During the past few years, a spate of research studies and newspaper stories chronicled the unusual effectiveness of Catholic high schools. They reported that Catholic schools do a better job of engaging students in schooling, have lower dropout rates and produce higher levels of academic achievement, especially for disadvantaged students. Yet until recently, there has been little rigorous examination of how Catholic high schools actually produce these desired outcomes. We now have some answers.
What makes these schools work? Researchers Valerie Lee, Peter Holland and I pursued this question and found that four key features stand out. First is a coherent intellectual focus. A common core of academic work is required of all students regardless of academic background or future educational plan. This emphasis on a shared set of academic experiences helps to bind students into a common round of school life that holds high academic expectations for all. This commonality of academic work is especially valuable for disadvantaged youngsters, who attain higher achievement than they would in other schools where they are more likely to be tracked into less demanding courses.
Second, the internal life of these schools is deliberately structured to promote stronger engagement among students and faculty. In addition to a shared academic life, an extensive array of school activities provides opportunities for adults and students to really get to know each other. Teachers’ roles are broadly defined to encourage this personalism, and collegial working relations among the faculty promote a solidarity of purpose around the school’s mission. The smaller size of Catholic high schools provides a valuable assist in this regard. Taken together, these factors foster among school participants a sense that “we are a part of something of value here.”
Third, each school benefits from a high degree of autonomy over decisionmaking. This autonomy allows a school community to shape a distinctive character and encourages a local sensitivity to the particular needs of its students and families. Such localism creates strong attachment of parents, students and staff to their school, in sharp contrast to the impersonal quality of relationships in large bureaucratic organizations.
Fourth, a distinctive educational philosophy envisions the school as a caring community committed to the full development of all students. Catholic schools are equally concerned about both what their students know and the kinds of persons their students become. In their view, education for the 21st Century involves a melding of the technical knowledge and skill to negotiate an increasingly complex secular world with a moral vision that points this skill toward a more convivial and humane society and a critical disposition that encourages students to pursue this vision.
How can these observations help us improve urban schooling? Catholic schools are strongly committed to advancing educational opportunities for many of the “unspecial” in our society. Their social justice orientation couples with a deliberately formed academic and social life to create strong institutions for educating the disadvantaged. Our findings link to a growing body of evidence that advancing social equity demands such strong institutions, for the disadvantaged in our society rely heavily on the expertise, good intentions and efforts of societal institutions for their advancement.
A simple answer to questions about implications for urban schooling is that we need more schools organized like Catholic high schools. We contend that many students currently educated in public schools would benefit from attending schools organized around the principles found in the Catholic sector. We are convinced that many more urban children can benefit from an educational environment that combines demanding academic work with a caring ethos that expects personal responsibility and good effort from all participants. In fact, it is not clear to us that public schools can better serve disadvantaged children who want to learn and also encourage larger proportions of the students to share this aim unless many more schools are transformed along these lines.
We see the ideas as particularly timely in the context of current school reform efforts in Chicago. As we move to decentralize the public school system into a system of publicly supported schools, there is now more space for new schools organized like Catholic schools to emerge. Specifically, in the context of current efforts to break up large public high schools into smaller “schools-within-a-school,” there are opportunities now to create more schools that combine strong social engagement with the traditional academic program typically found in Catholic high schools.
At a more profound level, our observations about Catholic high schools remind us that all schools are agents of socialization. They aim to stimulate the feelings, experiences and reflections that can help each student apprehend their relations to all that is around them-both the material world and the social world, both those who have come before and those who will come after. Thus, in addition to promoting subject matter competence, we must also attend to the quality of the interior life that schools foster in their students, the voices of conscience they nurture or fail to nurture. These may reflect comprehensive ideals which encourage students to reach out broadly to others, or they may advance only material self-interest.
At root here is a fundamental question: What in the current age is “education for democracy?” Catholic schools offer a much broader answer than that which dominates most contemporary discussions about educational goals. Revitalizing this public conversation is essential to all Americans, whether young or old, whether they have children in school or not.
Life in a free society presumes broadly shared commitments to basic principles of truth, justice and human compassion. So much of the livability and vitality of a free society depends on the “right living” of its people. In its absence, we are less secure and less free. Ultimately these are questions about the hopes, aspirations and visions we offer our children about the kind of society we should become.
Finally, what about the future of urban Catholic schools? The fiscal pressures on these schools continue to mount. Despite the best efforts of all involved, we will surely see more urban Catholic school closings in the next few years. It is hard to see how the public is well-served by the continued demise of these institutions.
Contemporary Catholic schools are very different from those of 30 years ago. They now educate a broad cross-section of Americans of diverse race, ethnicity and social class. Instruction is not narrow, divisive or sectarian, but rather is informed by a generous conception of democratic life in a post-modern society. Moreover, many of these schools are located in very disadvantaged communities and constitute an important institutional resource to their communities.
