ABSTRACT
For more than two decades, social scientists have been debating empirical evidence concerning the benefi ts that students receive from having greater access to private schools as alternatives to public schools. Th is literature grew rapidly following a 1981 report to the National Center for Educational Statistics entitled Public and Private High Schools. In it, James Coleman and several colleagues argued that the achievement of students enrolled in private high schools relative to observationally similar students enrolled in public schools constituted evidence that private schools are superior organizations in terms of their effi ciency in fostering academic achievement. Th is report ignited intense debate and also spawned a large literature on the eff ects of private schooling.2
