During the spring of 1980, 59,000 students from over 1,000 public and private high schools were surveyed to obtain base-year data for a projected longitudinal study entitled "High School and Beyond." Intended to provide background information for making policy decisions, the study focused on four specific policy concerns: discipline, Hispanics, work, and private schools. This document is a verbatim transcript of an April, 1981 conference at which James Coleman, the project's principal investigator, presented his draft report on private schools. The report focused primarily on whether or not the data bore out the claims made favoring or opposing federal support for private education. The central issues in this debate are whether the quality of cognitive and affective learning is greater in private schools than in public schools, and whether private schooling is a divisive force in our society. The conference also included a report by Andrew Greeley of his work on the impact of Catholic education, based on the same survey data. A discussion of both reports by eight experts and responses to questions from the audience, concerned particularly with methodological matters and with the findings' implications for federal educational policy, concluded the conference. (Author/PGD)