Private Vs. Public Schools, Part 1: The Problem with the Fraser Institute

The Fraser Institute is Not Objective

Some of my friends have looked at the annual rankings of BC Schools, the "Report Cards" issued by the Fraser Institute and used them as guidelines for choosing elementary schools for their children.

What exactly *is* the Fraser Institute?

The problem is, the Fraser Institute is not objective or non-partisan. The Fraser Instititute has as its focus the increased privatization of government services. Its motto is "A Free and Prosperous World Through Choice, Markets and Responsibility." In the debate of public versus private schools, you want objective data.

It claims to be non-partisan and independent, but this is highly doubtful.  After my research, I believe that it promotes privatization and the free market.  It is anti NDP, anti Liberal.  It is against public education and promotes private schools.

Why the heck do parents follow it blindly, and why hasn't the media questioned the objectivity of the Fraser Institute?

Where does it get its money?  Well, who knows, as the Institute stopped disclosing its sources of funding since the 1980s.  I enjoyed reading this article by Donald Gutstein from 2009:

After 30 years in the business of turning people against governments that redistribute wealth and provide social programs, and against regulations that protect workers, consumers, human health and the environment, the institute had burned through $100 million. Some deep pockets must have been bankrolling the institute. But who? And why?...

Unfortunately, more recent documents are not available to reveal the links between the Fraser Institute and other industries, such as oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, food, chemicals and private health care. But a partial understanding of corporate backing can be gained by examining the think-tank’s board, since members are most likely invited to join because of their financial contributions.

The Fraser Institute board currently has seven members from the Calgary oil patch, including vice-chair Gwyn Morgan, former CEO of EnCana Corp. And consider that both the 30th and 35th anniversaries were held in Calgary even though the Fraser Institute is based in Vancouver.

What we also know is that the Fraser Institute received $500,000 from the Koch brothers, American oil billionaires:

As the Conservative assault continues against Canadian environmental charities, the Vancouver Observer has learned that since 2007, foreign oil billionaires the Koch brothers have donated over half a million dollars to the “charitable” right-wing Fraser Institute.

As for why the media does not question its objectivity, note that the Calgary Herald was a sponsor of the Fraser Institute's 35th Anniversary celebration, and that the Vancouver Sun sponsored a talk by Lord Lawson who pooh-poohed the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a “politically correct pressure group whose ... report presents an unfounded alarmist account of man-made greenhouse gas emissions...”

The Fraser Institute Misuses Data

The data which is the basis of the Fraser Institutes' reports, a standardized test of English and Mathematics, is skewed since the test is not mandatory in public schools. The parents who ask their children NOT to write the test are invariably the types of parents whose children will score higher on the test. In addition, according to the BC Teachers' Federation:

In some school districts, participation has fallen to less than 50% and in one Vancouver school alone not a single child participated in FSA testing this year.

...Once again the methodological manipulation of FSA tests by the Fraser Institute has come under assault this time from UBC’s Donald Gutstein when he writes that the institute’s ranking formula for schools “doesn’t use the FSA data directly but weighs the indicators. The average FSA scores for each of the reading, writing, and numeracy tests for each of the two grades (Grades 4 and 7)—six tests in total— are allotted a possible 7.5%, for a total of 45% of the overall rating.” The prominence given some variables over others, while ignoring factors such as socio-economic data, ethnicity, ESL, disability, and geographic location underline the misuse of FSA data.

On the Fraser Institute School Reports, a school board member from Kamloops commented:

"It's corrupt," said district school board chair Denise Harper. "It's not an accurate measure and to rank schools based on those marks is corrupt, it's dishonest, it's not truthful." 

Comparisons to private schools, she said, skews public schools' achievements. "We are multi-ethnic, multi-opportunity schools with children of all differing abilities and backgrounds. When you compete against a private school that selects their students it's not always a level playing field."

UBC's Donald Gutstein is a critic of the Fraser Institute and has written a book about it.  On the subject of School Rankings, he writes:

EIGHT DISTORTIONS AND OTHER PROBLEMS IN THE FRASER INSTITUTE’S REPORT CARD

The Fraser Institute says its report card is based on the Foundation Skills Assessment tests written by children in Grades 4 and 7 across the province. But is it really? 

1.  The actual FSA results account for less than half of a school’s ranking. The rest is based on the institute’s manipulations of the numbers.

Grades 4 and 7 reading, numeracy and writing tests account for 7.5 percent each, for a total of 45 percent. With so much of the ranking not based on actual test scores, distortions are created in the results a school obtains. Consider the case of Torquay Elementary in Victoria, which the Fraser ranked as 131st in its 2009 report. University of Victoria education professor Helen Raptis notes that the percentage of Torquay‘s Grade 4 students that met or exceeded expectations on the FSAs was 97 percent (for reading), 85 percent (writing), and 87 percent (numeracy). These figures, Raptis observes, are significantly higher than those for Pacific Christian School, also in Victoria, which scored 83 percent (reading), 69 percent (writing), and 76 percent (numeracy). Yet Pacific Christian ranked 108th. 

Scored higher on Ministry of Education-administered tests, but lower on Fraser Institute rankings. Why? Let’s look at the other variables.

