Chapter 6: Academic Achievement in Catholic Schools: That’s Not the Issue

In urban America, the Catholic school was and remains a powerful force for education. As costs continue to rise for all educational institutions, this becomes a critical issue for Catholic schools, especially those in high poverty and high minority areas. These schools depend solely on two sources: donations and tuition. These are not abundant for most Catholic high-poverty schools.

The demise of these Catholic schools would be a major setback to the education of minority students, both Black and Hispanic, who appear to do better academically in Catholic schools than their peers do in public schools. A preliminary analysis of the reading and mathematics scores on both the 2002 and 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for fourth and eighth graders indicates that all students do academically better in Catholic schools. (See Appendix, Tables 6.1-6.8.) White, Black, and Hispanic students have higher scale scores and a higher percentage at or above both basic and proficient levels for reading and mathematics in both fourth and eighth grades. These data are reported by the National Center for Educational Statistics (2006, pp. 23-24, 29-30).