According to the study, this connection stems in part from the fact that Catholic and many private schools tend to require all students to take a rigorous college-preparatory curriculum, while many public schools do not. However, such a switch has little effect on suburban white public school students. 17 Second, Catholic schools educate a sizable number of non-Catholics. In Washington, D.C., for example, 52.1 percent of Catholic elementary school children are not Catholic. Test scores are between 18 and 26 percentage points above the national norm.
Affluent suburbs are generally satisfied with their public schools.
Cleveland is the first to allow money to be spent in Catholic schools, usually they are opposed on constitutional grounds of separation of church and state. Test scores for catholic schools are comparable when parental achievement is taken into account according to Albert Shanker, catholic schools in Minneapolis show the same gap. Catholic schools reduced the racial gap by half. Gerald Bracey says Catholic better at bottom 4th grade but worse at the top of 12th grade while the NAEP 1996 Science Report Card does find that the 10th percentile of Catholic Schools is much higher than the 10th percentile of public schools at grade four, the difference is much smaller for the 75th and 90th percentiles. It is also much smaller for all percentile ranks at 12th grade.