2. Twenty percent of a school’s ranking comes from differences between the results achieved by boys and girls. This artificially depresses the scores of schools with students of lower socio-economic status where, typically, gender differences are more pronounced.

Worse, and inexplicably, the Fraser gives more weight to gender differences than to the actual results. Gender differences in Grade 7 numeracy and reading tests (what happened to writing?) account for 10 percent each. The actual test results account for only 7.5 percent each.

3. Twenty-five percent of a school’s ranking comes from the percentage of tests “not meeting expectations.” This result penalizes low-performing schools by accounting for their low scores twice. 

4. Ten percent of a school’s ranking comes from the percentage of tests not written in a school. This indicator was added in 2007 “to encourage schools to ensure a high level of participation in the FSA testing program.” It is a not-so-veiled attack on the BC Teachers Federation and parents who don’t want their children to write the tests.

That punishing the BCTF is the purpose of this component of the rankings can be seen by comparing the Fraser Institute’s BC and Alberta elementary schools rankings. This component does not exist in the Alberta report card where the union is not as activist in opposing mandatory testing.

5. Obviously, the elite boys and girls private schools—the ones that top the rankings—do not have gender differences. In this case the institute assigns an additional 10 percent to tests not written and 10 percent to tests not meeting expectation, with no rationale for the choices.

6. Nearly a third of BC schools do not enrol Grade 7 students. Students in these schools move on to middle schools, usually after Grade 5. However, the Fraser assigns the Grade 7 FSA results to the schools the children attended in Grade 4. This is not credible because it assumes that the middle school, where the student has studied for nearly two years, doesn’t contribute to student achievement.

7. The method of statistical standardization used throughout the ranking exercise makes small differences look large. Converting the results into a scale from zero to ten makes the differences appear even greater.

8. The worst problem with the rankings is that they take little account of individual and family differences among schools, which include socio-economic status, race and ethnicity, gender, disability, ESL and school location.

Numerous studies done in the U.S. have found consistently that these factorsaccount fully for school differences. In fact, poor public schools may even do better than wealthy private schools, when these factors are fully accounted for.

In Canada, a 2006 Statistics Canada study found that “higher income is almost always associated with better outcomes for children.”

Ignoring such key factors can lead to some bizarre results. On the 2011 report card for BC elementary schools, for instance, Roosevelt Park in Prince Rupert was ranked 874th out of 875 schools in the province. David Johnson, an economist with the C.D. Howe Institute, also ranks BC schools and he does take some—but not all—socio-economic factors into account. Based on his rankings, Roosevelt Park, with 90 percent Aboriginal and 32 percent special needs students, rates as one of the top 17 schools in the province!

How is such an enormous discrepancy possible? And why does the institute manipulate the numbers so drastically?

As an ideologically driven organization, it can’t allow student achievement results to be related to income and other individual and family characteristics.

 If you have the time, you should read his article in its entirety to understand the problems with the misuse of data by the Fraser Institute.  In fact, his whole website offers fascinating reading.

There are no studies that show that private schools produce superior outcomes in university and beyond. In fact, there are studies showing that public school students are better prepared for university.

That did not stop "OUR KIDS", an aggregate site advertising private schools, from writing this lengthy paragraph examining the pressing issue of quality of education:

Public school vs. private: quality of education 

In Canada, the Fraser Institute ranks schools, often finding favour with private schools, although it does highly rank some public schools. In the USA, the situation is similar: there are good public schools but many of the best overall schools are privately funded. A study by Harvard University found that private school students averaged higher than their public school counterparts in standardized tests in 11 of 12 comparisons of students.

In my research, I have yet to find that "study by Harvard University."  The "Chronicle of Higher Education" made reference to the same study but gave no details.  In fact there was no new study conducted but instead a re-examination of the same data produced by the NCES (see below article) but just analyzed with a different bent.  That critical paper from Harvard  disagrees with the findings of the NCES study.  However, the author of that paper says that, " it was impossible for him to draw any conclusions about whether students at private or public schools performed better based on the available data."  Hilariously, this website advertising for Upper Canada College is called "OUR KIDS THE TRUSTED SOURCE."  Yeah, parents, you need look no further for information on public vs private, because this is it.  This is the TRUSTED SOURCE.  Not.

I do have to admit that one thing I do covet from private schools is those uniforms--then I wouldn't have to worry about hitting the Gymboree and Gap sales on a biannual basis.

Well, as the Obsessive Researching Mommy, I have compiled all the studies (and studies that refer to studies) I could find on the Public vs. Private Debate, so get out your coffee or sedating drug of choice and prepare yourself for a long read.  Full disclosure: I am a proponent of public education and equal access for all.  I believe that strength in public education is what makes Canada great.  I am not a teacher or a school board member.  I am a parent who wants the best for my child.

Read all about in Private Vs. Public Schools, Part 2: Studies and More Studies

Private vs. Public Schools, Part 2: Studies and More Studies

Picture above: Not a private school

(Updated October 1, 2017)

Previously I wrote:

There are no studies that show that private schools produce superior outcomes in university and beyond. In fact, there are studies showing that public school students are better prepared for university.

