SACRAMENTO, CA - Do Catholic schools provide better quality education than public schools? Recent evidence suggests that they do. In a first of its kind study, the Heritage Foundation compared the math achievement of fourth- and eighth-graders in Washington, D.C.’s Catholic and public schools. Looking at African-American students with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, the Heritage study made some amazing discoveries.

For example, using data from the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) exam, the study found that Catholic-school students in both the fourth and eighth grades outperformed their public-school peers in math achievement. Also, this performance gap widened between the fourth and eighth grades.

Defenders of the government education monopoly would reply that the reason for this achievement gap has nothing to do with the quality of public education but may be explained by the supposed home-life advantages enjoyed by private-school students. To address this criticism, the Heritage study also took into account factors such as whether the child lived in a two-parent home, parents’ level of education, the amount of reading material in the home, and how often the student changed schools. When compared to these home-life factors, however, the study found that the impact of Catholic schooling was still much more significant.

For instance, attending a Catholic school had four times more effect on the math scores of fourth-graders as living in a two-parent home, and ten times more effect than attending a more affluent government school. For eighth-graders, being in a Catholic school had nearly twice the effect of having a mother who attended at least some college.

It should also be pointed out that the Catholic-school students were outperforming their government-school counterparts despite the fact that the District of Columbia spends in the vicinity of $10,000 per pupil, per year. This is more than most states and much more than the Catholic schools. But the results should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Catholic education, in Washington or elsewhere.

Recently, at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic elementary school, which is located in a poor Hispanic section of downtown Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahoney, the archbishop of Los Angeles, held a press conference highlighting the 28,000 scholarships given out by the archdiocese’s Education Foundation during the past ten years. These scholarships have allowed poor, at-risk children the opportunity to receive a high-quality Catholic education. If the scholarship recipients from St. Thomas elementary are any indication, the program is working very well.

Andy Mendoza, a poised and articulate fifth-grader, told reporters about his love for math and how he wants to become a math teacher when he grows up. Andy appreciated the fact that students at St. Thomas attended school for 195 days a year instead of the public-school schedule of 180 days. Most heartening, in this age of increasing school violence, Andy said that the school’s morals-based teaching helped him to understand his conscience and to differentiate between right from wrong.

If we want more Andy Mendozas in California, shouldn’t we consider school-choice vouchers so other kids like Andy can also attend better and safer schools?

--Lance T. Izumi