Over the next several days, dioceses all across America will be celebrating Catholic Schools Week (January 28-February 3). Catholic schools will be putting their best foot forward and making their case to parishioners and the broader world. While kids showing off their uniforms at Sunday Masses may be cute, the massive personal and parish investment required to support Catholic schools may require some justification. The evidence does show that Catholic schools help to produce Catholic adults.
Yes, Catholic schools are expensive. They are expensive for both the parish and for the families. In my diocese, families pay on average 47% of the cost for educating elementary students and 68% for high school students, with the balance coming from the parish or fundraising efforts. For my family, our monthly Catholic school tuition bill exceeds my home mortgage payment (just the principle and interest; tuition will not exceed taxes and insurance too until I have a kid in high school). With Catholic schools this expensive, it is not a shock that most Catholic kids are not in Catholic schools.
Most children baptized into the Catholic Church do not attend Catholic schools. The extensive National Youth and Religion Survey of 2002-2003 found that 86% of self-identified Catholic teens went to public school. In my diocese, 17% of Catholic kids attend Catholic schools. Nationwide, the percentage attending Catholic schools is certainly declining. Catholics born in the 1940s were twice as likely to have attended Catholic schools as those in the 2000s according to the Pillar’s Survey. Of course, there are many other intervening changes in those years too. Catholic schools went from serving immigrants to serving the affluent. We have Catholic schools that are regional athletic powerhouses, dedicated to recruiting athletic talent. Academic goals at some schools may outstrip spiritual goals. Sociologist Christian Smith notes that from 1970 to 2003, the percentage of non-Catholics enrolled in Catholic schools quadrupled.
There are many claims about the benefits of Catholic schooling. Parishes with schools actually tend to have fewer financial problems, though this appears to be a product of parish size itself. While some claim Catholic school students end up better behaved, others disagree. Catholic schools often boast of their academic excellence, but modern researchers challenge this. My alma mater proudly proclaims the results of its study: “Catholic schools not superior to public schools.”
If Catholic schools are so expensive and the record, as a whole, may not be clear, is it worth the expense and hassle of sending one’s kids to Catholic schools? The strongest case for Catholic schools may be the most obvious–their religious impact. Studies of religious transmission among Catholics tend to look at two things: whether people continue to identify as Catholic and how frequently they attend Mass. The surveys back up the claim that Catholic schools are more likely to produce practicing Catholic adults.
Among those who have studied the religious effects of Catholic schools is the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a “Georgetown University affiliated research center that conducts social scientific studies for and about the Catholic Church.” A poll conducted by CARA in 2003 “estimated that nearly eight in ten Americans raised Catholic who had attend[ed] Catholic schools (primary and/or secondary) self-identified as Catholics as an adult. By comparison fewer [than] seven in ten of those raised Catholic who did not attend a Catholic school remained Catholic as adults.”
In 2020, CARA conducted The National Poll of Young Catholics and again found a link between Catholic schooling and Mass attendance: “ Weekly Mass attenders, prior to the pandemic, are more likely than monthly or less frequent attenders to have attended Catholic primary school (40% compared to 34% and 26%, respectively), Catholic high school (30% compared to 24% and 13%, respectively).”
In 2021, Catholic news website The Pillar commissioned a survey of thousands of Americans on their religious beliefs and practices:
We collected data on all types of schools, but only Catholic schools and public schools had enough attendees to draw useful conclusions. Seventy-seven percent of those who went to Catholic schools still consider themselves Catholic, while only 69% of those who went to public school do.” They “tried controlling our data for childhood Mass attendance, family religious practices, etc. — But in all cases, we found a clear difference, in both adult Catholic identity and weekly Mass attendance, between people who went to Catholic schools and their public school counterparts.
In short, Catholics who went to Catholic schools ended up as weekly Mass goers 36% of the time; only 25% of Catholic public school graduates grew up to attend Mass weekly. Of course, both of those numbers are horrible and disappointing. It is sad that the Church has lost so many people. But the 40% increase for Catholic school grads is notable. CARA’s work, mentioned earlier, also suggests that the differences in Mass attendance “become more pronounced (and statistically significant) among younger Catholics.”
The data we have is necessarily backward looking. It tells us about the religious formation of today’s adults without necessarily predicting the future of today’s children. We can see what happened to Baby Boomers or Millennials but that does not inherently mean the patterns will be the same for the children of Millennials. We have, however, every reason to believe the gap between public school and Catholic school religious outcomes will widen in the future (the literature tends not to report on homeschooling because of limited data). The large and growing difference in fundamental values today between the government school system and the Catholic school system seems likely to make these gaps in religious outcomes much wider.
There is a reason to celebrate Catholic schools this week. It is nice if they win their basketball league or produce better test scores, but the return on investment is best measured in faithfulness. And the evidence shows that Catholic schools produce graduates with greater faithfulness.