As the Obsessive Researching Mommy, just for you I have compiled all the studies (and studies that refer to studies) I could find on the Public vs. Private Debate (in one day), so get out your coffee or sedating drug of choice and prepare yourself for a long read.  Full disclosure: I am a proponent of public education and equal access for all.  I believe that strength in public education is what makes Canada great.  I am not a teacher or a school board member.  I am a parent who wants the best for my child, and I believe it is important to put out information which counters false facts and perceptions backed by the deep pockets of the private education industry.


Here are excerpts from the studies I found on the debate.  Click on the date and source of each article/study to read the full article or paper from the original source.

From CBC news dated April 23, 2012:

Public school students better prepared for university

The UBC study looked at 4,500 first year physics and calculus students between 2002 and 2006 at UBC and found that public school graduates scored an average of about two to three per cent higher than private school graduates. 

UBC mathematics professor George Bluman, who was one of the study's authors, said the lack of individual attention on students in public schools may actually give students an edge in the tougher university environment. 

"Public schools have a lot to offer students and there's some myths out there that you're better prepared when you go from independent schools," 

"The university is more like a public school, the students probably don't get as much attention, the students have to stand more on their own two feet. And some of the independent schools are all-boys schools and maybe boys have trouble adjusting when girls are present." ... 

The study, Student Success in First-Year University Physics and Mathematics Courses: Does the high-school attended make a difference? was published by the International Journal of Science Education.

In the New York Times, July 15, 2006, the NCES Study:

Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study 

WASHINGTON, July 14 — The Education Department reported on Friday that children in public schools generally performed as well or better in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private school counterparts fared better.

The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores in 2003 from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools, found that fourth graders attending public school did significantly better in math than comparable fourth graders in private schools. Additionally, it found that students in conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind their counterparts in public schools on eighth-grade math.

The study, carrying the imprimatur of the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department, was contracted to the Educational Testing Service and delivered to the department last year.

From ScienceDaily.com, dated March 3, 2009:

Public Schools Outperform Private Schools in Math Instruction

ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2009) — In another “Freakonomics”-style study that turns conventional wisdom about public- versus private-school education on its head, a team of University of Illinois education professors has found that public-school students outperform their private-school classmates on standardized math tests, thanks to two key factors: certified math teachers, and a modern, reform-oriented math curriculum.

Sarah Lubienski, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the U. of I. College of Education, says teacher certification and reform-oriented teaching practices correlated positively with higher achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam for public-school students. 

“According to our results, schools that hired more certified teachers and had a curriculum that de-emphasized learning by rote tended to do better on standardized math tests,” Lubienski said. “And public schools had more of both.” 

To account for the difference in test scores, Lubienski and her co-authors, education professor Christopher Lubienski (her husband) and doctoral student Corinna Crane, looked at five critical factors: school size, class size, parental involvement, teacher certification and instructional practices. 

In previous research, the Lubienskis discovered that after holding demographic factors constant, public school students performed just as well if not better than private schools students on standardized math tests. 

“There are so many reasons why you would think that the results should be reversed – that private schools would outscore public schools in standardized math test scores,” she said. “This study looks at the underlying reasons why that’s not necessarily the case.

Of the five factors, school size and parental involvement “didn’t seem to matter all that much,” Lubienski said, citing a weak correlation between the two factors as “mixed or marginally significant predictors” of student achievement. 

They also discovered that smaller class sizes, which are more prevalent in private schools than in public schools, significantly correlate with achievement. 

“Smaller class size correlated with higher achievement and occurred more frequently in private schools,” Lubienski said. “But that doesn’t help explain why private schools were being outscored by public schools.” 

Lubienski said one reason private schools show poorly in this study could be their lack of accountability to a public body. 

“There’s been this assumption that private schools are more effective because they’re autonomous and don’t have all the bureaucracy that public schools have,” Lubienski said. “But one thing this study suggests is that autonomy isn’t necessarily a good thing for schools.”
Another reason could be private schools’ anachronistic approach to math. 

“Private schools are increasingly ignoring curricular trends in education, and it shows,” Lubienski said. “They’re not using up-to-date methods, and they’re not hiring teachers who employ up-to-date lesson plans in the classroom. When you do that, you aren’t really taking advantage of the expertise in math education that’s out there.” 

Lubienski thinks one of the reasons that private schools don’t adopt a more reform-minded math curriculum is because some parents are more attracted to a “back-to-basics” approach to math instruction. The end result, however, is students who are “prepared for the tests of 40 years ago, and not the tests of today,” she said. 

Tests like NAEP, Lubienski said, have realigned themselves with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards for math instruction, which have moved away from the brute-force memorization of numbers to an emphasis on “geometry, measurement and algebra – things that private school teachers reported they spent less time teaching,” Lubienski said.
“The results do seem to suggest that private schools are doing their own thing, and that they’re less likely to have paid attention to curricular trends and the fact that math instruction and math tests have changed,” she said. 

Lubienski cautioned that the relationships found between the two factors and public-school performance might not be directly causal. 

“The correlations might be a result, for example, of having the type of administrator who makes teacher credentials and academics the priority over other things, such as religious education,” she said. “That's often not the case for private religious schools, where parents are obviously committed to things beside academic achievement.” 

The schools with the smallest percentage of certified teachers – conservative Christian schools, where less than half of teachers were certified – were, not coincidentally, the schools with the lowest aggregate math test scores. 

