School choice in the light of the effectiveness differences of various types of public and private schools in 19 OECD countries

Journal of School Choice

Volumn 2, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 260-301

  Dronkers, J ^a   Robert, P ^b  

^a EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE   (Italy)

^b EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY   (Hungary)

Author keywords

Cross national comparison; Public versus private schools; School choice; School effectiveness; Secondary education

Indexed keywords

EID: 69849125800     PISSN: 15582159     EISSN: 15582167     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/15582150802371499     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. J. Dronkers, "Do Public and Religious Schools Really Differ? Assessing the European Evidence," in Educating Citizens: International Perspectives on Civic Values and School Choice, eds. P. J. Wolf and S. Macedo (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp. 287-314.
2. J. Dronkers and P. Robert, "Differences in Scholastic Achievement of Public, Private Government-Dependent, and Private Independent Schools: A Cross-National Analysis," Educational Policy 22 (2008): 541-577.
3. R. Corten and J. Dronkers, "School Achievement of Pupils From the Lower Strata in Public, Private Government-Dependent and Private Government-Independent Schools: A Cross-National Test of the Coleman-Hoffer Thesis," Educational Research and Evaluation 12 (2006): 179-208.
4. V. Vandenberghe and S. Robin, "Evaluating the Effectiveness of Private Education Across Countries: A Comparison of Methods," Labour Economics 11 (2004): 487-506.
5. J. Merrifield, "The Twelve Ways to Exercise or Facilitate School Choice," Journal of School Choice 2 (2008): 1.
6. P. Sammons, J. Hillman, and P. Mortimore, Key Characteristics of Effective Schools: A Review of School Effectiveness Research (London: Office for Standards in Education, 1995);
7. J. Scheerens and R. Bosker, The Foundations of Educational Effectiveness (New York: Pergamon, 1997);
8. C. Teddlie and D. Reynolds, The International Handbook of School Effectiveness Research (London: Falmer, 2000).
9. J. S. Coleman, T. B. Hoffer, and S. Kilgore, High School Achievement: Public, Catholic, and Other Private Schools Compared (New York: Basic Books, 1982).
10. J. S. Coleman and T. Hoffer, Public and Private High Schools: The Impact of Communities (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
11. A. S. Bryk, V. E. Lee, and P. B. Holland, Catholic Schools and the Common Good (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
12. Dronkers, ";Do Public and Religious Schools Really Differ?"
13. R. H. Hofman, Effectief Schoolbestuur. Een Studie Naar de bijdrage van Schoolbesturen aan de Effectiviteit van Basisscholen [Effective School Administration. A Study on the Contributions of School Boards to School Effectiveness] (Groningen: RION, 1993).
14. The content and structure of this data is summarized as follows on the OECD's Web site: ";From this page you can download the PISA 2000 dataset with the full set of responses from individual students and school principals. These files will only be of use to statisticians and professional researchers who would like to undertake their own analysis of the PISA 2000 data. The files available on this page include the questionnaires, the data files, the codebooks as well as SAS and SPSS control files in order to process the data."
15. Coleman, Hoffer and Kilgore, High School Achievement.
16. Coleman and Hoffer, Public and Private High Schools.
17. Merrifield, "The Twelve Ways to Exercise or Facilitate School Choice."
18. Not only in the PISA 2000 data, but also in the newer data sets (2003, 2006).
19. PISA 2003 focus on mathematical literacy and PISA 2006 on scientific literarcy, while the other scholastic achievement were of secondary importance in these waves.
20. We would like to refer to our other analysis at this point on the same PISA data where the dependent variable is the reading score (Dronkers and Robert, "Differences in Scholastic Achievement of Public, Private Government-Dependent, and Private Independent Schools").
21. T. A. Warm, Weighted Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Ability in Item Response Theory with Tests Finite Length (Oklohama City: U.S. Coast Guard Institute, 1985).
22. Warm, Weighted Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Ability in Item Response Theory with Tests Finite Length.
23. In fact, age is taken as a serious explanatory variable for students' performance even if the grade of the target population was defined in a narrow way (15 years old). This is why a very precise measure of age in month is applied in the data, and only a threemonth testing window was allowed for the data collection in the countries in order to ensure the accuracy of students' age at the time of assessment.
24. H. B. G. Ganzeboom, P. de Graaf, D. J. Treiman, and J. De Leeuw, "A Standard International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status," Social Science Research, 21 (1992), 1-56.
25. Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Classifying Educational Programmes (Manual for ISCED97 implementation for OECD countries, Paris: OECD, 1999).
26. P. DiMaggio, "Cultural Capital and School Success: The Impact of Status Culture Participation on the Grades of U.S. High School Students," American Sociological Review 47 (1982): 189-201.
27. P. Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital," In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. J. Richardson (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986): pp. 241-258.
28. Percentages in Table 2 are unweighted. Weighted percentages (when applied to the student weight as provided with the PISA dataset and described in the documentation) result in slightly different distributions, but the pattern with respect to the school types basically does not change. Weighted percentages produce even higher shares of students in the public sphere, and the proportion of students in the private, government-dependent institutions is smaller. The national deviations from the main average display the same picture.
29. As a combination of Table 1 and Table 2, Table A1 (in the Appendix) displays the mean and standard deviation of the math scores by type of school and country. It seems that the declining trend in the mean of the math scores from private independent schools to public schools as well as the increasing trend in the standard deviation of the math scores from private independent schools to public schools is present for most of the different nations. Even if there are deviations from this trend in certain countries, these deviations do not seem to be related to the variation of the private-public sector distribution in the given countries.
30. J. Rasbash and others, A User's Guide to MLwiN 1.1 (London: Institute of Education, University of London, 2000).
31. J. Hox, Multivariate Analysis. Techniques and Applications (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002).
32. For reading, students from private, government-dependent schools had significantly higher scores than students at public schools (Dronkers and Robert, "Differences in Scholastic Achievement of Public, Private Government-Dependent, and Private Independent Schools").
33. Dronkers and Robert, "Differences in Scholastic Achievement of Public, Private Government-Dependent, and Private Independent Schools: A Cross-National Analysis."
34. The characterization of U.S. charters school is made by the PISA authorities, in consultation with the U.S. data collector. This characterization is consistent with that of comparable schools in other European nations. The fact that U.S. charter schools are bound by numerous regulatory requirements by the chartering authorities make them private, dependent schools, but not yet public. The same holds for comparable schools in Europe, which are also subjected to numerous regulatory requirements by their chartering authorities. For instance, private, dependent schools in the Netherlands, France, and Germany are forbidden to charge substantial fees if they receive substantial state grants.
35. Merrifield, "The Twelve Ways to Exercise or Facilitate School Choice."
36. Merrifield, "The Twelve Ways to Exercise or Facilitate School Choice."
37. P. Koopman and J. Dronkers, "De Effectiviteit van Algemeen Bijzondere Scholen in het Algemeen Voortgezet Onderwijs [The Effectiveness of Neutral Private Schools in the General Secondary Education]," Pedagogische Studiën 71 (1994): 420-441.
38. Dronkers, "Do Public and Religious Schools Really Differ?"