Many Latinos Fare Better in Catholic Schools

Mexican-born mother Marta Lopez feared that if she left her three U.S.-born children in public schools, they would end up like her--in a Boyle Heights housing project surrounded by gangs and drug dealers.

A gang clique was laying after-school ambushes for Yolanda, 13. Lopez’s sixth-grader, Sylvia, still spoke no English. Older boys were beating up Roberto, 6, her Spanish-speaking first-grader.

In January, she persuaded the city’s poorest Catholic school, Dolores Mission, to take all three. Soon, Yolanda was safe, Sylvia was grappling with English and Roberto was considered one of the brightest children in his class--though Catholic schools have no formal bilingual education program.

As wealthy California parents put their children in suburban private schools, low-income immigrants from Latin America and Asia have turned to inner-city Catholic schools where a host of national studies say disadvantaged black and Latino students are outperforming their public school counterparts.

At a time when nearly three in 10 Latinos are not finishing high school, 97.4% of California Catholic school graduates go on to two- or four-year colleges, Catholic school figures show. A large number of those are Latinos, considering that 29% of California’s 251,478 Catholic schoolchildren are Latino.

“Given the right opportunity, low-income kids--regardless of whether they are Latino or African American--can live up to their potential,” said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a Latino think tank. “Catholic schools, through a combination of factors, are providing those opportunities.”

In Los Angeles, Latino enrollment in Catholic schools has grown more slowly than in public schools, but inner-city Catholic schools’ performance appears to surpass that of public education, experts say.

Latino Catholic school enrollment has jumped 60% in the Los Angeles archdiocese since 1970. Today, 46% of the county’s 92,500 Catholic schoolchildren are Latino.

The influx has helped buoy state Catholic schools to their highest enrollment since 1965, said California Catholic schools superintendent Robert Teegarden.

Some Latino students are from the emerging middle class. But in Los Angeles, many are from poor immigrant families who are among the recipients of $11 million in financial aid. Some inner-city students, especially in the lower grades, enroll speaking only Spanish or limited English.

“We have a much higher number of immigrant and low-income students than other Catholic schools around the country, and we seem to be getting the same achievement results,” said Jerome Porath, superintendent of the Los Angeles archdiocese’s Catholic schools.

At Sacred Heart High School, a Lincoln Heights academy that taught Irish immigrant children 100 years ago, 90% of the 275 students are Latinas from inner-city Boyle Heights, South Central and East Los Angeles, according to school administrator Kathy Young. The tuition is $3,500 a year, but one-third receives scholarships. Ninety-five percent of seniors go on to college, the average for city Catholic high schools. Graduates have gone to Princeton, Harvard and Stanford; some have become doctors and lawyers.

Less than 1% of Catholic high school students drop out, often to return to public schools, administrators say.

By contrast, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is 68.5% Latino, just over half of all graduates say they are going to college. In 1996-97, 7.8% of the 111,262 Latino high school students dropped out, said Donna Rothenbaum, of the state Department of Education.

Still, the Los Angeles teachers union says it is wrong to compare public and Catholic schools.

Catholic schools can easily expel drug users, gang members, and disruptive students. They do not take severely handicapped children. They benefit from the “self-selection” effect of parents committed enough to send their children to private schools.

Many public school teachers would like to adopt some of those features--though not the notoriously low-pay scale of Catholic teachers, who earn an average of $21,882 annually--said Steve Blazak, spokesman of the teachers union, United Teachers-Los Angeles.

“What they’re doing corresponds to some of the things we’re pushing for--safe schools, parental involvement and a district-wide discipline code with teeth,” Blazak said. “We would like to have the same high standards.”

Students Receive More Attention

Experts began studying inner-city Catholic schools in the 1980s because, unlike the private schools of affluent suburban children, they were a much closer mirror of urban public schools.

In California, about 55% of the Catholic schoolchildren are now minorities. In the three-county Los Angeles archdiocese, 69% of the 70,000 elementary students and 62.5% of the 30,000 high school students are Latinos, blacks, or Asians.

“A lot of people call Catholic schools the poor man’s private school,” said Valerie Lee, an education expert at the University of Michigan and co-author of a book, “Catholic Schools and the Common Good”.

“They’re safe and well-cared for by teachers who demand a lot of them, they go on to college and don’t drop out much,” she said. “And they’re surrounded by inner-city public schools where all the bad things are endemic.”

Lee’s study of minority students at Catholic schools, published in 1993, found that the schools dramatically reduced the academic handicaps imposed by a disadvantaged background. Other studies in Chicago and New York found higher SAT and graduation rates.

Paul Hill, co-author of a 1990 Rand study of New York Catholic schools, does not accept the contention that they were succeeding because parents at those schools were more committed than public school parents.

“There are a lot of parents in public schools willing to try anything possible, who are desperate about the low quality and feel their children are being hurt by public schools,” Hill said. “The only intelligent conclusion is that Catholic schools may be doing better.”

One important difference, experts say, may be the relative absence at Catholic schools of tracking, which studies say often shortchange black and Latino students. All Catholic high school students are on a college preparatory track.