“Those schools certainly have the prerogative to set different priorities when hiring, but it just doesn’t help them on NAEP,” Lubienski said. 

Lubienski also noted that public schools tend to set aside money for teacher development and periodic curriculum improvements. 

“Private schools don’t invest as much in the professional development of their teachers and don’t do enough to keep their curriculum current,” she said. “That appears to be less of a priority for them, and they don’t have money designated for that kind of thing in the way public schools do.” 

Lubienski hopes that politicians who favor more privatization would realize that the invisible hand of the market doesn’t necessarily apply to education. 

“You can give schools greater autonomy, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to use that autonomy to implement an innovative curriculum or improve the academics of the students,” she said. 

Instead, some private schools try to attract parents by offering a basic skills curriculum, or non-academic requirements, such as students wearing uniforms. 

Privatization also assumes that parents can make judgments about what schools are the best for their children. 

“With schools, it’s tough to see how much kids are actually learning,” Lubienski said. “Market theory in education rests on the assumption that parents can see what they’re buying, and that they’re able to make an informed decision about their child’s education. Although parents might be able to compare schools’ SAT scores, they aren’t able to determine whether those gains are actually larger in higher scoring schools unless they know where students start when they enter school. People don’t always pick the most effective schools.” 

The results were published in a paper titled “Achievement Differences and School Type: The Role of School Climate, Teacher Certification, and Instruction” in the November 2008 issue of the American Journal of Education. The published findings were based on fourth- and eighth-grade test results from the 2003 NAEP test, including data from both student achievement and comprehensive background information drawn from a nationally representative sample of more than 270,000 students from more than 10,000 schools.

Note also that Christopher and Sarah Lubienski, Education Professors at the University of Illinois, have written a book called, "The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools."


From the Center on Education Policy's October 2007 Paper:

Are Private High Schools Better Academically Than Public High Schools?

Policymakers, parents, and other interested citizens often assume that private schools, on the whole, are better academically than public schools. But is this empirical assumption actually supported by evidence? 

For the most part it is not, suggests the study of urban public and private high school students described in this paper. 

About the Study 

This study, commissioned by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) and conducted byresearcher Harold Wenglinsky, was based on statistical analyses of a nationally representative, longitudinal database of students and schools (the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988-2000, or NELS). The study focused on a sample of lowincome students from inner-city high schools. This focus was chosen because policies for private school choice often target low-income, urban youth, on the grounds that these students should have the same advantage of a private school education that more affluent students already have. The study compared achievement and other education-related outcomes for students in different types of public and private schools, including comprehensive public high schools (the typical model for the traditional high school); public magnet schools and “schools of choice;” various types of Catholic parochial schools and other religious schools; and independent, secular private schools. Most importantly, the study took into account key background characteristics, including students’ achievement before high school, their family’s socioeconomic status (SES), and various indicators of parental involvement.

To test various assumptions made in this study, another researcher, Dong Wook Jeong, performed a series of sensitivity and replication analyses using the same group of students.
These analyses included reorganizing the data quasi-experimentally using propensity score analysis (a statistical technique that estimates the effects of an educational “treatment” on a group of students when the treatment was not actually done). They also included testing the data for clustering (looking at whether the data converge around certain variables) and introducing other non-school controls, such as the influence of peers on student achievement.
All of these analyses produced the same results as Wenglinsky’s initial analysis—namely, that the private school effects, in most instances, could be explained by the demographics and family characteristics of the students. 

Core Findings 

The study found that low-income students from urban public high schools generally did as well academically and on long-term indicators as their peers from private high schools, once key family background characteristics were considered. In particular, the study determined that when family background was taken into account, the following findings emerged: 

1. Students attending independent private high schools, most types of parochial high schools, and public high schools of choice performed no better on achievement tests in math, reading, science, and history than their counterparts in traditional public high schools. 

2. Students who had attended any type of private high school ended up no more likely to attend college than their counterparts at traditional public high schools. 

3. Young adults who had attended any type of private high school ended up with no more job satisfaction at age 26 than young adults who had attended traditional public high schools. 

4. Young adults who had attended any type of private high school ended up no more engaged in civic activities at age 26 than young adults who had attended traditional public high schools.
Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that students who attend private high schools receive neither immediate academic advantages nor longer-term advantages in attending college, finding satisfaction in the job market, or participating in civic life. 

This study did identify two exceptions to this general finding. The primary exception is that students who attended independent private high schools had higher SAT scores than public school students, which gave independent school students an advantage in getting into elite colleges. (These independent private schools enroll many students from affluent families and are often expensive and fairly elite themselves, with tuitions as high as $30,000 a year.) This finding suggests that while these schools are no better at teaching the subject matter, they may provide students with test-taking skills that help them further their education, or they may enroll students with higher IQs (aptitude tests like the SAT are a better measure of IQ than achievement tests are). 

A second exception is that one special type of private school, Catholic schools run by holy orders (such as Jesuit schools), did have some positive academic effects. There are very few such schools, however; most Catholic schools are run by their diocese, not by an order (Meyer, 2007). 

Unique Features of This Study 

What accounts for the fact that the findings from this study are largely at odds with those of some earlier studies, which did find a private school academic advantage? Many past studies, beginning with that of Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore (1982), found a private school advantage even when students’ socioeconomic status was taken into account. Yet these studies did not measure other aspects of family life that are also critically important in shaping students’ academic, civic, and economic life.

