Surveys, Achievement and Enrollment: Strengthening and Sustaining Catholic Schools

Abstract

U.S. Catholic school enrollment has declined significantly from a peak in the 1960s. Schools attempting to reverse that trend have relied on marketing and promotion. We use survey data from Chicago Catholic schools to compare Rasch measures of school climate to student growth, school enrollment, and closure. We find that these measures are reliable indicators of students’ and teachers’ experiences, and they are related to enrollment change. These findings provide some validation of survey measures that were previously validated in public schools. Thus Catholic schools seeking to increase enrollment might move beyond marketing and achievement to examine school climate.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Mark Berends for locating the data used in this work, and dedicates the work to Maureen Hallinan, who originally collected the data. The author thanks colleagues Julie Dallavis, Monica Kowalski, Gina Svarovsky, and Ryan Woodbury for ongoing conversation and review. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of any school, school district, or Diocese. Any errors are the responsibility of the author. The author has no competing interests to report.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen M. Ponisciak

Stephen M. Ponisciak is a research scientist for the IEI Program Evaluation and Research team. His research includes work on student growth models, teacher observation, and Rasch analysis.