Student Performance on Renaissance Star Assessments in Catholic and Public Schools

Strong academic preparation is a primary reason parents choose Catholic schools. Yet research demonstrating a Catholic school effect on achievement is a decade or more old. We use data from Renaissance Star assessments to provide a current national comparison of academic achievement in math and reading in the elementary grades in Catholic and public schools. Specifically, we use matching methods to measure differences in performance, comparing similar students in similar schools. We find that students in Catholic and public schools perform about the same in both math and reading.