Education: Catholic school students post impressive scores
Catholic Spirit, June 2010, Good News
By Father Bill Wack, Father Rusty P. Richard and Carolyn O’Connell
Guest Columnists
It’s all about the bottom line. Whenever most people receive a report they go right to the bottom or the back of the paper to see the results. To what does it all boil down? What did we do right? What did we do wrong? After all, that’s why reports are written: to give us the bottom line. The test results are in and the bottom line is impressive!
During the month of February, Catholic school students across the Austin Diocese took the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS). Our students outperformed the national average in nearly every category in every class level. Students are tested in all grade levels on vocabulary, reading comprehension, word analysis, listening, spelling, language, math concepts, math problems, math computation, social studies, science, sources of information (maps, diagrams, reference materials) and critical thinking.
The bar graph reports for each grade level give us a snapshot of how Catholic schools are doing. The explanation from the report states that “The varying lengths of these bars permit identification of the stronger and weaker areas of achievement for this diocese.” The good news is that these bars exceed the national average again and again and again, almost always landing above the 75th percentile. There are some skills that need to be strengthened, but overall the report shows that our schools are doing a fantastic job educating our children! Every year upon receiving test results, our schools evaluate their programs to ensure students are provided faith-filled, strong, academic programs.
Consistent throughout the grades, from Kindergarten through 12th grade, are higher scores in reading, vocabulary, comprehension and analytical skills. Mathematics also received high marks throughout the grade levels, though slightly lower in computation skills as one looks at the advanced grades. These results help us target areas where we can make improvements. Perhaps our greatest challenge is to teach in such a way so that our students will outperform their peers in every class, at every level.
The Strategic Plan for Catholic Schools (June 2009) for the Diocese of Austin clearly states our academic objective, “Catholic school PreK to grade 12 educational programs must excel academically and exceed the acceptable standards of quality as defined by the Texas Catholic Conference Education Department (TCCED) and/or the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).”
Thanks to many dedicated, faithful and talented educators in our Catholic schools, we are well on our way to achieving this goal. With God’s help, we will continue to see more and more success, especially in the directive that comes from our Diocesan Strategic Plan for Catholic Schools, “We must provide young people with an academically rigorous and doctrinally sound program of education and faith formation designed to strengthen their union with Christ and his church.”
A Catholic education is more than simply grammar, science, social studies and math, of course. There are so many other values and benefits from being a part of a Catholic learning community: faith, prayer, character building, ethical decision-making, responsibility and social justice, to name a few. Given the fact that our schools spend a large amount of time and energy passing along these values, it is even more impressive that the students’ academic scores are so high.
If we tried to plot the value of a Catholic education in terms of faith, worship and service on a bar graph, the results would be off the chart.