The Catholic School Advantage

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Catholic education is considered a “National Asset.”

Through the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education Division, a number of Catholic school studies across the country looked at the “Catholic school advantage” and from those studies, a number of very important advantages were identified1:

  • The achievement gap between races and income groups is smaller in faith based schools.
  • Black and Latino students who attend Catholic schools are much more likely to graduate from both high school and college than their peers from public schools.
  • Highly disadvantaged children, particularly benefit from Catholic schools.
  • Students in Catholic schools demonstrate a higher academic achievement than similar students in public schools.
  • Catholic school graduates are more civilly engaged, more committed to service and more tolerant of others.
  • And graduates of our Catholic high schools earn higher wages than peers who graduated from public schools.

1Fleming, D.J., Lavertu, S., & Crawford, W. (2018), High School Options and Post-Secondary Student Success: The Catholic School Advantage, Journal of Catholic Education, 21 (2)