High School Achievement/Catholic High Schools and Minority Students
Hassenger, Robert
Schools that make a difference HIGH SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT Public, Catholic, and Private Schools Compared James S. Coleman, Thomas Hoffer, and Sally Kilgore Basic Books, $20.75, 289 pp. CATHOLIC...
...Coleman did not say that, and his latest report is an exploration of the ways they do...
...Coleman achieved widespread attention with the appearance of the Report on the Survey of Equality of Educational Opportunity, mandated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964...
...Perhaps the most significant point Greeley makes is the impact of Catholic schools on "triply disadvantaged" students: those from minority groups and low-income whites, whose parents did not attend college, and whose previous academic records led to a placement of them in general (i.e., non-academic) tracks...
...schools is no greater and no less than it would be if there were no private schools, and their students were absorbed into the public sector, distributed among schools as public sector black and white students are now distributed...
...But they are questions neither public nor private educators can afford to ignore...
...The NCES research did not generate the kind of data that make it possible to account for these results...
...It is unfortunate that they were first released at a time (April, 1981) when the debate about tuition tax credits and school voucher plans was in full rhetorical flight...
...But the conclusion that many drew from the report was that "schools make no difference...
...But contrary to expectations was the finding that Catholic schools are more likely to be located in suburban than urban areas: three-fifths of the schools, and more than two-thirds of the students, are found in the suburbs...
...Cole-man's suggestion - based on a "hypothetical experiment" that estimated relationships between family income and private (including Catholic) school enrollment, using a very small sample - that tuition tax credits or educational vouchers would more likely increase private school enrollments among black and Hispanic than among white students caused real alarm, and his argument assumes that tuition, school size, admission policies, and other variables would remain insignificantly changed, which is unlikely...
...have attempted to statistically control for this difference, however, and conclude that "the segregation of black and white students in U.S...
...But there is less income and racial/ethnic segregation in the Catholic than in the public schools...
...And "Catholic schools seem less successful in producing high academic scores for young people who are college bound from college-educated families...
...Their publication in final form may be no less provocative than the "Coleman Report" of 1966 or Father Greeley's novels of concupiscent cardinals...
...Furthermore...
...But, at a time when religious orders are divesting themselves of schools this is another irony in the fire...
...One variable neither Coleman nor Greeley was able to study is the degree of parental commitment to education, and their expectations of their children...
...Comparison of achievement levels for students from different backgrounds is smaller at the senior than at the sophomore level in the Catholic schools, while these differences are greater at the senior level in public schools.Achievement becomes increasingly alike from sophomore to senior year, in the Catholic schools...
...Comparatively few black Americans are Catholic, yet Coleman et al...
...He does not attempt an explanation - or even a satisfactory description - of their "superior community effectiveness...
...What is in danger of being lost in the brouhaha is the significant finding that schools - public and private - can make a difference, and the careful attempts by Coleman et al...
...Private schools" was a heterogeneous category, and the comparatively small sample size (27) of non-Catholic private schools led to an-emphasis on the comparison of 893 public and 84 Catholic schools...
...Their books raise as many questions as they answer...
...But so do low-income whites...
...and Greeley to determine the most significant variables associated with school success...
...His presentation is intended to show that the public/Catholic school differences are indeed education - notfam-ily background - effects...
...note that blacks have the "highest absolute rate of enrollment in Catholic schools, at low as well as high income levels and among both Catholics and non-Catholics," higher than, e.g., His-panics, a much greater proportion of whom are Catholic...
...It is insufficient to control for income, since families from the same income level may be significantly dissimilar in their willingness to sacrifice to pay for private education...
...Black and Hispanic students do perform better in Catholic schools...
...Cognitive outcomes" are.consistently higher for the Catholic and other private schools, whether the comparison is among sophomores, among seniors,or sophomore to senior gains, and these differences persist when parental income, education, and (Hispanic) ethnicity are statistically controlled...
...Even more striking, there is a "greater homogeneity of achievement of students with different parental education levels in Catholic than in public schools...
...There are considerable geographical differences in the proportion of schools that are non-public...
...Among the measurable differences in school functioning were in the "degree of discipline and order," amount of homework assigned, and in students' perceptions of teacher interest, all higher in private (in large part, it will be recalled, Catholic) schools...
...This is not surprising...
...Robert Hassenger IT IS not what would have been expected, as recently as a decade and a half ago...
