Early findings from a new research effort suggest that low-income minority students attending Catholic schools in the Los Angeles area are staying in school and graduating at high rates.
The study examined 205 students who started the 9th grade in fall 2001 at about 30 area Roman Catholic schools and found that 97.5 percent of them graduated from high school within four years. This graduation rate was well above the rates for public school districts in the Los Angeles region, said the study, conducted by researchers at the Loyola Marymount school of education, in Los Angeles.
The analysis also looked at a larger pool of 603 students who completed the 8th grade in 2001, and found that all of them continued on to attend the 9th grade the following fall.
All of the students studied received tuition awards from the Catholic Education Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group that provides financial aid to help students from low-income families attend schools in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