This CEP-commissioned study, for the first time, included a range of family educational activities and attitudes towards schooling. When these were taken into account, the private school advantage went away. This suggests that the private school advantage is a chimera; it merely shows that private schools contain a larger proportion of children whose parents have characteristics that contribute to learning than do public schools. 

In addition, this study, unlike many other public-private school comparisons, focused specifically on low-income, urban youth. It also looked at several long-term outcomes, in addition to high school achievement, and distinguished between several different types of public and private schools.

For a little international flavour, here is a study from India cited by the University of Michigan, dated October 11, 2012:

India's public school students on par with private students

Contrary to past research, private school students in India do not outperform their counterparts in public schools, finds a new study by a Michigan State University education researcher.
The study challenges the claim that private schools are superior – a hot issue in India and other developing countries that are expanding K-12 educational offerings. During the past decade, some 40 million children have entered India’s education system, giving rise to a growth in privately run schools. 

“Our study finds no consistent benefit of attending a private school,” said Amita Chudgar, assistant professor of educational administration. “The main implication is to recognize that the debate is not settled regarding public and private schools.” 

Chudgar analyzed the reading, writing and math performance of 10,000 Indian students aged 8 to 11. Because private-school students generally come from families with higher income and education levels, she narrowed the research sample to private and public school students with similar backgrounds. 

The study, which appears in Economics of Education Review, found that private school attendance is not associated with any systematic and specific benefit in terms of increased student achievement. Chudgar said the results hold for rural and urban areas of India, and for both expensive private schools and low-fee private schools.

The Globe and Mail on September 24, 2014 found Ontario private school Bishop Strachan wondering if test preparation detracted from student learning. In my experience with BC's testing, none of the students at our local elementary schools were specifically prepared to write the standardized test which forms the basis of the Fraser Institute reports.

Teachers put too much emphasis on preparing for the tests, which distracts them from creating deeper learning experiences for children, says Patti MacDonald, Bishop Strachan’s Junior School principal. 

“Teachers feel students have to perform well on the tests, so they sacrifice what might be rich learning experiences [in favour of] rote learning,” says Ms. MacDonald, who urges her teachers not to teach to the tests. The school is consulting with parents about whether the tests have value. 

In fact, public schools significantly outperformed private schools on the Grade 10 literacy test in 2012 – 82 per cent of public school students passed, while only 73 per cent of their private school peers did.

The Tyee's "Are Private Schools Really Better?" from July 16, 2004 provides some history on private schools and some explanations for why public schools outperform private in tests:

The prospect of a growing private sector role in health care has been widely and thoroughly debated. Yet the recent and substantial growth of private grade schools has not. 

We hear mainly that private schools produce better academic results, while the public system is failing. Last month, the venerable Vancouver private school St. George's again topped the Fraser Institute'sannual report cardon schools. 

But a math professor's research shows that publicly funded "independent" schools like St. George's shouldn't crow about their academic excellence. And he has 30 years of data to prove that they aren't all they're cracked up to be. 

Back in the 1970s when George Bluman started teaching math to UBC undergraduates, he became concerned about the level of students' abilities in first year courses. So he decided to do something about it. "The initial object was to improve things, and to lobby for provincial exams," he said. 

Since 1974 he has tracked how well students from schools across the province have done in first-year courses in his annual School-by-School Study. Five years later, he added results from the Euclid competition, which draws 2,500 students from public schools all over the province. 

Public schools consistently outperform 

Bluman's results are startling for anyone familiar with the Fraser Institute's rankings. "Consistently the public schools have done better than the independent schools, and that goes way back. Every year they've done better for 20, 25 years. It's a bit complex, but in fact the gap has widened over the years … in the old days the independent schools had a higher fraction doing well in the math test relative to the public schools, but now it's the other way around. Public schools are at the top end, the very top end." 

He said the Fraser Institute has approached him with the hope of using his data. However, he said he believed it was important to keep it in the academic domain, where he could control how the data is used. Bluman, like all researchers, works to minimize the effects of any potential confounding influence, like the teachers. In fact, when he first began to look at how students from various schools performed at university and in the Euclid competition, "The [British Columbia] Teachers' Federation attacked me like the communist publications used to attack people in the '50s…. They don't like comparisons." 

Bud Patel, the director of school and community relations at St. George's, said parents preferred his school to those in the public system because "the school system has been financially affected, obviously, by cuts." Similarly, Gordon Allan, the associate director of admissions at the school, said "You see a number of [public] schools cutting back on extra-curricular programs because of underfunding and so forth. A school like our is in the position of being able to offer that full spectrum of support activities." 

Cuts in the public system have not meant, however, that the government has slowed the flow of money to schools like St. George's. In 1977 the then-Social Credit government offered substantial funding to independent schools, and in 1989, the amount skyrocketed. Addressing the house on March 30 that year, the Minister of Finance, Mel Couvelier, unveiled the generous funding that has continued since then. "Grants to independent schools will rise by over 17 percent to $57 million. Independent schools meeting specific criteria will receive per-pupil grants equal to 50 percent of public schools' per-pupil operating costs. Funding for special education in independent schools will also increase," he told the house. 

