They also made comparisons between the tiers of non-selective schools, finding significant differences between student outcomes in the top-tier and bottom-tier schools.
Comparisons were made between students with similar characteristics like prior test scores, parental involvement, and home neighborhood, in order to try to isolate the effect of school attended.
This really doesn’t surprise me in the least. As many people know, for a variety of reasons we moved our children from a hyper-selective, ultra-high-quality (and high reputation) private school (median SAT 1320/1600) to a modestly selective, high-quality public magnet (median SAT 1100/1600). We would not even have considered doing that had we not been reasonably certain that our children could get a high-quality education at the public school, and they did. There was a small, but not negligible, group of students at the public school who were demographically indistinguishable from students at the private school, including a handful of students like our children who had moved between the two schools or between similar schools. The college admissions results for those students were essentially indistinguishable from the results for their counterparts at the private school. (Not to mention graduation rates, and other indicators.)
I’m sure there would have been a difference if the fancy private school had been compared to a lower-quality public school. But where would the children to do that comparison have come from? People whose children have high test scores, and who have high involvement in their children’s education, and who live in the same neighborhood with people whose children go to highly selective schools, go to great lengths to avoid sending their children to lousy schools. They often do things like move to better school districts, or find a decent Catholic school, whatever, to make certain their child has opportunities commensurate with his or her potential.
High performing students, who can attend very good public schools, do as well as those that attend “selective-enrollment” schools.
This really isn’t a surprise. The study really addresses the choice of attending a relatively high performing local high school, or a selective-enrollment school. The finding is that there isn’t much difference in outcomes (but there is some advantages to the more selective school).
As @JHS we faced a similar choice. Send the kids across town to an very selective public magnet school(highest rated HS in the state), or put them into the rigorous AICE program at our local High School. We went with the local high school and it’s really worked out for us.
Of course, if our local HS had been a low performing school, we would have shipped both kids off to the magnet school. 
^ We made the opposite choice for our younger child. Although the local public was fine academically none of us cared for the social culture at that school. He was interested in attending the magnet even though it was a long commute, and he would not be a superstar there. He got a terrific education and we have no regrets.
Right. People make choices, and they make trade-offs, but there are some important limits. They don’t tend to make choices that are irrational or fundamentally contrary to their values (and their community’s values).
A number of the relatively wealthy suburbs of my city have some of the best open-enrollment public schools in the country, and also first-rate, highly-selective private schools. Lots of people who live there send their kids to the public schools, and lots send their kids to one of the private schools, notwithstanding the availability of good public schools. Both sets of parents tend to be happy with their choices. Many times, they may be making their decision based on qualities of the kids themselves that are not picked up by demographics – kids who go with the flow vs. kids who need more attention, kids who are a little snobby vs. kids who can’t stand snobs, kids who need flexibility vs. kids who can do well with regimentation – so that in fact kids are place where they will get the best results, but for reasons no study will validate. In any event, there won’t be significant differences between groups of kids with the same demographics and test scores based on which type of school they attended.
Which is not to say there won’t be differences between the schools – of course there will be, the private school kids are from much wealthier families, on average, and have much higher average test scores going in, especially if they are from less wealthy families and receiving scholarship help, while the public schools reflect the whole community but over-weighted to the less wealthy and lower scoring. But the differences will disappear if you hold wealth and testing constant. If that weren’t the case, you would never see a decent-sized population of wealthy, high-scoring kids in the public schools.
I am with @JHS.
Nothing wrong with prestigious prep or private HSs though. Some families do find them good ways of providing quality education to their kids.
In contrast, I am fond of having my kids attend our local, rather decent public HS. The quality of education is good enough. I also believe a more diverse student body at a typical public HS enables kids to learn about compassion toward those less fortunate kids and their families.
Is mine the only family that allowed the kids to decide whether to attend the good neighborhood high school or to apply to our district’s selective-entry high school programs?
