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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In general, the major determinants of children's performance in school are their parents' income and educational levels.  Once you control for those things, the benefits of private school, on average, look pretty small, according to the studies I've read.[/quote]
So would it also be your view that there are few meaningful differences between different public schools for most kids, because the primary determinants of their success will be parents' SES and educational levels?[/quote]

If we measure performance by test scores, I think you can plot those against income pretty well.  Test scores, however, don't predict things like college performance very well, so they are probably a very imperfect metric of life success.

It's certainly possible for schools to do things that enable kids to be more successful than parents' income would predict (or to teach them so badly that they would do worse than predicted on  a test).  However, the things that work (KIPP, AVID program) usually include longer school days and explicit teaching of study skills.  Since these interventions are labor intensive and therefore expensive, most schools don't do them.[/quote]

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