Comparing Public and Private Schools

Student Survey Results

San Antonio School Choice Research Project
October 1997

Executive Summary

This report is the third in a series of research reports on a four-year study of private and public school choice programs in San Antonio, Texas.  The first report examined the characteristics of choosing and nonchoosing families, the factors influencing their schooling decisions, and their levels of satisfaction with their schools.  The second report discussed the characteristics of private and public schools as perceived by the teachers within them.

Two choice programs are the focus of the study.  The first is the privately funded Children's Educational Opportunity (CEO) Foundation program providing partial scholarships to low-income children for use in private and out-of-district public schools (none of the latter participated in the program because of lack of space).   The second is a district-wide multilingual thematic public school choice program offered by the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD).  In addition, inclusion of SAISD allows study of a comparative group of nonchoice attendance-zone schools.

The student survey was administered to 3440 students at nine schools in 1993.  Usable questionnaires were received from 1871 students for a response rate of 54 percent.  Response rates from the nine schools varied from 50 percent to 84 percent.  The schools included the two SAISD multilingual middle schools, two comparable SAISD attendance-zone schools, three Catholic schools, one Baptist school, and one denominational Christian school.  The surveys were administered to all students in grades 6-8 at these schools who returned parent permission slips.  Incentives in the form of candy bars were used to encourage return of parent permission slips and wee given to students who did so regardless of whether parents allowed them to participate or not.  Of the 1871 student respondents, 952 were from the multilingual schools, 586 from the attendance-zone public middle schools, 237 from the Catholic private schools, and 96 from the non-Catholic private schools.  Survey details are included in Appendix A.   The survey instrument asked questions about school characteristics, the character of the instructional program, school climate, parent involvement, and values emphasized in the instructional program.  Students were asked to identify their gender, grade level, ethnicity, and whether or not they participated in the multilingual program (the SAISD multilingual middle schools) or in the CEO scholarship program (private schools).   The surveys were administered by the research team during site visits to the nine schools.  Study findings included the following:

1.  While the vast majority of students at all three types of schools believe they are receiving a good education, students at private and multilingual schools are more likely than students at attendance-zone schools to agree strongly.

2.  Half the students at the three types of schools say that their classes are easy.

3.  Two-thirds of private school students say that their teachers assign a lot of homework, compared with half of the students at the SAISD multilingual schools, and one-third of the students at the attendance-zone schools.

4.  Students at Catholic private schools are much more likely to say their teachers assign a lot of homework (70%) than students at non-Catholic private schools (49%).

5.  Students at all three types of schools generally agree that their teachers are supportive and that students are encouraged to express their views in class.

6.  Half of the students in three types of schools say they discuss controversial issues in class.  SAISD public attendance-zone school students rarely feel comfortable disagreeing with the opinions of their peers.

7.  The majority of the students surveyed are satisfied with their school climate.  Private school students consistently claim a higher level of satisfaction than the other students.

8. For nearly all the school climate questions, the responses of African-American students at both SAISD multilingual and attendance-zone middles schools ranged between ten and twelve percentage points lower than Latino student responses.

9.  Fighting is a more significant problem at the four public schools than at the five private schools.  Over half the students at the SAISD attendance-zone middle schools, one-third of those at the multilingual schools, ;and one-quarter of private school students agree that fighting is a problem   Attendance-zone students are least likely to feel that their school rules are fair.   As noted in the parent survey (see the Baseline Data Report), discipline is a strong factor in motivating parents to seek an alternative to the attendance-zone public school.

10.  While over 90 percent of students at all three types of schools say their parents expect them to get good grades in school, students at private schools are more likely to say that their parents have met and talked with their teachers.   Students are the Catholic schools are more likely than students at non-Catholic private schools to report their parents have met their teachers (95% versus 83%).

11.  One of the most interesting patterns of responses arising from the survey concerns the teaching of values at the nine schools.  The emphasis each of the ten value items receives at the three types of schools is remarkably similar -- except for religion.  Nearly 80 percent of private school students say that religion is addressed often in their classes.  By contrast, public school students list it as the least addressed.  The apparent pervasive influence of religion in the instructional program at private schools supports contentions that publicly funded voucher program funneling money to private sectarian schools inevitably will have the effect of supporting religion.

12.  Other than religion, the private school students list importance of learning as the second most often addressed at their schools, while public school students listed as the most often addressed.

13.  While citizenship responsibilities receives about the same instructional emphasis at all schools (40%), the percentage of students saying learning to live in a democracy is addressed often is higher at the private schools (31%) than at either the multilingual or attendance-zone public schools (19% and 24%, respectively).   These findings suggest that concern expressed by critics of publicly funded voucher systems that private schools will not teach the democratic values necessary for effective citizenship may be misplaced.

14.  Catholic school students showed much higher levels of emphasis for most of the value items than their non-Catholic private school counterparts.