NEW STUDY FINDS PRIVATE SCHOOLS ARE MORE EFFECTIVE AT BOOSTING KEY CIVIC OUTCOMES

Peer-reviewed research finds religious private schools play a particularly positive role in shaping civic outcomes

NEW YORK, April 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Private schools are linked to more positive civic outcomes for students and parents than public schools, according to a peer-reviewed statistical meta-analysis published today in Educational Psychology Review by authors from the University of Buckingham and University of Arkansas. The research, which combines, audits, and analyzes all available empirical studies of the effects of public and private schools on various civic outcomes, found that private schooling is associated with an advantage of 5.5 percent of a standard deviation, or roughly two percentile points, over public schooling in various measures of civic outcomes.

The researchers combined the results of 57 studies from more than a dozen countries, including the United States, to calculate the average association between schooling and measures of four central civic outcomes that are widely viewed as conducive to self-government:

• Political Tolerance: An individual's willingness to respect the rights and opinions of people who are different from them. This also includes attitudes about equality, human dignity, and even measures of antisemitism.
• Political Participation: A behavioral measure of a person's willingness to engage in the activities of self-government. This includes activities like voting and contacting a political representative.
• Civic Knowledge and Skills: A set of understandings and abilities widely viewed as conducive to self-government. Examples include scores on factual quizzes regarding the country's constitutional system, as well as willingness to accept the results from fair elections.
• Voluntarism and Social Capital: Measures of one's involvement in activities that benefit the broader community and the depth of one's community attachment. Examples include charitable giving and the number of hours of volunteering without pay.

"Since public schools were often established specifically to prepare children for citizenship, one might assume that they're superior to private schools at that function. Our research shows that is not the case," said study lead author M. Danish Shakeel, director of the E. G. West Centre for Education Policy at The University of Buckingham. "Private schooling does not threaten democracy. In fact, it may strengthen it."

The study, titled "The Public Purposes of Private Education: a Civic Outcomes Meta‑Analysis," found that religious private schools had a greater effect than secular private schools relative to public schools, equivalent to 7.6 percent of a standard deviation. Even for the outcome of political tolerance, arguably the toughest test for religious schooling effects on civics, the researchers found that there is, at worst, no negative effect of religious relative to public schools.

This research comes amid global concerns about the state of civics education. In May of 2023, the National Assessment Governing Board announced that just 22 percent of eighth graders in the United States were proficient in civics. Furthermore, a recent survey from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars found that only 4 percent of Americans aged 18-24 were able to correctly answer four basic civics questions. This is not a problem unique to the United States, with UNESCO launching a framework for global citizenship education in 2015 to address disappointing civics scores in democracies around the world.

"With civics education in such a sorry state, our research points to a possible solution," said Patrick J. Wolf, Interim Department Head, Distinguished Professor of Education Policy and 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice in the Department of Education at the University of Arkansas. "Educational pluralism, advanced by effective school choice policies, seems to be a boon, and not a bane, for civic outcomes."

"As a more expansive and diverse population of students gain access to private schooling, and as pressure mounts for public schools to improve their civics instruction, the private (mostly religious) school advantage in promoting civic outcomes could disappear or even flip to a public-school advantage," according to the report. For now, a wealth of evidence indicates that private schools do at least as well, and likely better, at forming democratic citizens.

To ensure methodological rigor and guard against biases, the researchers pre-registered the study at the Open Science Framework and employed the latest and most rigorous meta-analytic procedures. Meta-analysis is a well-established scientific technique for consolidating all the reliable evidence that exists regarding a question. 

Contact: Jacob Waters
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SOURCE University of Arkansas