School's Out

It seems that private school enrollment is down, with a good many students being removed in the middle of the year as opposed to the end. As the recession continues to groan on middle class parents who placed their kids into private school either because of religious (sometimes), educational (moreso), or "social" (most-often) reasons have had to fall back on public schools to save money.

Cynthia Hogan pulled her daughter and son out of Catholic school when she started feeling the squeeze of a recession that had just begun.

"We just couldn't keep writing the check. It was killing us," said Hogan, who lives in San Francisco. "My husband just got laid off in October. Thank God we are where we are." More

Why do parents choose private school over public? Is there really a difference? Some will even argue that private schools have lower standards so that parents are lulled by better grades, though the education they receive may be of a lower standard than the public schools nearby. Some even argue that the education standards are definitely lower because the certification standards for teachers don't have to be met. But there is research that states that lower-income minority students enrolled in Catholic school perform better than their minority counterparts enrolled in public school.

... the study showed that when compared with their public school peers, African-American and Latino students in Catholic schools had beliefs about success and failure that were more conducive to learning. They were more likely to attribute success to ability and less likely to attribute either success or failure to external factors, such as luck or a difficult test. More

Statistics also show that minority students in U.S. urban Catholic high schools are 42 percent more likely to graduate than minority students who attend neighborhood public schools, and 2.5 times more likely to earn a college degree, Zinsmeister told Catholic News Service. More

So what's the deal?

I, myself, went to private school for a short while, as did my mother and husband, as are my godchildren. We can all say that it had to do with higher educational standards, and I think to some degree that was true, but it had more to do with separation from the common folk or to phrase it more positively, congregation with those of similar values. We all like to congregate with like minded people, and though we don't live in a post-racial society I think for the most part people are more comfortable with others on their class level than their race. Take a trip down to your local lunch spot, be it Applebee's or Bennigan's or what have you. You'll see a mult-culti mix of co-workers who are happy to mingle with each other and I'm sure they'd wouldn't mind having each other as neighbors.

The issue comes into play when the kids of your second cousin on your real Daddy's side sits next to yours in Kindergarten. And then you remember that Sheila never brushes that baby's hair, she doesn't know how to read, and she likes to bite. Now your child can't pay attention in class because Sheila's second child by that aspiring rapper that traveling quartet singer that you can't quite name is bothering her. The teacher tries to speak with Sheila, but you remember that "Sheila ain't doin' nuttin' with dem kids." Suddenly all that work you put into preparing your child for school begins to unravel as she picks up the attention grabbing habits of her distant cousin, and then you have a revelation. Private school. Now your child is in a class with kids whose parents check their homework at night and read them stories. They take field trips and learn about new technologies in the state-of-the-art media center.

Is it the school that is superior or is it the kids? Or rather the parents of the kids? It's a classism debate and I wonder what's going to happen now that these middle class kids are being pumped back into school systems with lower middle class and lower class students. Will their collective ire at the state of public education force the public schools to tighten their reigns and increase discipline and educational standards? I'm not sure.

What are your thoughts?