Achievement Growth in Public and Catholic Schools

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. GROWTH IN PUBLIC AND CATHOLIC SCHOOLS 75in method indicated some robustness of the inferences. However, for testing the inferences with longitudinal data, these variations can become problematic. Definitions and procedures necessitate some arbitrary decisions, ways of approaching a problem differ, and styles of reporting results and pursuing a sequence of findings differ. To resolve each of these differences by compromise would be to lose many of the virtues of the two approaches. Therefore, to compare the longitudinal and crosssectional results of both analyses, it appears most sensible to carry forward both techniques.The next section is a longitudinal extension of the Greeley (1982) analysis, and the section following that is a longitudinal extension of the CHK (1982b) analysis. There are two modifications: (1) Although the Greeley crosssectional analysis used unweighted data, the longitudinal extension uses data weighted to represent the U.S. student population; and (2) although the CHK cross-sectional analysis compared both Catholic schools and other private schools tQ public schools, the longitudinal analysis is limited to Catholic schools because of the small size and heterogeneity of the sample of non-Catholic private schools.The final section of the article examines the consistencies and inconsistencies between the two analytical sections and draws together the results from both approaches. It also examines studies by Alexander and Pallas (1985) and Willms (1985) and discusses the points of convergence and divergence between their results and those presented here. LONGITUDINAL EXTENSION OF THE GREELEY ANALYSISIn this section, we extend the analysis begun in Greeley (1982). The methodological skepticism of that study is retained: We assume the presence of a school effect only after we have attributed as many school-related differences as possible to differences in individual and family input and only when we can link the residual difference to actual school programs and policies. We therefore attribute to student-input variables, as opposed to schooleffect variables, such influences on academic performance as the students' college plans, which might themselves be the result of their school experience.The objections to our earlier reports can be summarized as follows:1. Any apparent effects are merely the result of a higher learning curve for Catholicschool students, due to selection. The effect of Catholic schools is confinedto the most able students and to those from homes where there is strong motivation and support for academic achievement. 3. Catholic schools seem to have an effect because they eliminate their disciplinary problems by expelling them from the school. T...

School Sector, School Poverty, and the Catholic School Advantage

“…Controlling for prior achievement and background variables in NELS, Hoffer (1998) found no special academic advantage for minority or low-SES students in Catholic schools. Based on data from the Educational Longitudinal Survey (ELS), the most recent national survey similar to HSB and NELS, Carbonaro and Covay (2010) reported that SES, race, and ethnicity have the same effect on availability of courses and student achievement in both Catholic and public schools.…”

“…First, since the goal of many parents and students is to increase students' future occupational mobility, educators and researchers have concentrated on student rather than school characteristics as determinants of learning. Other than early research on school level effects on student outcomes (Coleman & Hoffer, 1987;Coleman, Hoffer, & Kilgore, 1982a, 1982b, 1982cHoffer, Greeley, & Coleman, 1985), few subsequent studies have examined school level determinants of student achievement.…”

Effects of Catholic School Attendance on Student Achievement: A Review and Extension of Research

“…The models for estimating the Catholic school effects on achievement included essentially the same set of background variables as the base year analyses, plus controls for the sophomore achievement scores. Analyses by Hoffer, Greeley, and Coleman (1985), Willms (1985), and Alexander and Pallas (1985) converged on the finding that Catholic schools contribute from 0.03 to 0.04 additional standard deviation units during the junior and senior years of high school (Jencks, 1985). This statistic is an average across all six achievement tests in the HS&B battery: Reading, Vocabulary, Mathematics, Writing, Science, and Civics.…”

“…Probably the best operationalization one could make of the Goldberger-Cain unmeasured selection hypothesis would be to control for the sophomore achievement scores in regressions of senior achievement on the background variables of interest. Regressing senior achievement on sophomore achievement plus SES, race, and Hispanic ethnicity, Hoffer, Greeley, and Coleman (1985) found that the effects of sophomore achievement and the three social background variables were consistently smaller than the effects in the public schools. Across the six HS&B achievement tests, the effects of the four variables were closer to zero in the Catholic schools in 22 of 24 comparisons.…”

Comparison of Academic Development in Catholic versus Non-Catholic Private Secondary Schools

“…This work has been grounded in social capital theory, which explains the Catholic school advantage in terms of the value for young people of being embedded in a network of relationships, in this case a network based on religious association (Coleman and Hoffer 1987). Subsequent studies have either lent support, albeit sometimes qualified, to their findings (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1993;Gamoran 1992;Hoffer 2000;Hoffer, Greeley and Coleman 1985;Jencks 1985;Jensen 1986;Keith 1985;Marsh 1991;Marsh and Grayson 1990;Riordan 1985;Sander 1996) or called them into question (Alexander 1985;Gamoran 1996;Graetz 1990;LePore and Warren 1997;Noell 1982;Willms 1985). Coleman et al (1982a) noted that findings of public-private school comparisons could have implications for policy decisions and parent choices-implications that have become even more salient today.…”