WACO, Texas (ABP) — The academic achievement gap between Anglo students and their African-American or Hispanic peers disappears when the students have intact, religious families, a new study says.
William Jeynes, a non-resident researcher for the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion and a professor of education at California State University at Long Beach, said religious commitment and intact family structures bridge the achievement gap for students in both public schools and private religious schools.
“The results suggest that the achievement gap might not be quite as indefatigable and pervasive as many people believe,” Jeynes wrote in an article published in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion. “Given the number of efforts social scientists have launched to reduce the achievement gap, the fact that the combination of personal religious commitment and coming from an intact family eliminates the gap for African-American and Latino students is nothing short of magnificent.”
Furthermore, in single-parent families with a deep religious commitment, the gap between African-American and Hispanic students and Anglo students is cut in half, he noted, suggesting that devotion to faith makes a key difference in academic success.
“Clearly, their faith is a source of strength,” Jeynes said, presenting his findings in a lecture at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
Jeynes' research focused particularly on the benefits of religious schools as compared to public education.
“According to the findings, students of low socioeconomic status and students of color especially benefit from attending religious schools,” he asserted.
Not only do students in religious schools outperform their counterparts in public schools in almost every measurable area of academic achievement, but the gaps between low socioeconomic students and high socioeconomic students — as well as between Anglo students and ethnic minorities — are also reduced and, in some areas, eliminated, he said.
Jeynes' report showed that the lower a student's socioeconomic status, the greater the benefit from a religious school education. And for all academic measures, regardless of socioeconomic status, African-American and Hispanic students benefit more than Anglos from attending religious schools, the report said.
Public schools can learn a thing or two from religious schools, Jeynes suggested.
“Although educators are frequently divided over the merits of school choice, there is a growing consensus that public schools can benefit by imitating some of the strengths of the religious-school model,” he said. “There may be limitations on just what qualities can be imitated, but the increased emphasis on character education, high academic standards and parental involvement can be imitated.”
Jeynes also offered several recommendations for educators:
–Recognize that education is “not just about methodology but is also about loving the child.”
–Raise expectations regarding student effort and work ethic.
–Encourage parental involvement by establishing strong relationships with parents.
–Encourage students to draw from sources of strength, including their religious beliefs.
Jeynes did, however, voice some doubt about how effectively public educators could incorporate the elements that make religious schools most effective. To help level the field, he said, he supports a system of “school choice” that provides low-income and minority students access to religious schools.
Jeynes said it “appears illogical and potentially racially oppressive and discriminatory to deny minority students the right to more fully reach their potential via a school-choice system.”
But Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, took issue with Jeynes' call for any system that uses public tax dollars for private religious education.
“It is prejudicial to religious schools' autonomy and ultimately a denial of religious liberty for government to subsidize — and therefore regulate — pervasively religious schools,” he said. “It is simply wrong to tax citizen A to pay to teach citizen B's religion.”
Walker said acceptable alternatives to school choice include tapping private sources of financial aid, providing choices within the public schools and establishing a “serious commitment to reforming and funding public education.”
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