Catholic School Lessons for the Public Schools

School Administrator, August, 1997 by Peter B. Holland

Everyone has an answer for how to improve public schools. Some say voucher plans are the only route to wholesale reform. Others push interdistrict choice or decentralized decision making or pledge allegiance to total quality management. And, of course, charter schools are the answer of the moment.

To navigate through this maelstrom, superintendents and their boards must sort out the educational, philosophical, and political merits of these proposals. At the same time, research since the mid-1960s has identified one group of schools that has posted some surprisingly effective results.

Based on my experience as a researcher of Catholic schools and an administrator in both Catholic and public schools, I suggest that some practices and policies that work well in Catholic schools are portable to public schools.

Pronounced Findings

First, a brief overview of Catholic schools. In 1995, nearly 2 1/2 million students in grades K-12 were educated in 8,300 Catholic schools. (By comparison, public schools educated more than 44 million students in K-12 in 1995.) The number of students enrolled in Catholic schools has declined by more than 50 percent since 1965, resulting in a third fewer schools.

One reason for the declining enrollment is that many Catholic schools are located in urban areas, and new Catholic schools have not been established in the suburbs where Catholic families have moved. Less than 2 1/2 percent of existing Catholic schools were founded since 1980, a much lower rate of establishing new schools than that of private and public schools.

Research over the last 30 years by James Coleman, Thomas Hoffer, Sally Kilgore, and Andrew Greeley showed higher academic achievement for Catholic school students after controlling for family background characteristics. These results were even more pronounced for minority students in Catholic high schools. Research that I helped to conduct (with Anthony Bryk and Valerie Lee) in 1993 showed that Catholic high schools achieved relatively high levels of student learning, distributed this learning more equitably with regard to race and class than in the public sector, and generally sustained high levels of teacher commitment and student engagement.

What are Catholic schools doing that account for these results? Can these practices be replicated in the public sector?

Key Attributes

Our research indicates that Catholic schools share five organizational characteristics that account for their unusual effectiveness.

* First, Catholic high schools offer and require a core academic curriculum for all students.

Every student is expected to take a common set of courses partly because of resource constraints, but also because faculty and administrators believe such a curriculum constitutes a proper humanistic education.

Most Catholic high schools require four years of English, math, science, social studies, and religion, as well as two years of foreign language study. Electives are limited in scope and number. In the seven Catholic high schools we visited in our study, required courses ranged from a low of 14 of 21 needed for graduation at one school to a high of 20 of 22 needed for graduation at another. The so-called general track in Catholic schools is virtually an academic track, and few Catholic schools offer programs in vocational courses or education in the trades.

Some students may begin the curriculum at a more advanced level and proceed in more depth, but the same basic academic goals apply for all students. Although some tracking and ability grouping occurs, the negative consequences of such practices are limited by the few levels offered. In addition, school policies allocate the limited fiscal and human resources to ensure all students make satisfactory progress.

This emphasis on core curriculum is reinforced by the Catholic schools' lack of resources to offer broadly differentiated programs. Research by the College Board, among others, indicates the positive correlation between the number and quality of academic courses taken and higher test scores.

* Second, the academic structure of Catholic schools is embedded within a larger communal organization involving students, teachers, and parents.

This communal structure has three characteristics. The first is an extensive array of school activities that provide numerous opportunities for personal interactions and shared experiences for adults and students. School events such as athletics, dramatics, music programs, liturgies, and retreat programs create high levels of participation and afford opportunities for student-teacher experiences.

The second feature is the extended scope of the teacher's professional responsibilities. More than subject matter specialists, teachers in Catholic high schools are coaches, activity moderators, and advisers who work with students beyond the classroom.

The final feature is a set of shared beliefs about what students should learn, the proper nor s of instruction, and how people should work and relate to one another. The philosophy of the school underscores these shared beliefs.