Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
According to the latest round of U.S. Department of Education tests, Catholic school students scored so much higher than their public school counterparts experts are calling it a “thrashing.”
According to syndicated columnist Terry Jeffrey, the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, which are administered by the U.S. Department of Education, Catholic school students consistently outscored public school students.
“In 2011,” says the Department of Education in a report on the NAEP tests, “the average reading score for eighth-graders attending public schools was 19 points lower than the overall score for students attending private schools,and 20 points lower than for students attending Catholic schools specifically.”
But this wasn’t an anomaly by any means. Catholic-school eighth graders have been defeating public school eighth-graders in reading scores by double digits for the last 20 years. The closest public schools ever got to these scores was back in 1992 when they were only 17 points behind.
The margins are not as great in mathematics but they’re still high.
“In 2011,” says the Department of Education, “the average mathematics score for eighth-graders attending public schools was 13 points lower than the overall score for students attending private schools and 13 points lower than for students attending Catholic schools specifically.”
Once again, this dominance is nothing new. The closest public schools ever go to beating their Catholic peers was when they lost by only nine points – which was 22 years ago. Since then, the margin of excellence in Catholic schools has gradually grown.
“If the Catholic school in your community beat the public school in basketball by 20 points, partisans of both teams would deem it a rout,” Jeffrey writes. “If the Catholic school beat the public school by similar margins year after year, people would wonder what was wrong with the public-school basketball program. Were the coaches incompetent? Did they not care about instilling excellence in their teams?”
Which leads to the inevitable question: “So, what is the matter with public schools?” Jeffrey asks.
“Why can’t they compete with Catholic schools in basic academic disciplines like reading and math? One thing is certain: It isn’t a lack of money.”
Sadly, Catholic schools, which are among the best in the nation, are closing in record numbers across the U.S. while politicians dither over school choice programs that would enable them to better compete with state-funded public schools.
How could such an educated nation make such a dumb mistake?
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I’m tired of Catholics being oppressed in our country. Many do not want to see Catholics succeed and the only way to beat them is to make it too difficult for them to carry out their mission. Therefore, limiting financing and freedoms seems to be a common method, even though it is unjust.
To be fair, most Catholic schools do not have to admit just anybody. Most of their students have parents who have an interest in their children’s education, and there aren’t the classrooms filled with students with learning disabilities, emotional disabilities, multiple languages, and other classroom disrupting behaviors. I have 2 daughters and a daughter in law who teach – one is a principal, in public schools around the country and this is an everyday situation for them. I applaud the students who are able to stay abreast of their studies in such surroundings and the teachers who have unbelievable expectations placed upon them. In the “old days” when unpaid sisters taught us, we did have classrooms with these kinds of problems and those dear sisters spent a great deal of time sitting on benches outside after school tutoring those students – and of course the parents back then would see to it that appropriate measures were taken at home for disruptive kids.