools. Some schools really are better than others--even when you consider socioeconomic differences--due to capable administration, devoted faculty, etc. Someone once said of the great Alabama football coach Bear Bryant that "he could take his [players] and beat yours, and then take yours and beat his." There are some Bryant-esque schools out there, ones we should emulate; the lesson from this study is that private schools per se are no more likely to be great in this regard than their public counterparts.