Private versus Public Education

I chose to write about Private versus Public education for an essay in my Foundations of Education course. After researching and writing this paper I began to really think about my own feelings about private versus public education. I spent my entire life in the public education sphere. My brother went to private school for one year because he constantly got in trouble so my parents thought private school would straighten him out. The only other private school experience I have been exposed to are all my cousins on my mother's side attend private Catholic schools. I have always been under the assumption that students who attended private school do much better in school and after school than students in public schools. Much of the research I have found has not supported this and in some cases has provided evidence that supports public over private. Many parents choose to put their children in private schools because they have more control of the goals of their child's education, the environment they are exposed to, the strength of the education, and the emphasis put on post secondary education. Research by Sassenrath, et al. found that the mean scores between private and public schools in the mathematics and science arena aren't significantly different, indicating that private education may not be much stronger in those subjects. I was very surprised by the research that i found that supported this notion that private schools may not be much better cognitively than public schools. Private schools do tend to have better discipline and less behavior problems and many parents choose to send their children their to expose them to a more positive environment. There are so many pros and cons to each side it makes it hard for a parent to choose...I am not sure where I would feel most comfortable putting my child, but I do know that the cost of private school education will have a large impact on that decision.