4. Private School

In modern American education, private schools can refer to any school not operated or directly funded by a governmental agency. Private schools include religious day and boarding schools, nonsectarian day and boarding schools, military schools, postgraduate schools andspecial education schools. Private schools are controlled administratively by boards of trustees, who appoint a principal as chief executive officer of the school with full authority over school management and responsibility for implementing the board’s educational policies.

The term private school dates from the post–Civil War era, when the emergence of state-run public school systems left all non-public schools reliant on private funding from individuals or churches. Prior to the establishment of the first state-run public schools in the late 1830s, almost all schools in the United States and in the English colonies that preceded them were, in fact, “private,” in that they were operated by individual, entrepreneurial schoolmasters or schoolmarms or by ministers of local churches. Although many admitted some students from needier families free of charge, virtually all charged fees for each student whose family could afford to pay and raised the funds to pay for needier children from local parishioners. Early Massachusetts colonial law required such schools to tax property owners to cover the cost of schooling, but there were no church-state or public-private distinctions. The first state-run public school systems established before and after the Civil War provided only elementary school education, and privately operated academies offered the only secondary education. Indeed, New York City did not establish its first public high school until 1897, and as late as 1910, only 10% of American children attended high school. Some 40% of them attended private schools, most of which were church-affiliated.

With 20th-century expansion of compulsory education to include most of the high school years, public school systems expanded, siphoning off the majority of students from private secondary schools. By 2005, more than 6.3 million children, or about 11.5% of America’s more than 54.5 million elementary and secondary school students, attended private schools. Nearly 22.5%, or more than 27 000 of the more than 121 000 elementary and secondary schools in the United States, were private, however, thus providing private school students with a much lower average student-teacher ratios—6.2% versus 16.3—and consequently higher-quality education. Private school students score about 7.5% higher than public students at all grade levels in reading proficiency and about 5% better in mathematics proficiency. Within the private school group, about 1 200 independent schools with no religious affiliations represent the strongest academic element. Their extremely selective admissions policies limit students to the most academically proficient and often the wealthiest and most culturally advantaged applicants. Acceptance rates are as low as 12%, and only slightly more than 1.5% receive need-based financial aid （compared with more than 55% at American colleges and universities）. Many of the schools were founded in the late 19th century as elite preparatoryschools to “feed” graduates into selective American private colleges and universities. Groton School fed students into Harvard, for example; Lawrenceville School into Princeton; and The Taft School and Hotchkiss School into Yale. On average, 60% to 70% of independent school students achieve at the highest level of reading and mathematics proficiency, compared with 40% to 50% at other private schools and 15% at public schools. Independent school students spend nearly 11 hours a week on homework, compared with less than 6.6 hours for students at other private schools and less than 5.5 hours a week for students in public schools.

Private schools as a group spend more per pupil on library facilities—$29 versus$53—and private school students, as a result, spend 2.2 hours on outside, non-school reading, compared with 1.8 hours for public school students. Private schoolers watch only about 14 hours of television each week, compared with 21 hours for public school students.

Although private schools students account for only 11.5% of all schoolchildren in the United States, they fill 40% or more of the seats at the 50 most academically selective colleges. As a reflection of the quality of American education, however, the comparisons are relatively meaningless and do not reflect accurately the quality of education provided by public schools. Under full-inclusion laws, public schools are required to accept all students, including the mildly retarded, disruptive, learning disabled, non-English-speaking and so on, while private schools have the luxury of selectivity that skews characteristics of their students toward greater academic motivation and substantial cultural and economic advantages. It is irrelevant to use comparisons of academic achievement of a student population from the highest socioeconomic backgrounds in an elite group of private independent schools with that of the huge public school population to judge academic standards of American public schools. Even within the private school sector, comparisons of student proficiency between inner-city Roman Catholic schools and costly independent schools in wealthy city neighborhoods and suburbs simply codify the obvious and are meaningless in assessing academic quality of either set of schools.

Education at American private schools is not inexpensive. In addition to paying local and state taxes to support public schools that their children do not attend, parents must also pay the cost of the private schools their children do attend. Tuition averages about $16 500 at private day schools and almost twice that, $32 000, at boarding schools but ranges from as low as$3 000 at some inner-city Roman Catholic elementary schools to $30 000 for some exclusive, academically selective day schools in and around New York City （plus $3 000 for transportation, books and lunch）. Together with room, board and other fees, the costs ofattending the most prestigious, academically selective boarding schools is more than $45 000 a year—about the same as at similarly selective colleges such as Yale, Harvard or Princeton.