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I never considered Michigan State to be an arbiter of high academic standards! They would do well to worry about their own performance levels. Perhaps they got a little financial boost from the teachers’ union.
In the sixties, when I was in Catholic grade school, we attended Mass every school day.
Now every Catholic grade school I know of only sends students to school once a week.
When I look back at my own faith formation, those thousands of Masses were key.
I fear that by scaling back Mass attendance, we are missing out on an opportunity to bring Catholic kids closer to the Lord.
I began grammar school in 1955; we attended Mass only once a month — on the First Friday. That continued through high school.
I suspect the frequency of school Mass may have been a regional situation; I think daily Mass was more the case in the Midwest, than the Northeast.
I attended Catholic grade school from 1954-1962. We ALL attended Mass on Sunday together. There were probably 500-600 students at 9 AM Mass who: didn’t talk, didn’t leave the pew to go to the bathroom (there were none), most of whom made their weekly Confession the day before and everyone received Communion after having fasted since midnight. It’s simply amazing what discipline and setting high expectations wrought. Then came the Beatles and everything went to hell in a handbasket.
The Beatles and birth control pills signaled the beginning of the end.
Decades ago in our area, the Catholic kids were not allowed to ride the public-school buses until a protest got that policy changed. (they had to carpool in from the farms)
The personnel costs are prohibitive and as the article states a heavy burden is borne by the parish. Many of the families do not attend/participate in the weekend masses.
Historically, many of the students who go on to graduate from the public high school do so with honors.
I went to a one room school in the country so it was out of the question to go to Mass. Even when I went to Catholic schools in town for middle school, I don’t remember going to Mass with the school. However, my parents took us to Mass every Sunday.
Today, kids go to Mass with the school maybe once a month. Many of them haven’t a clue when to stand or when to kneel. Mom and Dad don’t bother to take them to Mass. (Ontario, Canada where Catholic schools are government-funded, so far).
I attended a one room rural school also Cleo. It’s good to know there are folks who have had the same experience. In my case it was a great blessing. And similar in ways to home schooling because the older children would help the younger ones with their lessons. That’s a known way to reinforce what you’ve learned.
God bless!
My older siblings attended a one room school before the consolidation in the 60s. Our cousins that lived in town and attended the Catholic school had no school on holy days, so they sometimes would attend the one room with “the country cousins” on those school days.
Thank you for sharing that.
🙂
You’re welcome. Yes, your earlier comment I’ve heard before about the reinforcement as our one rooms had recitations. These were heard over and over again until you graduated from the 8th grade.
My son was in 3rd grade (public) and needed help with math and I suggested maybe a good middle school student could help him. The teacher told me “the state” would not allow it – never was quite sure if that was true or not.
Coming from the state of Michigan, the state of Catholic Schools is a disaster.
The better question would be: are the graduates going to monthly or more often confession? Do they get married in the church? Mass attendance without the other precepts is just repeated sacrilege.
What would cause an orthodox Catholic to celebrate or even give to Catholic schools?
1) Adherence to Divini Illius.Magistri, the penultimate magisterial document on Catholic Ed.
2) All adults at the school take the Oath of Fidelity and Oath against modernism.
3) The Catholic school pledges to respect parents and their primal authority to form their children. Most schools think they are superior to parents in parenting, forming, and educating them. No, they are supposed to augment and help, not replace parents.
4) Stop fighting and judging the homeschoolers.
5) Figure out a way to retain male teachers who desire a large family and to follow Humanae Vitae. Most male teachers cannot be sole breadwinners and support a large family as a Catholic School teacher.
That a slightly higher percentage of Catholic School graduates attend Mass weekly is not something to publicize nor boast. Being a tad better than a government school is not the goal of any authentic Catholic School.
We should celebrate when daily Mass, monthly confessions, Marian consecrations, monthly adoration, Eucharistic Processions, and vocations are the rule, not the extremely rare exception.
Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, pray for us!
Your #5 would be good for society as a whole, to pay the father enough so the mother can stay home with the young children.
“A preferential option for the poor” should be maintained in our Catholic schools. If we find that we cannot afford to keep our schools open to the poor, the Church should be ready to use its resources for something else which can be kept open to the poor. We cannot allow our Church to become a church primarily for the middle-class and rich while throwing a bone to the poor. The priority should be given to the poor even if we have to let the middle-class and rich fend for themselves.
Practically speaking, the Catholic schools must give up general education in those countries where the State is providing it. The resources of the Church could then be focused on Confraternity of Christian Doctrine and other programs which can be kept open to the poor. These resources could then be used to help society become more human in solidarity with the poor. Remember, the Church managed without Catholic schools for centuries. It can get along without them today. The essential factor from the Christian point of view is to cultivate enough Faith to act in the Gospel Tradition, namely, THE POOR GET PRIORITY. The rich and middle-class are welcome too. BUT THE POOR COME FIRST.