In Long-Term Trends in Private School Enrollments by Family Income, the authors described private elementary school enrollment trends based on data from a series of national surveys conducted from 1968 to 2013. The study was based on representative datasets that contained people’s responses to questions important to the analysis. The authors wanted to analyze current trends because they believe that economic inequalities between families risk undermining the potential for intergenerational economic mobility (Murnane & Reardon, 2018). In addition, they were convinced that wealthy parents may not be interested in developing the public school system because they prefer to send their children to private schools (Murnane & Reardon, 2018). The weaknesses and limitations found in the article in general do not affect the validity and possibility of further use of the results obtained.
The authors were able to find that the level of coverage of families with high income has remained fairly stable, while the coverage of families with average income decreased. Differences were found in enrollment trends depending on the ethnicity of the students (Murnane & Reardon, 2018). In addition, dissimilarities were discovered by urbanicity and region of the country, which disparities in income cannot explain (Murnane & Reardon, 2018). Among the materials used were 46 October Current Population Surveys, four IPUMS data sets, 8 National Education Household Surveys. Three National Center for Education Statistics longitudinal data sets, 13 Private School Universe Surveys, and six surveys conducted for Phi Delta Kappan were also utilized in the research.
One of the authors is Richard Marnein, who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has made important contributions to the contemporary understanding of education policy and the relationship between economics and education. Another author is Sean Reardon, an American sociologist who now teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Both authors’ interest in economics and education explains why this research topic was chosen – the scholars wanted to understand how increasing inequality in education has led to increased segregation of public schools. Given that not enough studies currently exist on this issue, the authors fill the gap by presenting their own analysis.
In order to formulate consistent conclusions, the authors conducted the analysis necessary to replicate sample sizes and descriptive statistics in published tables based on CPS data for each relevant year. The authors used validated data analysis techniques, such as logistic regression models and Stata software, in cases where the necessary information was not available (Murnane & Reardon, 2018). The findings of the authors are consistent and verifiable, which gives reason not to doubt the reliability of the data. The detected patterns are also explained by mathematical calculations and in terms of a simple economic model of families (Murnane & Reardon, 2018). The unequal distribution of private school students is logical, as parents seek to maximize their family’s well-being given the constraints they face.
Despite the apparent reliability of the trends identified by the authors, they still cannot be perceived as exact causal relationships, as the researchers themselves pointed out. Thus, their conclusions remain mere hypotheses, supported by descriptive data. Undoubtedly, more research is needed to confirm or refute the scientists’ conclusions. Other authors who conducted studies on the same topic have found the same trends: the risk of deterioration in the quality of education due to economically sound choice of place of study (Huber et al., 2020; Nadori et al., 2020). Nevertheless, Murnane and Reardon were able to show that the distribution of private elementary school students in the United States has become much more segregated, which cannot but affect the emergence of educational inequality.
References
Huber, E., Gunderson, J., & Stephens, J. D. (2020) Private education and inequality in the knowledge economy. Policy and Society, 39(2), 171-188. Web.
Murnane, R. J., & Reardon, S. F. (2018). Long-term trends in private school enrollments by family income. AERA Open, 4(1), 1-24. Web.
Nadori, N., Bouylmani, A. & Erguig, R. (2020). Schools and inequality: A correlational analysis of public and private school students’ reading achievement. Journal of Applied Language and Culture Studies, 3, 113-135.