Academic Achievement in Public and Catholic Schools

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This article examines two critical questions related to equality of educational opportunity. First, does the academic advantage that was observed in Catholic high schools more than two decades ago continue to hold for contemporary students in Catholic middle schools? Second, how closely do different school sectors adhere to the common school ideal? Answers to these questions are central to efforts to reduce educational inequalities.

The study reported here relies on data from sixth- and eighth-grade students in the Chicago School Study, a longitudinal survey of Chicago public schools, and the Chicago Catholic School Study, a survey of all the Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago. These school systems are the third largest public and largest Catholic school systems in the United States.

The results show no consistent sector differences in achievement gains in sixth and eighth grades in reading and mathematics. Moreover, background characteristics vary by school sector, and neither sector eliminates all background effects on achievement. Compared to the Chicago public schools, Chicago Catholic schools reduce the effects of students’ race and socioeconomic status on reading achievement but exacerbate the effects of race on mathematics achievement.

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The Geography of Inequality: Why Separate Means Unequal in American Public Schools

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Persistent school segregation means not only that children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds attend different schools but also that their schools are unequal in performance. This study documents the extent of disparities nationally in school performance between schools attended by whites and Asians compared with those attended by blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. It further examines the geography of school inequality in two ways.

First, it analyzes the segregation of students between different types of school profiles based on racial composition, poverty, and metropolitan location. Second, it estimates the independent effects of these and other school and school district characteristics on school performance, identifying which aspects of school segregation are the most important sources of disadvantage.

A focus on schools at the bottom of the distribution, as in No Schools Left Behind, would not ameliorate wide disparities between groups that are found across the whole spectrum of school performance.

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Contracts in the classroom

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While contracts are an indispensable tool in the modern workplace, a new study has found that they may also be very effective in contemporary classrooms. According to a new article published in SAGE Open, courses in which students design their own course based on a contract lead to both higher grades and higher student satisfaction than traditional points-based courses.

The article, "Use of Contract Grading to Improve Grades among College Freshmen in Introductory Psychology," details this study. Researchers Dana Lindemann and Colin Harbke assigned a total of 40 college freshmen enrolled in one introductory psychology course to a traditional or contract grading system. Those assigned to the contract system signed a contract at the beginning of the semester in which they indicated what grade they were aiming to receive and specified which assignments they would complete to receive that grade. Students who wanted to receive a better grade had to complete more assignments and receive a higher score on exams than those aiming for a lower grade.

Though the instructor and course materials were identical for both sections, at the end of the semester, the group of students who were graded contractually were three times more likely to earn an A grade, one third as likely to fail or withdraw from the course, perceived a higher degree of control over their grade, and consistently rated their own effort, their instructor, and the course overall more favorably.

"Students indicated higher ratings for working hard for their grade, enjoying the course format, and for enhancing independent thinking," wrote the authors. "Contract graded students may be more motivated to perform well."

For the students assigned to the contract-grading system, the course instructor implemented components into the course structure which are unique to a contractually-graded course, unbeknownst to the other students in the classroom. These components included allowing students to choose their coursework from a variety of assignments, grading their exams and assignments as pass or fail, requiring that each student master 85% of the material to receive a passing grade, and allowing students to resubmit their assignments one time in order to receive a passing grade.

Lindemann and Harbke continued, "When assignments are graded pass or fail, emphasis is placed on mastery of the material, as opposed to gaining a partial understanding of the material."

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