Some wise people had these comments about children:
Norman Douglas: If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.
Malcolm Forbes: Re raising kids: Love, without discipline, isn’t.
Robert Heinlein: Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
Art Buck: How soon do we forget what elders used to know: That children should be raised, not left like weeds to grow.
Catholic schools tend to have a stronger sense of community, high academic standards and a committed faculty. Students are disciplined and orderly. Academic achievement is notable among all students, minorities and non-minorities.
A 1990 RAND study of Catholic schools and public schools in New York City that has stood the test of time highlights the educational outcomes. Nina Shokraii-Rees summarized the differences:
1) Catholic high schools graduated 95% of their students each year; the public schools graduated only slightly more than 50% of their senior classes.
2) More than 66% of the Catholic school graduates received the New York Regents diploma; only about 5% of the public school students received that distinction.
3) Catholic school students achieved an average combined SAT I score of 803; the average combined SAT I score for public school students was 642.
4) Sixty percent of African-American Catholic students scored above the national average for African-American students on the SAT I; less than 30% of public school African-American students scored above the average.
Even when the selectivity bias of leaving the worst-performing and worst-behaved students in public schools was taken into account, African-American and Hispanic students attending urban Catholic schools are more than twice as likely to graduate from college as their counterparts in public schools.
Another later study by Paul Peterson of Harvard University and the Hoover Institute, and Herbert Walberg of the University of Illinois compared the costs and performance of students in 88 public and 77 Catholic elementary and middle schools in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Peterson and Walberg found that Catholic schools are at least twice as efficient and their students perform better on state tests.
To ensure a fair comparison, Peterson and Walberg deducted all expenditures that did not have a private school counterpart, including all monies spent on transportation, special education, school lunch and associated bureaucratic functions.
After removing all of those expenditures-which represented nearly 40% of the cost of running the New York City public schools-the analysis showed public schools still spent more than $5,000 per pupil each year, compared to $2,400 spent by Catholic schools.
The test scores were equally revealing. Even excluding test scores by special education students, and making adjustments for race and ethnicity, Catholic schools outperformed public schools on state-administered math and reading tests.
(Editor’s Note: This is Part 3 of a 4-Part Article.)
Copyright © 2008 Ed Bagley
By: Ed Bagley
Posts Tagged ‘Catholic Education’
Catholic Education – Thoughts About Children and Facts About Catholic Education Outcomes – Part 3
February 26th, 2010Catholic Education – When It Comes to Learning Environment, You Reap What You Sow – Part 2
February 21st, 2010
I believe a Catholic education is better and less expensive than a public school education. Here are 2 salient reasons why:
1) Public schools must open their doors to all children by law. They must provide for the very brightest of students with excellent study habits, for the most disadvantaged of students with profound learning disabilities, for the most disadvantaged of students from low-income, government-dependent families, and for the most unlucky of students whose parents have horrific and destructive habits, including alcohol, drug and sex addictions as well as being sometimes unemployed, lazy and stupid.
If you think having to admit any and all levels of students raises a school’s average student SAT scores and associated test scores you are dead wrong.
Catholic schools are generally not set up to deal with students with extraordinary problems; they probably do not have, for example, a special education program and the staffing to support it.
Catholic schools do not have to admit any or all students who apply; they can test students and only admit those students without significant problems. This is why average test scores at Catholic schools will always be significantly higher than in public education schools.
2) Parents who send their children to Catholic schools pay all of the taxes that other parents pay to send their children to public schools, and they also pay the tuition required at Catholic schools, which is a significant investment that could amount to thousands of dollars more every year.
With this kind of monetary commitment from Catholic school parents, you can bet that when there is a problem with their child and the principal calls their parents, a parent is on the school doorstep quick time. Students get straightened out in a hurry by their parents.
Parents and teachers are generally both on the same page in Catholic schools, not allowing the student involved to play one against the other.
Catholic school parents know that if their child becomes a troublemaker because of attitude or behavioral problems, he or she can be kicked out of school or expelled in a heartbeat, and never be allowed to return.
Snotty, bratty, nasty, naughty, abusive, uncooperative children are shown the door so learning can continue to take place in a positive, upbeat, friendly, healthy environment. There are no guns, no alcohol, no drugs, no fighting and no filthy language allowed on campus. Period. Comply or be gone. Be good or be gone.
It is no revelation why the learning environment is more productive and the students are more protected from a liberal, secular progressive society that has all but eliminated God, discipline, accountability and manners from public school education. You reap what you sow.
Public school teachers and administrators cannot discipline children, cannot hold children accountable, cannot touch children and are required to practically parent and baby-sit some students, and we wonder why children do not perform as well in public schools.
(Editor’s Note: This is Part 2 of a 4-Part Article.)
Copyright © 2008 Ed Bagley
By: Ed Bagley
