Unasked Questions

Abstract

Scholars should be free to question conventional wisdom, but there should be little cause for celebration when they subsequently confirm it. The recent study by James Coleman,Thomas Hoffer, and Sally Kilgore, Public and Private Schools, confirms the conventional belief that private schools are different from public schools and that students from each perform differently. Since their inception, the two kinds of schools have been perceived as being different by students, parents, the general public, and policymakers.Public and Private Schools' unsurprising finding will unfortunately succeed in provoking controversy over an issue that hardly deserves such attention.