How Different, How Similar? Comparing Key Organizational Qualities of American Public and Private Secondary Schools
October 1996
(NCES 96-322) Ordering information
GPO #: 065-000-00906-4 $6.50
Highlights
Differences in the organization of public and private schools are a focus of school reform discussions. Yet how different or similar public and private schools really are is not well understood. Debates about improving schools often overlook the diversity among private schools, as well as the potential for a high degree of similarity between many public and private schools. Using data from a national sample of secondary schools in the 1990-91 Schools and Staffing Survey, conducted by the (NCES), this report examines organizational differences across public and private schools and among private school types.
- Overall, the results show considerable organizational variation among different types of private schools and some significant similarities between public schools and some types of private schools. For instance, compared to other private schools, Catholic schools often have more similarities with public schools. School sector is not a simple organizational fault line running through the nation’s schools.
- Although religious development of students is the most important goal among many private schools, comparable proportions of public, Catholic, and unaffiliated religious secondary schools hold academic excellence as their main educational goal.
- Although private school principals may hold fewer education credentials than their public school counterparts, there are differences across private school types. Principals of all three types of Catholic secondary schools earned education credentials similar to those found among public school principals.
- Teacher salary schedules are lower in the private sector across school types, but there is a wider range among private schools than public schools.
- The size of the administrative staff within the school relative to the size of the school’s faculty is larger in the private sector than in the public sector. However, there is considerable variation among private school types; for example, Catholic parochial, diocesan, and unaffiliated religious secondary schools have school based administration similar in size to public schools.
- Although private schools tend to have more on-site control of key administrative decisions about teacher hiring, curriculum, and student discipline policies, not all public schools lack this feature. There are some differences in degree of administrative control among types of private schools as well.
- There are few substantial sector differences in graduation requirements.
- After controlling for many other school characteristics such as size, location, and student body composition, information about sector membership and private school type greatly increased prediction of a school’s teacher salaries, but only modestly improved prediction of administrative staff size and the degree to which the principal is a key decisionmaker.
The full report is available for downloading, viewing, and printing in Acrobat PDF format.
Title page (14K) For questions about the content of this report, please contact Stephen Broughman at Stephen.Broughman@ed.gov.