Content provided in partnership with
Measuring Catholic school performance
Public Interest, Spring, 1997 by Neal Derek
In 1980, the late James S. Coleman, a prominent, University of Chicago sociologist, conducted a comprehensive study of student performance in secondary schools. This study was commissioned by the Department of Education, and many expected it simply to detail what types of school characteristics are associated with student success. Most observers were surprised then when Coleman focused on the importance of a single school characteristic: whether schools are public or private. Further, because Catholic schools constitute a large and relatively homogenous group in the private-school sector, Coleman and his two co-authors, Thomas Hoffer and Sally Kilgore, directed most of their attention to differences between Catholic and public schools. They examined achievement test data and concluded that students in Catholic schools learn more than students in public schools. Moreover, Coleman rejected the claim that Catholic school students perform better on achievement tests simply because they are more talented or come from better families. He argued that the achievement differences between public and Catholic school students are, in significant measure, attributable to the different schools they attend.
This study sparked significant controversy, and, over the next 15 years, numerous studies addressed the issues that Coleman raised. Coleman also continued working on the topic, and, in 1987, he and Hoffer published a book that dealt with both their original data and follow-up data collected after 1980. Taken as a whole, Coleman's work, and subsequent research by other scholars, indicates that, on average, Catholic high-school students learn more than public-school students of similar backgrounds and ability levels. It was also found that Catholic schooling lowers high-school dropout rates.
Schooling in the inner city
I recently completed a new study of the effects of Catholic schooling on high-school graduation rates.(1) My work contains an important qualification, one that is missing from most previous studies of Catholic schooling, but that has important public-policy implications concerning the use of public funds in private schools. In estimating the effects of Catholic schooling on various outcomes, Coleman and others compare the average outcome for all public-school students with the average outcome for Catholic school students. In some instances, they compare average outcomes in the two sectors by race, but they almost never make an attempt to define the effects of Catholic schooling with reference to a particular set of public-school alternatives.
For several reasons, I have adopted a different approach. To begin with, a disproportionate share of Catholic school students live in large cities. In addition, available data suggest that public schools in large cities perform poorly compared to other public schools. Finally, this urban-school performance deficit appears to be most acute in minority neighborhoods. So I set out to determine how differences in Catholic and public-school performance vary across different types of communities, with special attention paid to the experience of Catholic school students in large cities. I divided students into four groups: urban minorities, urban whites, non-urban minorities, and non-urban whites. This allows me to compare Catholic schools and public schools serving similar populations of students.
My data, gathered from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), demonstrate that Catholic schools succeed in communities where public schools fail miserably.(2) The public-school graduation rate for urban minorities is quite low, but the Catholic school graduation rate for urban minorities is actually higher than any of the graduation rates for white students. Ninety-one percent of blacks and Hispanics who attend Catholic secondary schools in urban counties graduate from high school. This figure does not include General Equivalence Diplomas (GED). In contrast, only 62 percent of blacks and Hispanics who attend urban public schools graduate. For urban whites, the Catholic school graduation rate is 87 percent while the public-school graduation rate is 75 percent.(3)
The 26 percent effect
However, critics of Catholic schools are quick to argue that Catholic as well as other private schools do not educate a random sample of students, that Catholic school students are, on average, from better educated and more stable families than public-school students. Therefore, high graduation rates in Catholic schools may arise because Catholic schools select good students, not because Catholic schools offer a better education.
To address this issue, I constructed a statistical model of the determinants of high-school graduation. According to the model, the probability that a student graduates from high school is a function both of his individual characteristics and whether he attends a public or Catholic school. Students who report attending a private school that is not Catholic are eliminated from the sample. I applied this model to all four subsamples of students: urban minorities, urban whites, non-urban minorities, and non-urban whites.
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Reference
- Academe
- African American Review
- African Arts
- African Studies Review
- Afro-Americans in New York Life and History
- Alabama Heritage
- Alabama Review
- American Mathematical Monthly, The
- Anglican Theological Review
- Annals of Dyslexia
- Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ)
- Auk, The
- Australian Journal of Anthropology, The
- Christian Century
- Natural History