Why do at-risk students thrive in Catholic schools?
by Nina H. Shokraii, USA Today
Strong institutional leadership, shared values among the staff about school goals, a safe and orderly environment, and high expectations for students regardless of back ground provide a climate for learning and much-needed discipline.
It is said that economic empowerment today is linked inextricably to education. This means that Congress has the opportunity to give tens of thousands of America's most disadvantaged children a much brighter future.
Attention from across the political and social spectrum is shifting to the astonishing success of inner-city Catholic schools in working with the very kids the public schools have abandoned as uneducable.
An abundance of research comparing public. private, and religious schools shows that Catholic schools improve not only test scores and graduation rates for these youngsters, but their future economic prospects -- and at a substantially lower cost.
In a study published in 1990, for instance, the Rand Corporation analyzed big-city high schools to determine how education for low-income minority youth could be improved. It looked at 13 public, private, and Catholic high schools in New York City that attracted minority and disadvantaged youth. Of the Catholic school students, 75-90% were black or Hispanic. The study found that:
* The Catholic high schools graduated 95% of their students each year, while the public schools graduated slightly more than 50% of their senior class.
* Over 66% of the Catholic school graduates received the New York State Regents diploma to signify completion of an academically demanding college preparatory curriculum, compared to five percent of the public school students.
* 85% of the Catholic high school students took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), compared with 33% of the public high school students.
* The Catholic school students achieved an average combined SAT score of 803, while the public school students' average combined SAT score was 642.
* 60% of the Catholic school black students scored above the national average for black students on the SAT, and more than 70% of public school black students scored below the same national average.
More recent studies confirm these observations.
As parents, politicians, and concerned observers become aware of the benefits of Catholic schooling, particularly for the poor, the rhetoric demanding action builds. Syndicated columnist William Raspberry, a self-described "reluctant convert to school choice." wrote in 1997 that "It seems as obvious for poor children as for rich ones that one-size-fits-all education doesn't make sense."
Furthermore, according to a 1997 survey conducted by Terry Moe, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and John Chubb, founding partner and curriculum director for the Edison Project. 83% of public school parents and 82% of poor inner-city, parents want parochial schools to be included in the choice of institutions to which they can send their children. Lawmakers and educators should use the mounting research comparing the performance of students in private and religious schools with their public school counterparts to promote change in the U.S. educational system.
Not only do Catholic schools offer a safe and cooperative learning environment, they do so at a more reasonable and much lower cost than the public schools. For example:
Holy Angels Elementary School, a 110-year-old institution, is located in the Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood of southside Chicago, where three out of four people live in poverty and violent crime is the rule rather than the exception. Yet, Holy Angels has managed to become one of the strongest academic institutions in the country.
According to a 1994 report published by the Chicago Public Schools, four times as many Holy Angels eighth-graders scored above the national average in math on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills than those attending the area's three public schools. In addition, of the eighth-graders who scored above the national average in reading, twice as many were from Holy Angels as from the public schools. Tuition at Holy Angels is approximately $1,500 a year.
St. Gregory the Great Elementary School on West 90th St. in New York City serves only low-income black children from Harlem and Washington Heights. It outperforms all neighboring public schools and most of the schools in its district. In 1995, 62% of St. Gregory's third-graders were reading above the minimum standard and 92% functioned above the standard in math. St. Gregory charges $1,700 a year in tuition.
East Catholic High School in Detroit, where the principals saved for 12 years just to buy a school bus, has not allowed lack of funding to interfere with its students' academic achievements.
The school serves low-income minorities almost exclusively and has been particularly successful in teaching students who were not performing well in public schools. Nearly 75% of its pupils go to college after graduation. Just 15% of parents paying the $2,000 tuition fee are Catholic.
Holy Angels, St. Gregory the Great, and East Catholic High are typical inner-city Catholic schools. They overcome financial hardships daily to deliver astounding results because they possess the ingredients that make schools work well: strong institutional leadership and school autonomy; shared values among the staff about school goals; a safe and orderly environment: and core curriculum requirements and high expectations for all students regardless of background.
Despite such examples of success, prejudice against allowing inner-city parents to choose Catholic schools for their children continues to linger among policymakers and the education elite.
It often seems that just mentioning the term "Catholic schools" causes many opponents to conjure up images of strict nuns using knuckle-rapping rulers on terrified children. Unlike many government-run schools, Catholic institutions are strong on discipline, but the wholesome discipline at a Catholic school sends a clear message to students, who consequently are able to learn in a safe and orderly environment. Researchers have agreed that the caring staff members at Catholic schools willingly devote their attention to the academic and emotional well-being of students.
This difference is not lost on parents.
In Cleveland, inner-city parents immediately enrolled their children in Catholic schools during its 1996-97 experiment, a popular full-choice program that was struck down by a lower court after a successful first year of operation.
Most of the parents in this program who enrolled their children in the Catholic schools were not Catholic. They selected Catholic schools because, on balance, those institutions deliver impressive results.
Opponents of school choice often state that Catholic schools succeed because they can pick and choose students, have more freedom to dismiss disruptive pupils, and parents are more involved in their children's education. The evidence proves otherwise. According to Lydia Harris, principal of St. Adalbert, a leading Catholic school in Cleveland, "There's no cream on my crop until we put it there. It's a myth that we take discipline problems and throw them out of school.
It's the other way around. I get the kids the public schools can't handle." St. Adalbert is not alone. On average, Catholic high schools dismiss fewer than two students per year, and less than three students per year are suspended.
In 1996, Sol Stern, a contributing editor at New York's City Journal, wrote about how Catholic schools worked to teach their predominantly low-income minority non-Catholic clientele. Stern concluded that Catholic schools are "constantly reminding us that the neediest kids are educable and that spending extravagant sums of money isn't the answer.
No one who cares about reviving our failing public schools can afford to ignore this inspiring laboratory of reform." This is a strong admonition to those in Washington, D.C., who can direct the future of education reform.
The success of these Catholic education "laboratories" has been well-researched. As John DiIulio, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, attests, "The Catholic-school story is as solid as you can make a case.... It's not even close to the warning zone, when it comes to sociological credibility."
