In the coming months, public focus on faith-based and community-based alternatives to government services is likely to increase. Helping Hand calls attention to one such program in southern California, the Catholic Education Foundation, which acts in conjunction with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to provide scholarships for needy children to attend Catholic schools. This study examines who these children are, how they compare to other Catholic-school students, and which public schools they would otherwise attend.

Helping Hand finds that scholarship recipients are not children in active, well-connected families in local parishes, but tend to come from very poor, single-parent homes, and whose local public school performs well below district and state averages. It is these children who most benefit from Catholic education.

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