Institutional Racism

higher grades, but because black private school students learn at a substantially higher
rate than black public school students. Economist Derek Neal has found that black
students attending urban private schools are far more likely to complete high school,
gain admission to college, and complete college than similar students in urban public
schools.Similarly, in a study comparing graduation rates of all Milwaukee public school
students (of all income levels) with those of the low-income participants in the city's
private school voucher program, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Jay Greene found
the voucher students were more than one-and-a-half-times as likely to graduate as
public school students.
However, others argue that private schools actually perpetuate and exacerbate the
achievement gap. Without controlling for student background differences, private
schools scored higher than public schools.
However, a study showed that demographic differences between students in public and
private schools more than account for the relatively high scores of private schools. In
fact, after controlling for these differences, the advantageous "private school effect"
disappears and even reverses in most cases. Private schools have selective
acceptance and a different demographic. Another criticism is that private schools only
serve a small percent of the population and therefore cannot make a huge effect on
closing the achievement gap.
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