From the NY Times
Re: public education

A large-scale government-financed study has concluded that when it comes to math, students in regular public schools do as well as or significantly better than comparable students in private schools. The study, by Christopher Lubianski and Sarah Theule Lubianski, of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, compared fourth- and and eighth-grade math scores of more than 340,000 students in 13,000 regular public, charter and private schools on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The 2003 test was given to 10 times more students than any previous test, giving researchers a trove of new data.

The researchers said they compared math scores, not reading ones, because math was considered a clearer measure of a school's overall effectiveness.