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Catholic Schools Lead Nationwide Test Scores

The Covid-19 pandemic had a wide-ranging and lasting impact on students’ education throughout the country. School shutdowns and remote learning hurt children’s progress in all subject areas. Recently, the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released their 2022 findings, also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” which demonstrated the extent of the pandemic’s impact on student learning, with decreases in mathematics and reading scores.

However, Catholic schools emerged as a bright spot in the NAEP report where they outperformed public and charter schools in reading and mathematics. Catholic school students had steady or increased scores in two categories of the NAEP assessment and Catholic school students have the highest scores in the nation on all four NAEP tests.

The NAEP’s “Nation’s Report Card”, is a measurement of success that allows for not only state-by-state comparisons but also nationally representative sample-based looks at how Catholic, charter, and traditional district-run public schools performed on reading and math tests.

As shown in the above table, Catholic schools improved in 8th-grade reading and held steady in 4th-grade math. While Catholic schools saw a decline between 2019 and 2022 in 8th-grade math and 4th-grade reading, though these declines were not statistically significant.

Additionally, even when there was an observable decline, Catholic schools’ gap was noticeably smaller than public and charter schools. According to the NAEP, Catholic school students lost five points in math in 2022 compared to 2019, three points better than public schools, which saw an eight-point loss among its students and four points better than charter schools which had a nine-point drop.

Jonathan Butcher, a fellow with the Heritage Foundation, noted “instead of losing a year as some states/districts did, Catholic schools saved a year”.

While it is unclear what is the definitive cause of this difference, many point to Catholic schools’ commitment to providing in-person learning as a key driving factor. This was true of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Boston and schools funded by the Catholic Schools Foundation (CSF). These schools pivoted to remote learning without missing a beat when the pandemic first started and were open soon after that for in-person-learning.

Kathleen Porter-Magee, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the superintendent of Partnership Schools, a network of urban Catholic schools in Harlem, South Bronx, and Cleveland said she was heartened by the organization's results. In a quote to America Magazine, Porter Magee says, “I think [they are] a reflection of the hard work that Catholic school teachers and leaders have been doing throughout the pandemic and…a reflection of what Catholic schools’ mission-driven, faith-filled and community-focused leadership has done to support kids and communities throughout Covid." Additionally, she stated “If Catholic schools were a state, they’d be the highest performing in the nation on all four NAEP tests.”

In a statement released on Oct. 25, the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA), officials say data collected as part of the report card shows that Catholic schools perform exceptionally well in areas where it previously has been difficult to measure progress—most notably learning outcomes for students receiving free and reduced-price lunches, which demonstrate “the system’s commitment to supporting underprivileged children with rigorous academic standards while providing them means necessary to achieve such success." Catholic schools ranked first in eighth-grade reading for students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.

Lincoln Snyder, president of the NCEA, said in a press release that Catholic schools performed well in an education study because educators showed up for their students. “One of the reasons Catholic schools performed so well is that our teachers showed up for the kids,” he said. “In every state, we were among the first to transition to distance learning, and after that brief time, also among the first to return students to a safe in-person environment. That’s why I call our educators heroes.”

This report is a testament to the schools CSF serves. Your support goes directly towards providing low-income children access to these institutions. Without CSF’s community of supporters, our most in-need students would not be able to access a Catholic education. Your support helps pave the way for students to achieve their dreams through a solid educational foundation.

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Additional articles on the NAEP Results:

Wallstreet Journal

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