The influx has helped buoy state Catholic schools to their highest enrollment since 1965, said California Catholic schools superintendent Robert Teegarden. Some Latino students are from the emerging middle class. Some inner-city students, especially in the lower grades, enroll speaking only Spanish or limited English. Ninety-five percent of seniors go on to college, the average for city Catholic high schools. Still, the Los Angeles teachers union says it is wrong to compare public and Catholic schools.
Catholic schools can easily expel drug users, gang members, and disruptive students.
They do not take severely handicapped children. We would like to have the same high standards. Students Receive More Attention Experts began studying inner-city Catholic schools in the 1980s because, unlike the private schools of affluent suburban children, they were a much closer mirror of urban public schools. And they're surrounded by inner-city public schools where all the bad things are endemic. Lee's study of minority students at Catholic schools, published in 1993, found that the schools dramatically reduced the academic handicaps imposed by a disadvantaged background.