These profiles of students' family background who attend public and private schools demonstrate that school choice is a combination of parents' values towards education and their socio-economic backgrounds and capabilities. Teacher performance (Quality of teaching)

Quality of education is also linked to teacher performance, specifically, the competence and quality of teaching that teachers give their students. Teachers with impressive or highly commendable qualifications tend to teach at private schools instead of public schools. Thus, it can be surmised that because of teacher "quality" based on credentials are higher in private schools than public schools, students in private schools are getting quality education than public schools.

However, this assumption is disproved in Xu's (2006) study, which determined if teachers' credentials translate to quality of teaching. The researchers found that teachers' credentials "shows no relationship" with students' (improvement in) academic performance (355). Thus, teaching quality assumed to be driven by teacher credentials do not necessarily translate to improved academic performance of students. This also disproves the notion that since private schools are able to hire teachers with more impressive credentials than public schools, the latter would have a lower education quality than the former.

This finding provides an important insight into the role that teachers play in providing quality education in whatever type of educational institution -- whether public or private. It is the teaching quality variable that levels the standard between public and private schools -- that, despite differences in their curriculum, system, student profile and culture, teachers and teaching quality will not be school type dependent as other factors relevant to identifying the distinction between the two (i.e., public and private schools).

Students' academic performance

In a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, it was determined that at the middle school level, school type has no bearing on students' academic performance. This report took into consideration school characteristics such as "teacher experience, school location and school size" to be not significantly related to students'...

However, not taking into account these characteristics, or removing these school characteristics as variables in the study, it was determined that private school students performed better in reading and mathematics subjects/courses than public school students (NAEP, 2006 & Mendez, 2005). (This finding is still relevant only to middle school level students). Although to a certain extent this provides empirical evidence about the quality of education provided in private schools, the report emphasized the importance of taking these findings in the context of the study, specifically, the kind of data and method used for the study. The report cautions its readers and end-users to consider that data used for the analyses as obtained using "observational" methods rather than experimental, "so the estimated effects should not be interpreted in terms of causal relationships" (v).
Conclusion

This analysis on the similarities and differences between private and public schools demonstrate that among the variables studies, students' profiles and teaching quality are the only variables found to be significantly contributing to their differences and similarities, respectively. Students' academic performance is still a variable that is not strongly established to be significantly influenced by school type.

References

"Comparing private schools and public schools using hierarchical linear modeling." (2006). Published by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, U.S. Department of Education.

Goldring, E. And K. Phillips. (2008). "Parent preferences and parent choices: the public-private decision about school choice." Journal of Educational Policy, Vol. 23, No. 3.

Mendez, T. (2005). "Public schools: do they outperform private ones?" Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 97, Issue 11.

Toppo, G. (2010). "Recession fuels shift from private to public schools." Available at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-01-06-1Apublicprivate06_CV_N.htm

Xu, Z. And C. Gulosino. (2006). "How does teacher quality matter? The effect of teacher-parent partnership on early childhood performance in public and private schools." Education Economics, Vol. 14, No. 3.