Education

Proving the Worth of Public Education

By Dweep Chanana ⋅ April 9, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅ Post a comment

In response to my last article defending public, state-funded education - particularly primary education in India - a few people pointed me to various studies that prove private schools are “better.” One of the most widely acknowledged of these is by Tooley & Dixon (Private Education is Good for the Poor, Cato Institute, 2005). Indeed, it is Tooley’s work on slum schools in India that got him hired by the US$100 million Orient Global Foundation. The School Choice campaign (India) also carries several studies, for those interested in more.

In view of such overwhelming “evidence,” what, after all, is the evidence in favor of public schools?

Yet, the evidence is very much there. After all, China far outperforms India on educational indicators such as enrolment and efficiency, despite having a largely public primary system. Clearly, you don’t need a private system to achieve high quality and provide universal access to education.

Closer to home, Abi at Nanopolitan shows how publicly funded Kendriya Vidyalaya schools outperform even private schools at the CBSE exams. In 2007, KV schools (of which there were 860), had a pass percentage of 95.6%. Jawahar Navodayas, had a pass percentage of 96.4%, private schools had 91.8%, and other government schools had 70.3%. Clearly, not all public schools are the same!

Another important point emerging from this post is the massive performance improvement that Delhi’s government schools displayed last year. The pass percentage of this group of schools improved from 59.73% to 77.12%. The key was offering the right carrots and sticks, as illustrated in the article. Clearly, then, improving quality is not a question of public or private, but of offering the right incentives - regardless of the system.

A third bit of evidence emerges, ironicaly, from Tooley’s study itself. A Dr. B.M. Craven writes in a comment that in Tooley’s study, “facilities such as toilets, playgrounds, desks, blackboards and computers were inferior in the private schools by comparison with the Government schools but such measures (inputs) do not appear to have affected outcomes.” Tooley’s summary also states that private unaided schools had “sometimes better facilities than government schools.” Yet, why are we settling for worse facilities, so long as they do not affect outcomes?

Such infrastructure is important not simply for outcomes, but in and of itself (would you prefer to send your child to a school without toilets, or one with?). It also has an important impact on limiting access and school choice (as pointed out previously, girls will be excluded in this system). Finally, it clearly points to the underlying problem of private schools - that they have no incentive to invest in anything that does not directly appear to improve quality - and will therefore not invest to correct existing inequities (through e.g. greater investment in infrastructure, outreach, etc.).

It is a sign of our times that we take all things publicly funded to be of poor quality, despite evidence to the contrary. While government is, in general, not known for service excellence, there is enough data out there showing that public schools can be very good (i.e. private schools are not necessary), and conversely, that private schools have substantial problems of their own (i.e. private schools are not sufficient to solve our problems).

As Martin Carnoy wrote: “I would like to believe, with Professor West, in a panacea that could make everyone learn more without investing enormous time and effort in improving children’s nutrition, home lives, and the way all schools deliver knowledge…Unfortunately, vouchers tend to divert attention from the overall complexity of the learning problem rather than providing a real solution.”

Tags: Economics, equity, governance, policy, primary education, privatization, vouchers