More Urban Minorities in Catholic Schools Go To College, Study Says

Blacks and Hispanics in urban areas stand a better chance of completing high school and college if they attend a Catholic school instead of a public one, suggests a newly published report from the University of Chicago.

The conclusions support the results of earlier studies of the relative advantages of Roman Catholic education, first claimed in the early 1980s by research that set off a heated debate among scholars and educators. By concentrating on urban areas, the new study also promises to fuel the ongoing discussion over offering private school vouchers in cities with troubled public schools.

Derek Neal, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Education's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which has followed the progress of more than 10,000 students since 1979. Mr. Neal found that while 62 percent of minority students at urban schools graduate, that rate is 88 percent for students from similar backgrounds who attend Catholic schools. Among urban minority students who graduated from a public high school, 11 percent completed college; for those who attended a Catholic high school, 27...