“From time to time people say, ‘You should offer technical training because not everybody is college material,’ ” Porath said. “I say, ‘Why not give them a chance?’ ”

Others point to structural problems at inner-city public schools, where high school counselors handle as many as 400 students and have little time to plan students’ course loads or college applications. At Catholic high schools, coaching seniors into college is a top goal.

But the most important values behind their success, experts say, are the adherence to a core curriculum, an insistence on old-fashioned character-building, civility and ethics; and the commitment to offering the community emotional backing and identity many disadvantaged children lack--even if it means acting as surrogate parents.

Dan Horn is the principal of St. Thomas, an award-winning Catholic K-8 in a Pico Union area that is the Ellis Island for Central American immigrants. Three years after he took over, a woman who had been shot to death was dumped in the driveway. Gang gunfights are less common in the district, but the school still holds drive-by shooting drills.

Horn calls his students “the good gang,” acknowledging the hunger to belong that leaves local children--many left alone by parents working several jobs to support them--highly vulnerable to gangs and teenage pregnancy.

All but 11 of his 315 students are there on need-based scholarships, some granted so informally no paperwork was involved. Their parents are maids, factory workers, and can collectors. Some pay nothing.

Having 10 families that paid full tuition last year--$2,075--was “a major achievement,” Horn said. “Most Catholic schools in areas like ours probably don’t have anybody paying the actual cost of education. We have to go out and raise the money.”

There are about 35 students per class--higher than the 20 per teacher in K-3 public schools --but St. Thomas strives to create a close-knit, family environment.

Last year, when Chris Mejia’s Salvadoran immigrant mother died of cancer and left him an orphan, the distressed eighth-grader rushed to school and sought his dance teacher. She became something of a second mother. With her support, Chris received a scholarship to start Catholic high school this fall.

The school’s theater program counteracts the widespread attitude among disaffected local youths that it somehow isn’t “cool” to get good grades and achieve in school.

One St. Thomas convert was Adolfo Guevara, a onetime low-achiever. He became envious of the small-time Hollywood aura the school thespians enjoyed and sheepishly auditioned for the musical “Godspell.” He was cast as Jesus, and from then on he was hooked on school.

Educators say the musicals coax untapped gifts that might have gone unnoticed for a lifetime--along with the confidence they instill. Theater also encourages parents to enroll in English adult education courses so they can understand the plays that keep their children off the streets.

At a recent Catholic educators’ conference, Nancy Rosales, a shy eighth-grader with cat-eye glasses and long black hair belted out “Home” (from the Whiz) in a big voice with such range and depth, she brought tears to some eyes.

The school still sometimes loses students to the streets. Two students--one on a full scholarship--got involved with gangs last year. Both were expelled.

A Laboratory for English Instruction

As Catholic schools attract the attention and interest of educators, they also provide a laboratory for language instruction, the issue that has captivated California public schools this year in the debate over bilingual education.

There are no comprehensive figures, but Teegarden said many Latino and Asian immigrant children start Catholic kindergarten speaking no English.

Lessons are in English, and teachers rely on bilingual aides--and most important, he said, fellow students--to bring the students up to speed.

“It’s not like if you didn’t get it in English, tough luck,” Los Angeles Superintendent Porath said. “Teachers find ways to help the kids understand. Children, especially in the primary grades, seem to acquire the language quite readily.”

As many as five of the 35 incoming St. Thomas kindergartners spoke no English in the early 1990s. Most students speak Spanish at home, and the language echoes throughout the school’s hallways, offices and playground.

When Roberto Lopez entered first grade at Dolores Mission in January, he spoke no English and his teacher, Rosemary Powell, spoke no Spanish. But nobody relegated the inquisitive little boy to the dummy track.

“This kid is sharp. He’s one of the smartest kids in the class,” Powell said. “He picks up everything really quickly.”

Roberto beamed from behind a “Doctor Seuss” book, pointing to an illustration of a blond hairy fantasy animal. “That’s a guera,” he offered in Spanglish.

At Dolores Mission, classes are in English, but students chatter away in Spanish to each other.

Who speaks Spanish at home? Every child in Roberto’s class raises their hand.

“Except when I do my homework with my Dad,” said Xochitl Davila, 6. “That’s in English.”

Dolores Mission covers only 20% of its annual budget with tuition. Usually, parents do not enroll their children in the first grade. Instead, they wait until a public school menace looms.

“They feel there’s greater social pressure [in public schools] for the girls to be more active with boys, whether sexual or otherwise,” said Gabrielle Porter, a bilingual aide. “And with the boys, they worry about gangs and drugs.”

Recently, a mother asked the school to take an older son because he was under pressure to join a gang. And Roberto’s mother, Marta Lopez, was concerned that her daughter Sylvia was not being transitioned into English by bilingual educators.

Language skills is one reason Dolores Mission principal, Sister Pat Reinhart, encourages parents to enroll children as early as possible.

“The younger they learn the language, the easier it is,” she said.

The school’s mission does not stop at scholastics. It also targets the “poverty of the imagination.” “They watch television and don’t believe that prosperous lifestyle belongs to them,” said Father Greg Bonfiglio, a school administrator. “We try to get them to imagine a future in which they are doctors and not asbestos removal workers.”

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Researcher Julia Franco contributed to this story.