Catholic schools have seen more than a 30% decline in enrollment over the past 20 years. While some of the decline in enrollment may have been spurred by secular trends or the Church abuse scandal, the increase in schools of choice, principally public charter schools, may explain at least some of this decline. In this paper we estimate the effect…

Over the years, Catholic schools have been particularly committed to the formation of sound character, including the acquisition of self-discipline. Researchers at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute wanted to know whether students in Catholic school actually exhibit more self-discipline than their peers--and if so, what those schools can teach other…

This analysis looks at measures of religious identification and commitment among Americans with different levels of education. Looking at the U.S. public as a whole, the answer to the question of whether more education is correlated with less religion appears to be yes. Among all U.S. adults, college graduates are considerably less likely than…

The tables in this report include data from the 2019 School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). These tables show the extent to which students, ages 12 through 18, with different characteristics report being bullied, including estimates by student sex, race/ethnicity, grade, and household income. The U.S.…

Public and private school principals were asked to report whether their school had a staff member assigned to work on parent involvement; workshops or courses for parents or guardians; services to support parent participation such as providing child care or transportation; or a parent drop-in center or lounge. The Principal Questionnaire was…

In 1988, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) developed a private school data collection that improved on the sporadic collection of private school data dating back to 1890 and at the same time developed an alternative to commercially available private school sampling frames. Since 1989, the U.S. Bureau of the Census has conducted…

Religion in public schools has long been a controversial issue. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that teachers and administrators cannot lead prayers in public schools, and a decision in 2000 barred school districts from sponsoring student-led prayers at football games. At the same time, the court has held that students retain a First…

Private schools have a long and important tradition in U.S. education and have been the focus of a great deal of political controversy in recent years. There is deep division among Americans over the desirability of using public funds to finance vouchers for private education--an issue that has become the leading educational goal of the Trump…

This report provides an overview of the 2014 School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS). SHPPS is a national survey periodically conducted to assess school health policies and practices at the state, district, school, and classroom levels. The 2014 study collected data at the school and classroom levels only. SHPPS assesses the…

This report provides results from the School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS) conducted in 2014. Following a detailed Methods section, 2014 results are presented in a series of 168 tables organized around the 10 components of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model. Tables 1.1 through 10.4 provide the percentage of…

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of children going to school in England who do not speak English as a first language. We investigate whether this has an impact on the educational outcomes of native English speakers at the end of primary school. We show that the negative correlation observed in the raw data is mainly an…

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that have considerable independence from public school districts in their curriculum development and staffing decisions, and their enrollments have increased substantially over the past two decades. Charter schools are changing public and private school enrollment patterns across the United States. This…

This paper reports on Catholic elementary and secondary schools in the United States. It gives statistical information on schools, enrollment, and faculty with a 10-year overview. The historical statistics include tables listing schools, pupils, and teachers by diocese, state, and region. Information was gathered from 161 diocesan offices, with…

Reports made to the Office of Education by State departments of education show an enrollment of 21,278,593 children in elementary schools during 1929-30. Between two and three million other children attend private elementary schools. Estimates for the year 1929-30 put the total private elementary school enrollment at 2,255,430. The Department of…

This is a statistical report on Catholic high school education in the United States. The report builds on two previous reports ("The Catholic High School: A National Portrait," in 1985 and a follow-up study of high school finances in 1986). Data are drawn from a sample of 206 schools stratified on the variables of region and enrollment…