Christian schools get the graduates they want but ...
Ray Pennings, MAR, is a senior fellow and the director of research at Cardus (www.cardus.ca), a Christian think tank that is focused on renewing social architecture. An author and regular Canadian media pundit, Pennings has a diverse background that includes labor relations and political activism. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, with his wife, Kathy, and a university-aged son.
Even stereotypes are beneficial if research debunking them produces truth and offers fresh possibilities. The newly released Cardus Education Survey succeeds on both counts in its study of alignments between the motivations and outcomes of Christian education. (For the complete study and a summary of its methodology and the composition of the research team, download a free copy at www.carduseducationsurvey.com.)
What began three years ago as a research commitment to understanding Christian schools’ role in students’ lives, in families, and in the larger society has become a tool to overturn significant misperceptions of Christian schools and their graduates. It also helps those of us involved in these schools learn from each other and identify opportunities for improving results in our local schools.
The stereotypical picture of the highly political, right-wing Protestant Christian is demonstrably false. The survey’s data shows that graduates of Christian schools are less engaged in politics than their peers; these graduates talk less about politics, participate less in campaigns, and donate less to political causes (Pennings et al. 2011, 27–28).
Compared with their public school, Catholic school, and nonreligious private school peers, Protestant Christian school graduates are uniquely compliant, generous, outwardly focused individuals who stabilize their communities by their uncommon commitment to their families, their churches, and the larger society (5).
Graduates of Christian schools donate money significantly more than graduates of other schools, despite having lower household incomes (18). Similarly, graduates of Protestant Christian schools are more generous with their time, participating far more than their peers both in service trips for relief and development and in mission trips for evangelization (19).
Equally erroneous is the depiction of Protestant Christian school students graduating to become die-hard “culture warriors,” at odds with the society around them and pessimistically detached from it. The Cardus Education Survey statistical data unequivocally show that Protestant Christian school graduates tend to have the following characteristics:
- They harbor distinctive hope and optimism about their lives and their futures, and have the tools to engage in healthy relationships and to address the problems in their lives (6).
- They are more thankful for what they have in life than their Catholic school or public school peers.
- They report greater direction in life than their public school, nonreligious private, or Catholic peers.
- They do not report feeling helpless when dealing with problems in life; this quality makes them foundational, reliable, and indispensable members of society (24).
Those strengths are reflected in notably lower rates of divorce (26), for example, and in markedly higher attachment to family, to church, and to faith life itself among Protestant Christian school graduates when compared against the levels of their Catholic, nondenominational private, and public school peers (16, 21).
It is in academic and spiritual development that the survey’s data most powerfully deconstruct common assumptions. Conventional wisdom has it that Catholics, as the inheritors of a faith tradition rooted in hierarchy and obedience to authority, are steeped in those qualities by their education. Protestants, in this cliché, carry from their schools the characteristics of independent-mindedness, and they are less likely to defer to authority and established structure.
In fact, the Cardus Education Survey shows that the truth is a mirror image of the stereotype. Our research finds that Catholic schools are providing high-quality intellectual development for their students—but at the expense of developing faith and commitment to religious practices in their graduates. Protestant Christian schools are seemingly providing a place where students become distinct in their faith but are not developing academically at any better rate than their public school peers (6).
More Catholic school graduates are being enrolled in elite colleges and universities, gaining advanced degrees, and earning higher lifetime incomes. Catholic school administrators put a higher value on university degrees than their Protestant Christian peers do, and Catholics’ academic programs consist of more rigorous course offerings across the board (31–32, 34).
But this emphasis on academic excellence seems to correlate with an actual diminishment, among Catholic graduates, of willingness to serve in leadership positions within the Church. While attending a Catholic school increases the probability of being recruited by a top-flight college or university, it has no impact on the frequency with which those graduates will attend church services (16).
Nor does Catholic school attendance encourage charitable works consistent with the Catholic Church’s message and commitment. Because Catholic school graduates usually earn more money than their parents did and generally possess upward economic stability, we expected a more generous disposition toward the Church’s emphasis on charity than the data reveal. As with the findings on divorce referenced above, our research finds that the moral, social, and religious dispositions of Catholic school graduates seem to run counter to the values and teachings of the Catholic Church (18–20).
Graduates of Protestant Christian schools reflect a precise reversal of these outcomes. One of the most significant findings of the Cardus Education Survey is that attending a Protestant Christian school seems to make an impact on graduates’ choice to stay within the faith through their adult lives. Not only do they score higher than their Catholic, public, or nonreligious private school counterparts in such areas as church attendance and contributions (volunteer and financial) to their churches, but they rely significantly more often on God and Scripture to help them make moral decisions in their personal lives (20–21). Adult graduates of Protestant Christian schools also tend to
- marry younger, divorce less often, and have more children;
- volunteer outside the church on par with public school and other private school graduates (26);
- pray together as couples, talk with one another about God, and read the Bible together far more frequently than their peers in other schooling types (22);
- commit to mission trips in their adult lives significantly more often than their peers in every other sector (19); and
- tithe three times more often than their public school peers (18).