U.S. rhetoric spills into Canada 

Every year, more people followed the money trail, and new schools were built. At the same time, the public has been swamped with "the rhetoric of school failure that has spilled over from the United States … and the rhetoric also of private sector efficiencies," said Charles Ungerleider, a UBC education professor. 

In 1976, before the big infusions of public cash, 152 independent schools educated four per cent of the province's students. Now 337 private schools teach 10 per cent of B.C. children. Last year, the province funded private schools to the tune of $170 million, which is projected to rise to $200 million by 2006. 

"I think the parallel to health care is very obvious," said Heather-jane Robertson, the vice-president of the board of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives . "People understand that depriving health care of enough resources is the primary means of inciting an appetite for a second tier. And so the pattern is identical: you criticize the public service, then you starve it." 

But despite the Spartan diet of the public schools, Bluman's research shows that they have kept their lead over private schools. David Thompson secondary in east Vancouver ranks 148th on the Fraser Institute's report card, but it routinely outshines St. George's and other private schools in Bluman's School-by-School studies. This, despite a staggering difference in the student teacher ratio: 19:1 compared to St. George's 7:1. The provincial School Performance Report for David Thompson shows that 34 per cent of its families earn less than $30,000 a year. No such data exists for St. George's, but the parents of its 120 boarders pay $35,000 a year, while day-student tuition rings in at $12,000. 

At David Thompson, a tiny fraction of students speak English as their mother tongue -- only 15 per cent -- while one in five have special needs. But private schools like St. George's take only those who successfully pass entrance exams, effectively ruling out students with language or other difficulties. 

Nevertheless, Allan said, a handful of students receive extra "language support" and some have "time management" issues. "It could be that they need to sit at the front of the classroom…[But] if it's a student who is severely learning disabled and they need special intervention, and special support, we just don't have the staff to be able to deal with those."  

Demographics skew results 

It's just these kinds of demographic disparities that Bluman says make the Fraser Institute report so problematic. "The public school has to take all students," he said. "You have to look at the patterns very carefully." 

Nevertheless, he said it's difficult to tease out the exact reasons why a school with every imaginable privilege has been unable to keep up with students at a school with many potential challenges. For one thing, private school data is hard to come by, Bluman said. "The enigma to me is that even though they were funding the independent schools, they would have full data on the public schools on their website, but they didn't have the information on the independent schools. I found it rather strange." 

The Ministry of Education posts thousands of pages of information on public school performance. School Satisfaction Surveys are available for every public school in the province. These measure attitudes of students, parents, and teachers on topics ranging from whether students try hard at school, to whether their teachers are caring. School Performance Reportscatalogue demographic features of schools, including the education and marital status of the parents, as well as the numbers of gifted, ESL, and special needs students. 

Comparable reports are not available for independent schools. Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) results of private school students are online, together with student headcounts, and the number of male, female and aboriginal students in the school. According to the education ministry's website, it does not produce performance reports for independent schools. As a result, the public has no data to see how teachers in those institutions assess their institution's handling of many issues: disciplinary practices, opportunities for professional development, or school climate. 

Public accountability lacking 

Nor does the public have access to how students at private schools assess their education. Unlike students at David Thompson, St. George's pupils don't fill out a lengthy questionnaire in the Satisfaction Survey. The public can't know how its students would answer any of its 23 questions -- including number 12, "At school, do you respect people who are different from you (for example, think, look, or act different?). Or number 20, "Are you satisfied that school is preparing you for a job in the future?" 

A Ministry communications officer, Corinna Filion said, "Independent schools do not do satisfaction surveys because parents have made a conscious choice to pay a fee and enrol their student in that school." Although the ministry regularly evaluates private schools, they are only available to members of the public willing to pursue a time-consuming freedom of information request. 

Natasha Post, another ministry of education communications officer, said the data collected for public schools is not comparable to what's tracked in private schools. "It's like comparing apples and oranges," she said. 

Erika Shaker, a researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said logic suggests private schools should be required to make public the same information required of public schools. "Why should we not demand the same of private schools, especially when public dollars are at stake?" 

Teachers make a difference 

Back at David Thompson, Brian Copeland, the head of the math department, attributed his students' success to "family and community support for excellence and hard work. So many students are encouraged by their families to really work hard and excel, and even though they are naturally talented, not just take a basic approach to mathematics, but to challenge themselves." 

The principal, Ian McKay, attributed the success to the school's accelerated math programs as well as the opportunities for enrichment that teachers give their students in and out of class. He said "superb teaching" by Copeland and his team is the primary reason why David Thompson's kids outsmart their private school peers in math.
George Bluman agrees. After decades of teaching thousands of students, Bluman figures "teachers make a big difference." 

And Bluman has one explanation for the performance record of private institutions. "They are not able to attract as good teachers in the independent schools as in the public schools."

From CBC News Canada regarding a study by Statistics Canada on March 31, 2015:

Private school success due to better students, not better schools, StatsCan says

School resources and practices differ slightly between public and private schools, agency finds

Students at Canadian private schools have more educational success than their public school peers because of their backgrounds and classmates, not the schools themselves, Statistics Canada says in a new report. 

