Since Plato and Aristotle, political theorists have discussed the important role of education in forming democratic citizens. They disagree, however, over whether public or private schools are more effective at nurturing citizenship. We conduct a statistical meta-analysis to identify the average association between private schooling and measures of four central civic outcomes: political tolerance, political participation, civic knowledge and skills, and voluntarism and social capital. Our search identifies 13,301 initial target studies, ultimately yielding 531 effects from 57 qualified studies drawing from 40 different databases. Using Robust Variance Estimation, we determine that, on average, private schooling boosts any civic outcome by 0.055 standard deviations over public schooling. Religious private schooling, particularly, is strongly associated with positive civic outcomes. The evidence is especially strong that private schooling is correlated with higher levels of political tolerance and political knowledge and skills. We discuss heterogeneities, robustness checks, and implications.

自柏拉图和亚里士多德以来，政治理论家一直在讨论教育在形成民主公民方面的重要作用。然而，他们对于公立学校还是私立学校在培养公民意识方面是否更有效存在分歧。我们进行了一项统计荟萃分析，以确定私立学校与四个核心公民成果衡量标准之间的平均关联：政治宽容、政治参与、公民知识和技能以及自愿主义和社会资本。我们的搜索确定了 13,301 项初始目标研究，最终从 40 个不同数据库中的 57 项合格研究中得出了 531 项效果。使用稳健方差估计，我们确定，平均而言，私立学校教育比公立学校教育提高了 0.055 个标准差。宗教私立学校尤其与积极的公民成果密切相关。特别有力的证据表明，私立学校教育与较高水平的政治宽容以及政治知识和技能相关。我们讨论异质性、稳健性检查和影响。