Marc Porter Magee, CEO and founder of 50CAN, a network of advocates focused on education, similarly noted, “How well does the Catholic school advantage on the 2024 NAEP hold up when looking at student achievement between schools with similar levels of low-income students? Quite well. On average, Catholic school students scored two grade levels above their public school counterparts.”
Magee also noted that, on average, black students in Catholic schools were 1.4 grade levels ahead of black students in traditional public schools.
“In fact, if all Black students performed at the level of Black Catholic students, the racial achievement gap in reading would be completely eliminated and it would be reduced by two-thirds in math,” Magee wrote.
He similarly noted that “if all Hispanic students performed at the level of Hispanic Catholic students, Hispanics would reverse the achievement gap by outperforming the US average on 3 of 4 tests.”