The study followed 7,142 Grade 10 students, focusing on standardized test scores in reading, math and science at age 15, as well as the educational qualifications they had earned by age 23.
Private school students had better test scores (about nine per cent higher on average) and more educational success after high school.None of the differences, however, could be attributed to school resources and practices, Statistics Canada says. 

"Two factors consistently account for these differences," the report released on Tuesday said. "Students who attended private high schools were more likely to have socio-economic characteristics positively associated with academic success and to have school peers with university-educated parents." 

Books, computers at home

The report says uncovering the cause-and-effect between private school and student success is challenging because of self-selection: wealthier families are better able to enrol their children in private schools, and private schools may have more stringent admission criteria. 

Once in the school, private school students are more likely to have classmates who may exert a positive influence.In short, students attending private schools had backgrounds that led to good grades.
"For example, compared with public school students, higher percentages of private school students lived in two-parent families with both biological parents; their total parental income was higher; and they tended to live in homes with more books and computers," the report says. 

Report co-author Winnie Chan said the study was the first time research has combined data about students and the schools themselves. The report notes that most previous studies only looked at students in isolation, then attributed any remaining academic differences to the schools. 

School resources 'not the main players'

The study said school resources and practices differed "only slightly" between public and private institutions. The study looked at such resources as:

• Student-teacher ratio.
• Annual instructional hours.
• Number of computers per student.
• Percentage of teachers with an undergraduate degree.

In each case, the numbers were similar. For instance, the student-teacher ratio was 17 in public schools and 17.8 in private schools."We are not saying that school resources are not important in school outcomes … [but] from what we see in these studies they are not the main players compared to other factors," Chan said. 

About six per cent of Canadian 15-year-olds attend private school.The province of school attendance also accounted for some of the difference in high school test scores and graduation rates, but generally not at the post-secondary level. 

Data shows Quebec has the highest proportion of students in private schools — about one in five. By contrast, the Atlantic provinces have fewer than one in 100.

'A good opportunity to crow'

Paul Bennett, the director of Schoolhouse Consulting and an adjunct professor of education at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, felt there wasn't much new in the report, except for the "amazing" levels of success by the private students. 

"If anything, it gives private schools a pretty good opportunity to crow," he said. In particular, he pointed to the study's finding that 35 per cent of private school students had graduated from university by age 23, compared with 21 per cent of public school students. 
Bennett believes the report puts too much stress on socioeconomic factors and not enough on teacher autonomy and effectiveness.
"The fundamental difference is the values that are being developed in the kids," he said.

What about the labour market?

The study subjects were from 1,180 schools across the country and born in 1984.The researchers relied on a review of current and recent literature, national and international surveys and questionnaires, and student tests.
Sample sizes did not allow for a breakdown of results by type of private school, many of which are religious based.One important question also remains unanswered, the study states: Does the academic advantage the private school students enjoy continue into the labour market?"The higher rates of post-secondary attendance among private high school students may translate to higher lifetime earnings," the study notes.

"This effect may be amplified through peers: A social network of gainfully employed friends may improve an individual's chances of securing a well-paying job." 

From cleveland.com, dated March 26, 2017:

Do vouchers give kids better educations? Ohio test results are mixed

CLEVELAND, Ohio - The school voucher programs that some federal and state officials want to expand have mixed test results in Ohio that make it unclear how much more students learn than if they had stayed in their local public schools.

Ohio's voucher programs, which give families grants to help pay tuition at private schools, have a low bar to clear to look successful.

Neither the state's main voucher program, EdChoice, and a Cleveland-only program are competing with high-scoring suburban districts. Both were created to let families avoid schools the state considered to be failing, so they only have to beat the lowest-rated schools.

But the private schools receiving voucher dollars have mixed results, even when compared to these "failing" public schools.

Voucher students do well on reading tests. Students in both the Cleveland and statewide EdChoice program score significantly better on all state reading tests between grades 3 and 8 than students at the public schools they left behind, state data shows.

But the private schools falter in math, with their voucher students scoring lower - sometimes by a hair, sometimes by a lot - on four of the six state math tests for the same grades.

It's a trend that has held for several years. The Plain Dealer reported that result for Cleveland in 2011, then the state found the same pattern both in Cleveland and statewide in 2015 and the last round of state tests for 2015-16 confirmed a similar pattern for Cleveland again.

See detailed charts below.

The state's analysis for 2015-16 is not yet available.

Further, a detailed analysis last year - one commissioned by a major pro-school choice group - suggests that voucher students in Ohio score worse in math and English than if they had just stayed in their public school.  

It's a very nuanced and technical study that avoids looking at a key group of public schools - the very worst-performing ones - for statistical validity reasons. Northwestern University professor David Figlio also doesn't quantify how much ground students lose by going to voucher schools in terms that make sense to the general public.

David Figlio discusses his voucher study at the City Club last year.

But Figlio found that while voucher students were typically better-off financially and stronger academically than students they left behind, they did worse after going to private schools than comparable students that stayed in public school.

"The kids that were going to the private schools were doing worse," he said. "The kids who participated in the program did considerably worse compared to the closest-looking kids in similar schools."

The study was commissioned by the Fordham Institute, a leading advocate for school choice in Ohio and nationally.

"Even when its findings are unexpected and painful, rigorous, disinterested evaluation remains the best way to prod improvements and make progress toward the program's goals," Fordham's Ohio director Chad Aldis wrote in the foreword to Figlio's report.

