ABSTRACT
Catholic schools were not initially designed to be educationally superior. They came into existence for specifically religious purposes— to protect or enhance religious faith and practice of young Catholics while facilitating their educational and occupational mobility in American society. While occasionally the more militant supporters of Catholic schools may have argued that they were educationally better, the normal stance in the Catholic community has been that Catholic schools are "as good" educationally as public schools. At one time many "liberal" self-critics in American Catholicism felt that Catholic schools were probably educationally inferior to public schools. The chapter presents some possible myths about the conservatism, which might be expected to be the result of the sterner Catholic disciplinary environment. It does not add any new pieces to the puzzle of more impressive academic outcomes in Catholic schools because there is no statistically significant correlation between any of these variables and academic performance.
