How Catholic School Personnel Perceive and Explain Minority Achievement in the Catholic Setting

Many educators and theorists alike, argue that while our nation’s public schools are continually plagued with a racial achievement gap, Catholic schools have found a solution to this social injustice. Through interviewing Catholic school personnel to determine how they perceive and explain this achievement gap, this researcher has concluded that minority students who attend Catholic schools achieve at higher capacities than their publicly educated peers because they posses greater motivation to achieve. This motivation to achieve incorporates a higher value towards education and a higher motivation towards academic success, relative to their white peers. The gap between minority and white achievement dominates today’s educational landscape like no other issue at the federal, state, and local levels. Despite educational legislation such as, No Child Left Behind (2001), which has made the improved achievement of minority students a specific criterion of school success, nationwide minority students continually under perform in comparison to their white peers on standardized tests, grade point averages and selective college admissions. However, many academics and scholars believe a sector of education where this trend of (racial) underperformance is significantly reduced, if not eliminated, is in the Catholic or parochial system. A decade ago in 1997, Derek Neal, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, examined minority achievement in Catholic schools. Professor Neal documented that 91% of minority students who attend Catholic secondary schools graduated, compared to only 62% of minority students educated in the public sector; indicating that there may be some truth to the notion that minorities achieve at higher rates in the Catholic sector of education, (online source, pg. N/A). Because minorities are significantly more successful in Catholic schools it is important to understand what accounts for these changes in order to achieve widespread social equality. Our society is structured in such a way that the quality of an individual’s education (in addition to their achievement) typically correlates with future professional success such as higher paying, more prestigious jobs. Simply, success in education has vast socioeconomic implications. Unfortunately, public education wherein the majority of students are educated is marked by severe underachievement by minority students as