Last week, the Center on Education Progress (CEP) released a report it said shows that parents are essentially throwing their money away on private education. Their study claimed that kids in public and private schools did equally well academically, and didn’t have different outcomes in life. The variable, they showed, have more to do with parental income, and involvement and expectations, when it comes to education.

“This certainly will challenge people in the presumptions that private schools

are superior to public schools,” says Jack Jennings, the center’s president, told USA Today.

But wait a minute: CEP is an advocacy group that promotes public schools, and typically opposes any choice initiatives. There are other studies, most notably the National Assessment of Education Progress, which contradict some CEP’s findings. (See Council for Education Reform, www.edreform.com) And even the CEP shows that private school kids tend to do better on the ACTs and SATs. Nor is anyone doubting that parental involvement, and having high expectations, is key for success in school.

But here’s what the study really missed. Yes, many of our public schools have gotten so much better in the last 15 years. But much of that is because private, charter, and home schooling alternatives have mushroomed, and put pressure on the public schools to improve!

Meanwhile, no mention is made in the CEP study of the cost to educate a student in a public vs. private school. There you would see a huge difference in “education bang for the buck.”

But here’s the bottom line: so many of us who have kids in private schools do it for non-academic reasons. I have two kids in a public school which I really like, and two kids in a private Christian school I really like. The latter two, my oldest, are there not because I think the academics are better—but because I wanted a religious education for them, at least in the middle school years.

Parents choose private schools for all sorts of reasons – religious education, smaller classes, a smaller school, maybe a sport or other training their child can’t get at the local public school and so on. It rather shows how out of touch with families some “experts” are when it comes to what we want for our kids. It’s just silly to think, as Jenkins apparently does, that we can dismiss the necessity of private schools because public schools are doing better in academics.

Besides, there’s so much variance state to state and school to school. Blanket statements about which is “better” don’t make sense when it comes to what school is best for your child. That’s why, far from getting rid of or denigrating our private schools, parents should be allowed to have a choice where to send their kids to school.

In the meantime, those (like me) who are sacrificing to send our kids, or some of our kids, to a private school shouldn’t think that we are wasting our money because some “expert” says it is so.

It really does take a parent to make these decisions!

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Betsy Hart is the author of “It Takes a Parent: How the Culture of Pushover Parenting is Hurting our Kids and What to do About It” (Putnam Books, 2005.)

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