ABSTRACT

The research literature that looks at Catholic school outcomes has been largely positive, and on occasion almost embarrassingly enthusiastic. The late James Coleman’s first study comparing public and private schools’ provoked great controversy, and for a time, it supported a small industry of contrarian scholarship.2 Five years later, Coleman published a second book3 which analyzed additional data from the same students included in the US Department of Education’s longitudinal study, High School and Beyond. The second study confirmed all of the assertions about academic achievement described in the first study, and went on to postulate a unique source of social capital in the relationship between the Catholic school and the Catholic community in which it was rooted. Strangely, this time there were few scholarly or political counterattacks. When Coleman’s first study was reported at a scholarly meeting, a sympathetic colleague observed that one could hear minds snapping shut. It is difficult to determine why reactions to the more sweeping conclusions of the later work were muted, although a case could be made that the political interests opposed to Coleman’s findings decided that silence served their cause better than counterattack.