ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF MINORITY STUDENTS ENROLLED IN CATHOLIC AND IN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of enrollment in Catholic versus public high schools on minority seniors' academic achievement, while controlling for both family background and a measure of student ability. Minority students represented in the study were black high school seniors or Hispanic high school seniors. Although recent research has purported to show that Catholic schools produce higher achievement in minority high school students than do public schools (even when controls were made for family background characteristics), other research has shown the necessity of controlling for student ability in such comparisons of school effects.

Path analysis was used to compare the achievement of black and Hispanic seniors enrolled in Catholic schools to that of similar students enrolled in public schools. Subjects were those black and Hispanic high school seniors from the first wave (1980) of the High School and Beyond longitudinal study who were enrolled in either public or Catholic schools.

Six causal models--three each for the black student subsample (BSS) and for the Hispanic student subsample (HSS)--were devised to determine the influence of school type (public or Catholic) on academic achievement. The first set of analyses was consistent with previous research in controlling only for family background characteristics. In the second set of analyses, a measure of student ability was added to the BSS and the HSS causal models. In the third set, a measure of the time students spent on homework was added to the models to help explain any school effect found.

The introduction of the measure of student ability to the causal models substantially reduced the apparent effect of Catholic schooling on student achievement for both the BSS and the HSS. However, the remaining paths from Catholic schooling to achievement were still meaningful, indicating that Catholic schools may well produce higher achievement than public schools in minority high school seniors. The results also indicated that this Catholic school effect may be partially explained through greater homework demands in Catholic schools.

These results are viewed as tentative, however, as there are other possible explanations for the Catholic school effect found.