What Protestant Christian school graduates do not do, according to our data, is engage vigorously in political life or even in political discussion. Statistically, they are actually much more likely to actively avoid politics and to show a consistent distaste for going against established constructs of society. They respect authority and avoid behaviors that might be perceived to challenge the status quo (27).
Some people may be relieved that more recent graduates of Christian schools are not following the clichéd political paths of an earlier generation that was negatively characterized as the “moral majority” or the “religious right.” But that change may raise serious questions about outright exclusion of Protestant Christians’ opinions and values from contemporary political dialogue and cultural influence. If an unquestioning, nonconfrontational way of life is distinctive of Protestant Christian school graduates, how can these schools possibly achieve their stated goals of developing the next generation of leaders who will influence culture?
The question takes on added seriousness when linked to the comparatively weaker educational attainments of students at, and graduates from, Protestant Christian schools. There has always been—and always will be—tension in Christian education between the emphasis on developing lifelong faith and focusing on immediate academic achievement. We would never assert that attending highly selective colleges is the ultimate goal of K–12 education. However, when almost 90 percent of Catholic schools report placing students in top 20 universities compared with 50 percent of Protestant Christian schools, the gap itself surely requires attention (32). It’s a divergence that corresponds to a precursor finding: Catholic schools report almost twice as many visits from college recruiters as do Protestant schools. And Protestant schools report only a third as many recruiter visits from nonreligious colleges (32).
In other words, institutions of higher learning in general and elite schools in particular are examining both curriculum rigor and student achievement—and voting with their feet. Attending a Catholic or nonreligious private school does appear to positively influence the postsecondary choices available to graduates. Not surprisingly, attendance also affects the end of the process; there is a notable imbalance between Protestant Christian school graduates and their Catholic or nonreligious private school peers in obtaining advanced degrees. Along the way, Catholic schools offer almost twice as many Advanced Placement (AP) courses as their Protestant Christian school counterparts, and far more Catholic schools offer senior-level physics and calculus courses, which are seen as an indication of academic rigor and emphasis (31–32).
A fair rejoinder would be that Catholics appear to have achieved academic respectability at the unacceptable cost of inculcating lifelong commitment to the Christian faith in their students. Such a response is borne out by Catholic school administrators’ ranking university attendance, along with volunteering, as the top priorities for their students. Protestant Christian school administrators, by contrast, rank family priorities, family values, family coherence, and eventual university attendance as almost identical priorities (26).
Yet if a purpose of Christian education is high development of the faith, surely those involved must also have faith that Christian education will purposefully develop highly educated Christians. Without attention paid to the academic program, a Christian school is nothing more than a tuition-based youth group. Christian schools need to hold themselves to the same standards with which they should challenge their students; pursuing excellence not only has utilitarian benefits but is a spiritual virtue and a necessary stewardship of the gifts and opportunities God gives us.
As we arrive at these conclusions, fresh possibilities arise from the data produced by the Cardus Education Survey. Beyond moving us past false stereotypes to a true picture of the state of Christian schools, we found that the most important discovery of all was that results faithfully realize the intentions in both systems. What administrators and educators say they want most is what they get the most of from the graduates they send out into the world. Mission matters.
In a positive way, that means mission can also be shifted in a way that restores balance rather than risking what is already working well. Academic rigor need not be sacrificed for either faith development or commitment to social, political, and cultural engagement.
Our study of one Protestant Christian school on the East Coast showed this to be true in the real world. The school has found a way to create a culture in which students are pursuing both intellectual development and spiritual encounter with the Christian faith. Students describe teachers who routinely connect the development of the students’ minds and their understanding of God and their own humanity created in His image. This school’s teachers and administrators understand that the development of a faith that translates into faithful engagement with the world requires students’ intellectual development. The school also believes that its students must be prepared to enter the most selective colleges if they are to lead in ways that could influence culture—so, despite its small size, the school offers an intense academic program and extensive AP course choices. The result is a unique educational culture that shows strong congruence between the three outcomes measured by the Cardus Education Survey: spiritual formation, cultural engagement, and academic achievement.
Therein lies the true possibility: the possibility of freedom. While public schools are necessarily entrenched in federal and state regulations and so encounter greater challenges in developing unique programs and curricula, Christian schools are less constrained by these regulations. The possibility, the opportunity, and the freedom exist for Christian schools to be incubators of educational innovation in ways never before acknowledged. If Christian schools are indeed providing a quality product, which our research categorically supports, they can serve the public good in this way, too—and debunk yet another stereotype in the bargain.
Reference
Pennings, Ray, et al. 2011. Cardus education survey: Do the motivations for private religious Catholic and Protestant schooling in North America align with graduate outcomes? Hamilton, ON: Cardus.
CSE 15.2 MISSION MATTERS