Do Catholic High Schools Improve Minority Student Achievement?

Abstract

There is much current debate concerning the role of private schooling in U. S. education. Recent research has purported to show that Catholic schools produce higher achievement in minority high school seniors than do public schools, yet this research has failed to control adequately for student ability, frequently a criterion for selection into such schools. Here, the High School and Beyond data set and path analytic techniques were used to compare black and Hispanic high school seniors’ achievement in public and in Catholic schools. When better measures of ability were added to the causal models, the apparent effect of Catholic schooling on minority achievement was greatly reduced from the former claims. Yet a small, meaningful path still remained. Further analyses suggest that any such Catholic school advantage may be due, in part, to their more stringent curriculum. In any case, the apparent advantage exists only for minority students, and the claimed overall achievement advantage remains unproved.

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