Another indication private schools [and, by extension, charters] do not provide superior education

by David Safier

You'd think if you sent your child to the private Riverdale Country School in the Bronx to the tune of $38,800 a year, that would be all the top flight education your child would need.

But you would be wrong. According to today's NY Times story, you could be spending as much as $35,000 a year on private tutoring. Some of that is SAT prep. Some is tutoring for course work.

The fancy, high expectations prep school tells students how high to jump, but sometimes it takes private tutoring at the rate of $150 to $425 for a 50-minute hour to help students jump that high. And these are hand-picked students from the most economically advantaged families anywhere going to one of those fancy prep schools which are supposed to supply the best education in the country.

Two studies out of the Bush-era Department of Education concluded that similar students in district schools, charters and private schools have similar levels of achievement (The only category with lower achievement is conservative Christian private schools). The "secret" at schools like BASIS and University High and high priced private prep schools is that they are filled with a select group of students who would excel anywhere. They probably benefit from being stimulated and challenged by students who are their peers in ability and ambition and by teachers who can gear their expectations to this kind of student body, but basically, the students are doing excellent work, scoring high on the National Merit tests and getting into top universities because that's what they do, not because the schools are doing such a fantastic job.

And if the competition at a school — or in university entrance requirements — is so high the combination of intelligence, ambition and instruction isn't enough, then you call in the tutors. I don't know how much of that happens in Tucson beyond SAT prep, which is prevalent, but if it doesn't happen here, that's only because the stakes don't seem as high in the Old Pueblo as they do in the Big Apple.

There's also a similar "secret" about all those countries that seem to offer better education than we do. Their students are getting tutored like crazy. Look at Japan, Korea and India, and you'll see families impoverishing themselves to pay for tutors hoping their children will get top scores on the do-or-die tests needed to get into the best universities. That says more about the countries' cultures than it does about the quality of the schools.