Volume 38, Number 4 (Fall) 2003

Jespen, Christopher. 2003. "The Effectiveness of Catholic Primary Schooling." Journal of Human Resources 38(4):.

Although extensive research has compared Catholic and public high schools, little is known about Catholic primary schools. Using unique data for two cohorts of primary school students, I find that Catholic schooling does not have a significant effect on mathematics and reading test scores. These findings do not change when school level test scores from the first-grade cohort are used to account for selection bias in the fourth-grade cohort. In fourth grade, Catholic schooling is associated with marginally fewer student absences than is public schooling.

Christopher Jepsen is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, 500 Washington Street, Suite 800, San Francisco, CA 94111, jepsen@ppic.org . He is grateful to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) for financial support and to Abt Associates for the use of Prospects data. He would like to thank Joseph Altonji, Erik Beecroft, Rebecca Blank, Todd Elder, David Figlio, Lisa Jepsen, Jens Ludwig, Bruce Meyer, Derek Neal, Steven Rivkin, Paulo Santiago, Jon Sonstelie, Christopher Taber, an editor and two anonymous referees – as well as seminar participants at the 1999 Fall APPAM Conference, Northwestern University, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and PPIC – for useful comments. He takes responsibility for all errors. All opinions are the author’s and do not reflect those of NBER or PPIC. Scholars who wish access to the data used in this paper may contact the U.S. Department of Education.