Separate the boys and girls. Uniforms. Let them go home on weekends only. I’m sure they’ll be happier when Monday comes around.
The spiritual formation is a big part of it too. If your school has the ritual of weekly Mass and daily prayers those aspects are going to sink into good habits of mind. Public schools lack that.
Proof that it’s school admins that are fail, rather than the students being unteachable, in inner city schools?
I certainly agree with this study. Check out the 60 Minutes segment on St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, which aired on CBS around the same time that the posted article was published.
Discipline, higher standards, and norms of social conformity. Its not rocket surgery.
Public schools really are lowest common denominator,
Newt Gingrich stated this 20 some years ago.
While the differing nature of the Catholic schools from the godless public schools is surely one factor, an even more strong thing is the fact that the parents who send their children to these schools generally care much more about their kids and generally do a much better job raising these kids before they even step foot in a school.
#1 factor in student success is parental involvement. The kids that escaped the LA schools are the ones with parents that cared enough to get them out. That raises success rate of the private school and removes the students who were most likely to go to college from the public schools, further driving down their %.
The private schools don't have to deal with the bottom 20% or so of intentional non learners that the public school does. This will also distort the numbers.
All that being said, I'd be moving heaven and earth to get my kid out of there.
How much money was wasted on that study?
When John Cardinal O’Connor was accused of taking only “good” into the Catholic school system and leaving the hard cases to the public schools he immediately rejoined: “Send them to me”. NYC somehow failed to take him up on the offer.