America’s Broken Education System

By Ricky Castillo

Would you prefer the crumbling public school down the block or the elite and comfortable private school? There’s an urge to imagine the two this way and assume that the private school will produce a better human being and student. But is this expectation a reality in America’s education system? Students at LREI voiced how heavily their parents influenced their decision in choosing private school, often having a perceived notion that private schools offer a higher education. These parents aren’t entirely wrong when it comes to a district to district type of thing. In the 1960s, James Coleman discovered that private schools across that nation exhibit, on average, higher levels of academic outcomes than public schools. This fact hasn’t been challenged since the 1960s and socioeconomic status wasn’t taken in account. We know that private schools tend to serve, on average, more affluent families — families that offer many advantages associated with school success. So the question then becomes: Is the high achievement evident in private schools a reflection of better education or simply the more advantaged family backgrounds of the students who attend the schools?

 

The United States has placed good faith in the idea of a public school system, and yet, Americans and politicians are deeply concerned over the institutions that we built in order to provide the right to education to all people. For much of America’s history, people have expressed a widespread belief that public schools are failing its students. Motivated parents pull their children out of poorer schools, with the students left behind sinking further in a declining academic environment. Did these wealthier, whiter, and more ambitious families use school choice to avoid sending their children to schools attended by minority and economically disadvantaged children? Students at LREI voiced not knowing the reasoning behind them attending a private institution, because in reality they had no choice, placed in private schools as young as 3 years old. 

 

A desperate parent whose child attended a private school at a young age voiced, “I feared that I’d cheated our son of a slot by not rising until the selfish hour of 5:30 in the morning. And I worried that we were all bound together in a mad, heroic project that we could neither escape nor understand, driven by supreme devotion to our own child’s future. All for a nursery school called Huggs.”  Parents voice that their top priority is the best future for their child, but are private schools going to provide that? Christopher and Sarah Lubienski attempt to answer this question in their book called, “The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools”. 

 

Lubienski says, “Common wisdom and common sense tell us that private schools are more effective than their public school counterparts. Private schools appear to produce more academically qualified students who seem to have a pipeline into better colleges and go on to more prestigious and profitable careers. The reality is that the differences in test scores are primarily due to inherent differences in the student populations served by these different sectors. When family income level is controlled public schools outperform private ones in math achievement” (61). Lubienski not only touches on this idea of effectiveness between the two school sectors but hints that the entire school system is flawed. As leaders of the XQ project put it, we need to “scrap the blueprint and revolutionize this dangerously broken system.” This, they explain, is the sad truth. At some point in history, the educational system simply stopped working. It aged, declined, and broke. That begs the question, are these parents at fault? Did an already broken system influence the establishment of private and charter schools attempting to pull students out of an impoverished public school system? 

Sources:

Public schools: Do they outperform private ones? – CSMonitor.com

Private school vs public school – how do the students | TED-Ed

Public schools actually outperform private schools, and with less money

Despite what DeVos wants you to believe, research shows public schools outperform private schools – Education Votes

Why Wealthy Parents Are Increasingly Choosing Public Over Private Schools

Parents in N.Y.C. Public Schools Now Face This Agonizing Choice – The New York Times

Public or Private School in NYC? It’s Not Just About Money | MommyPoppins – Things to do in New York City with Kids

How are America’s public schools really doing? – The Washington Post

Responses from LREI students 

One comment on “America’s Broken Education System
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