Click here to see Figlio discussing the study at the City Club of Cleveland.

Value of vouchers up for debate

The effectiveness of school voucher programs is already part of a national debate, with President Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos, his secretary of Education, proposing spending an extra $1 billion on school choice efforts.

Vouchers will also be up for debate soon here in Ohio, with a bill from State Sen. Matt Huffman to expand Ohio's voucher programs that just started having its first hearings in Columbus.

With the test score data mixed, Huffman and other voucher supporters are not basing their case for expanding the programs on academic grounds. Huffman says the value of private schools for families is not all about earning better marks on tests.

"I don't think the only measure of the success of a school is the tests a student takes," said Huffman.

He said things like student behavior, academic programs, sports teams and other extra-curriculars, and even distance from home are all "other better positive attributes of the environment that a child is in."

Much like DeVos, Huffman wants parents to be able to make their own choice.

"Let the marketplace work," he said.

Catholic school supporters, who have a lot at stake, agreed with much of Huffman's position. Religious schools receive 97 percent of Ohio's voucher dollars, of which all but 2 percent goes to Christian schools. Catholic schools dominate the recipients, but exact percentages are not clear.

The Catholic Diocese of Cleveland declined to address why Catholic schools in Cleveland would do so well in reading compared to the Cleveland schools, but worse in math.

"Catholic schools do not base a student's performance solely on test scores but take a holistic approach to a student's education and formation," the diocese said in a written statement.

The Catholic Conference of Ohio, a statewide association of bishops, seconded the statement from the diocese.

Is education under a voucher better, or just different?

Cleveland schools CEO Eric Gordon, whose district is the most affected by vouchers in Ohio, said he supports school choice efforts like vouchers and charter schools, but only if they help students have better learning experiences, not just different ones.

"If there's a pretty high assurance that my kids are getting a better education somewhere else, I can't in good conscience oppose that," Gordon said.

But he said the data doesn't show that voucher schools do any better. Though Catholic schools encourage a "toxic nostalgia" that they are better than public schools, Gordon said, "The data doesn't support it."

Just having a different experience in school, he said, is not enough to "gamble again, spend lots and lots of dollars and not move the needle for children."

"That's my bottom line," Gordon said.

Why the data is limited

State law requires all K-8 voucher students to take the same state math and English tests as public school students, even if other students at their private schools do not. That provides some reasonable data for the comparisons we shared above.

There are limitations, though.

-       High school comparisons are more complicated, thanks to admissions tests, new state tests for high school students and private schools lobbying the state to avoid the new high school tests.

Click here for more on the high schools.

-       Since voucher programs are limited to students in Cleveland or students who attend "failing" schools in other districts, comparisons of voucher schools to suburban districts are hard. There just are not a lot of students from many suburban schools that use vouchers .

-       Some students also receive vouchers because of low family income, but their scores are just starting to show up in test scores at younger grades.

And, as Gordon noted, many report card measures or key aspects of schools are not counted by the state for voucher schools.

 -        "Performance Index," the composite of test scores across multiple subjects and grades the state uses as its catch-all measure of how much students know.

-        "Value-added," a measure that highlights how much academic progress students make in a year. Value-added can show if a school is doing a good job with students  by catching up those who are behind their peers, or just coasting with advanced students.

-       Socio-economic challenges like poverty and income that have a strong relationship to test scores across Ohio and nationally.

-       The number of special education students or students learning English as a second language at a school.

-       Student attendance rates and disciplinary statistics, like the number of suspensions each year.

-       And, for high schools, the graduation rate at each school.

For the Cleveland school district's Gordon, all of those factors help show if a school is good or not. But he is frustrated that parents can't see that hard data from voucher schools.

He praised Huffman's bill for including a value-added calculation for voucher schools, just in a very broad way. His bill would call for a single calculation for all voucher students in Ohio, not for each school.

Gordon called that a "step in the right direction," but wants the state to go further to show real comparisons between schools.

"Those are all great sources," he said. "Let's build a data system that looks at it."

Cleveland voucher students' scores vs. the district

Here ia a comparison of the proficiency rates of K-8 Cleveland voucher students to Cleveland school district students on state tests for the 2015-16 school year. Voucher students had higher scores on all reading tests, but district students scored better on four of the six math tests shown here.

	Cleveland school district	Cleveland voucher students
Reading, percent proficient
3rd	24%	39%
4th	23%	40%
5th	26%	36%
6th	20%	35%
7th	20%	33%
8th	18%	37%
Math, percent proficient
3rd	34%	33%
4th	31%	30%
5th	26%	18%
6th	22%	20%
7th	24%	24%
8th	26%	30%

How EdChoice students scored vs students in the "failing" schools they left

Here are state calculations from the 2013-14 school year of how students in the statewide EdChoice voucher program performed on state tests compared to students in the public schools they would have attended, all labeled as failing by the state.

Note that 5th and 6th grade math scores are slightly higher for district schools, but are tied when rounded off.

	Reading		Math
Grade	EdChoice students	Public schools	EdChoice Students	Public schools
3rd	69	61	59	53
4th	76	65	48	51
5th	54	43	37	37
6th	76	63	47	47
7th	76	58	41	42
8th	78	67	53	49