Catholic Schools and Public School Achievement

Abstract

One of the arguments for education vouchers and more private school choice is that more competition from private schools will increase the quality of public education (Friedman 1962; Friedman and Friedman 1981). Recently, New York City’s Mayor Giuliani argued that a private school voucher program in New York City was increasing the quality of public education. His reasoning was that vouchers increased competition between public and private schools (Hartocollis 1997). Similarly, in Chicago there is a recognition that Catholic schools might benefit public schools. For this reason, this past year the head of the public school system in Chicago sent out teams to interview Catholic school principals to learn how to improve public school achievement (The Economist 1998). Apart from recent studies by Hoxby (1994) and Dee (1998) that show that private schools raise the quality of public education, there is very little empirical evidence on this topic. Related studies by Borland and Howsen (1992) and Grosskopf et al. (1998) show that more competition in the public school sector increases the quality of public education.