THAT’S WHY THEY’RE CALLED
THAT’S WHY THEY’RE CALLED “PRIVATE” SCHOOLS Here’s a great example of the arrogance of some reporters: private secondary schools are being pressured to release “accountability” type data and they’re pushing back.
Reshma Memon Yaqub, a writer for Worth magazine, graduated from a public high school — Churchill in Montgomery County — and is accustomed to such schools providing all kinds of information to reporters. But when she began to contact private high schools for an article on getting students into Ivy League colleges, she said, “the door was slammed in my face.”…
“It was as if these schools felt it was their God-given right to charge $20,000 a year . . . and not be accountable to the public for the results,” she said. [emphasis added]
They’re private schools. They don’t have to be accountable to anyone except the students and their parents. The article goes on to basically warn private schools that vouchers can spell the end of their independence.
Education experts say that if tax-supported private school tuition vouchers and other ways of funding private schools with government money become popular, private schools that receive such money will be obliged to report test scores, teacher qualifications and graduation rates, as public schools do now.
“I think it’s very hard to argue that private schools receiving public funds should not be subject to the same information requirements as traditional public schools,” said Doug Harris, assistant professor of education and economics at Florida State University and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
BONUS: Lisa Snell is quoted in the article.