School Choice or Best Systems_ What Improves Education_ - Margaret C. Wang [35]
Though these observational studies concern samples of private African-American and Catholic schools, Chubb and Moe’s analysis explains why similar findings are likely when Jewish, Lutheran, Muslim, and other sectarian and nonsectarian private schools are examined.
In summary, private schools exhibit superior academic achievement levels even after controlling for family socioeconomic status and other factors, though whether such factors can be completely controlled for is a subject of continuing controversy. The reason private schools excel is the way they are organized—strong principals with clear academic visions, the freedom to adopt and pursue policies, etc.—and this organizational form in turn is both made possible and strongly encouraged by market competition, producer autonomy, and consumer choice.
Effects of Private Schools on Efficiency
A large scholarly literature compares public and private provision of many services.22 John Hilke’s survey23 of more than 100 independent studies of privatization (moving from public to private provision of a service) showed cost reductions of between 20 percent and 50 percent, even though the quality of services and customer satisfaction were just as high or higher. Private firms, in other words, are up to twice as efficient as government agencies at delivering goods and services.
Proponents of school choice have said that private schools have similar efficiency advantages over public schools and that school choice programs would produce substantial savings for taxpayers or enable higher-quality private schooling to be purchased with current levels of spending. Comparisons of public and private per student spending offer a partial test of this claim. Such comparisons are difficult, however, because public school expenditures are variously calculated in different localities and states, and private school tuition may be subsidized just as some parents and firms privately contribute, though perhaps to a lesser extent, to public schools.
Several studies take such factors into account and still show greater efficiency of private schools. Andrew Coulson’s study of Arizona schools, for example, showed that private schools spend about 66 percent of the amount spent by public schools.24 John Wenders25 compiled similar estimates of private school per pupil spending as a fraction of public school costs. The estimates he reports for several types of schools—Catholic schools with and without parish subsidies, nonsectarian, all private, and all private without Catholic and Lutheran schools—cluster around 55 percent.
For those who want to look at taxpayer rather than total costs, it is reasonable to compare private school tuition with public school expenditures. Table 4-4 compares per pupil spending by public schools with average private school tuition for six cities and the national average.26 Unfortunately, separate figures for public elementary and secondary (or high) schools were unavailable. However, even though secondary schools are substantially more costly than elementary schools, private secondary schools cost 31 percent less than the average for all public schools. Private school tuition in all cities sampled (except the special case of Washington) and the United States as a whole is substantially lower than public school spending.
For an overall estimate of public and private school costs, if we assume that enrollment is constant across grades and that private schools are divided into grades 1-8 and 9-12, the weighted estimate of tuition