It seems as though the decisions were made by the parents in all the other families represented here.
Maybe we’re freaks.
Our decision was completely driven by parental concerns, so, no, we didn’t ask, we told. That’s not to say I would be opposed to giving kids a choice. If we had given our kids a choice, they wouldn’t have made the one we did. We and they both understood that, and they understood what our reasons were. (The reasons included educational considerations for one of them, but that was only one of several reasons. If we knew then what we know now, the educational considerations for the other child – which we barely considered – would have been a really strong reason for the move.)
There were some tough moments with both of them, but things worked out well.
We sent our kids to the barely-okay local school, and they did fine in admissions to college. We figured that they were bright enough to do well, and we could augment to some extent. They would have been appalled and angry if we told them they “HAD” to go to a private school; it was outside the norm in their circles. It worked out fine for us, though I can totally understand someone else doing things differently.
I wasn’t talking about private school. I was talking about selective-entry public high school programs – exam schools, magnet programs, and the like. Of course, this option is not available in all school districts. But in our district, several such options are available – if you can get admitted to them.
One of my kids didn’t want to apply to any of the special high school programs. We respected that. He went to the neighborhood high school (which is pretty good). The other kid wanted to apply to a selective-entry International Baccalaureate program. She got in to the program and attended it. Different strokes for different folks. In both cases, the kids’ choices turned out fine.
It’s funny how picking a high school can be almost as painful as selecting a college…
We got both kids to agree with our thinking.
This study was not comparing public schools to private schools. It divided public schools into four tiers(selective, top, mid, and bottom), and then ran a linear regression to determine the effect of going to a higher vs lower tier public school within the same public school system CPS. Given that the average ACT of the selective school cohorts was about 24, even the selective schools were probably only moderately selective.
Soooo…would the same apply to an elite private university versus an honors program at a good state school?
You could try reading the 52 pages of the “Elite/Ivy grads really do earn more” thread. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other, beyond believing the Krueger studies were obviously nonsensical to anyone that bothered to read them.
We absolutely let our kids choose which high school to go to- local good public, local magnet. It is them that has to spend 4 years there.
I’m not an expert on Chicago’s public schools (and don’t have access to the report that article is based on, it requires a ID and password),but…
The average ACT scores at Northside College Preparatory HS and Walter Payton College Prep (which I’m sure are included in the “selective” category for Chicago public HS’s) is 30.
And I’m sure Stuyvesant is more selective than either of these two schools, as I’m sure they are both more selective that our local North Florida selective magnet school. None of which impacts the premise of the report.
@roethlisburger Is that because the grads of elite colleges were elite students when they entered?
Our kids made their own decisions. The oldest (D) had no interest in applying to the magnet. She was a top student, but wanted to be with her friends, didn’t want to deal with the commute, etc. Our other child happily applied and was accepted. He was willing to accept the drawbacks.
To some extent, it probably is.
The graduates of elite magnet high schools were elite students when they entered, too.
This thread is interesting to me. We chose a private school for our kids. When we chose the school our oldest son was in middle school. We chose the school for the same reason we encourage our kids to choose colleges. We looked at what kind of education we thought they would receive and what kinds of ECs were available for them. We wanted them to get a good education and be in a healthy social environment. The school they attend prides itself on educating the whole child.
We figured that if they got a good education and were happy they college stuff would sort itself out. Both of the older boys wound up at their first choice college. We didn’t move them just for college but it turns out that the school they attended really helps the kids find the right college. There are lots of kids who wind up at the tippy top schools but also lots who wind up at great schools where they are successful (they graduate).
Around here the public schools offer choices. Kids can apply to selective schools but I think they get the same crappy education as the rest of the kids in my local district. I don’t know many kids from our local public schools who go on to top 50 universities other than UF. I envy those of you who can choose between high quality public schools. I hope that the vast majority of you choose the school where your child will get the best education for them.