...What goes on in the public and Catholic schools, and what comes out ("functioning" and "outcomes...
...The great majority of Catholic students are in public schools, of course...
...Catholic education "continues to do well what it always did well, much to the benefit of newer upwardly mobile (often non-Catholic) students...
...The achievement of blacks is closer to that of whites, and the achievement of Hispanics is closer to that of non-Hispanics in Catholic than in public schools...
...In absolute terms, however, Catholic schools enroll only about half as high a proportion of blacks as the public schools (and other private schools, only about a quarter as high a proportion...
...These are important findings...
...Now, the authors of these volumes must take pains to demonstrate the soundness of their methods in re-search showing the apparent superiority of Catholic schools...
...To some extent they are, of course...
...Another theme that recurs - even in 117 pages, Greeley flogs some of his points so much that one wonders who he thinks his readers are - is the particular effectiveness of schools administered by religious communities...
...Then, supporters of and researchers on Catholic education were pleased to have evidence that parochial schools were not divisive, and were as academically respectable as their public counterparts...
...Greeley is, of course, better known to Commonweal readers as a sociologist, who carried out some significant research on Catholic schools and colleges in the 1960s (and who has since written on a wide range of topics...
...to conclude: Thus we have the paradoxical result that the Catholic schools come closer to the American ideal of the "common school," educating all alike, than do the public schools...
...Children from such families would like be more highly motivated, and have greater self-expectations...
...This is not because they have smaller class sizes (they are larger, in Catholic schools), are more competitive (no evidence of this), or because they are working with predominantly white, middle-class students from families with higher educational backgrounds...
...Greeley calls attention to the disciplinary climate noted by Coleman et al., in Catholic schools, and stresses their higher "quality of teaching," although it should be emphasized that the sources of these data are students' perceptions...
...Indeed, "Catholic schools are only barely comparable to public schools in their impact on young people from college-educated families...
...Catholic and other private schools are more often found in the New England and Middle Atlantic States than in the South or West (e.g., 17 per cent in Connecticut, 1.5 per cent in Wyoming...
...Within the Catholic schools, over 90 percent of the students are Catholic...
...Critics will point out that, with small proportions, this is to be expected...
...CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOLS AND MINORITY STUDENTS Andrew M. Greeley Transaction Books, $4.95, 117 pp...
...But internally, the private sector is less segregated then the public sector...
...a similar result holds for race and ethnicity...
...Greeley's book is basically a gloss on and highlighting of these findings, although he provides some additional information on the, costs of Catholic schooling...
...When it is recalled that Catholic schools are more commonly suburban than urban, and speculating that these parents are to some extent themselves the (successful) products of Catholic schools, this is somewhat ironic...
...Coleman et al...
...Upwardly mobile" is determined primarily by the reported college aspirations of Catholic school students and their parents, who themselves did not attend college...
...Only about ten percent of this country's schools are private, and about a third of these are Catholic (although they enroll two-thirds of all private school students...
...One can only conjecture about this, without adequate data to test the hypothesis, but it would be surprising if some self-selection were not operating to at least partially account for public/ private school differences...
...contains sections on the student composition of public and private schools, the resources that go into them, the functioning of each type of school, and the "outcomes" of public and private schooling...
...But Greeley would argue - and what data there are support him - that not all Catholic school effects are input effects: the schools do make a difference (and at an average per pupil cost of $1,097, compared to $1,807 and $3,598 for public and other private schools, respectively...
...Probably the most striking finding of the report is that private (including Catholic schools produce "better cognitive outcomes" (assessed by standardized reading, vocabulary, and mathematics tests, and aspirations for higher education) than public schools...
...But it is not with these students that the Catholic schools are apparently most successful...
...In their widely-cited but little-read report, Coleman and his colleagues concluded that, as none of the school variables they measured appeared to make significant contributions to differential student achievement, when family backgrounds were statistically controlled, busing for desegregation would likely have a positive effect on school "outcomes" for children from less-advantaged - their emphasis was class, not race - backgrounds, with no negative effects for middle-class children...
...Coleman et al...
...This leads Coleman et al...
...The reports - based on research commissioned in 1980 by the National Center for Education Statistics from a longitudinal study of 57,728 students in 1,015 high schools - were the focus of considerable controversy (and some disbelief) when released in preliminary versions in the Spring of 1981...
Vol. 109 • November 1982 • No. 19
