Unfortunately, the NAEP generally isn’t a good tool to examine how the public school system compares to performance in private schools. While the NAEP does attempt to sample private school performance, the participation is voluntary and so few private schools take part that NAEP as of 2022 didn’t report their scores – with one notable exception – Catholic schools.

The NAEP did report nationwide average results for Catholic private schools in 2022 in both reading and math, and the table below compares the NAEP Scale Scores for white, Black and Hispanic students in these schools of choice to the corresponding averages for public schools across the nation. There’s some interesting “stuff” going on in this table.

Let’s consider the NAEP Scale Scores first. These are under the section with the orange headings.

In Grade 4 NAEP Reading, for example, white students in the nation’s public school system scored 226 while Catholic Grade 4 students scored higher at 235. In fact, the score difference is large enough to be statistically significant even after the sampling errors present in all NAEP score estimates are considered. So, the Catholic score for white students of 235 has been shaded in light green to show it is definitely higher than the public school score.

As you look through the rest of the Scale Score section of the table, you will see all the other Catholic scores, with just one exception for Black Grade 4 Math, are also shaded in green to show the differences to the corresponding score above from public school students are statistically significant, too.

That’s a lot of green shading.

Something else to notice, the Grade 4 NAEP Reading scores for Blacks and Hispanics in Catholic schools is essentially equal to the score for white students in the public school system.

Without question, regardless of grade and subject and race, the students in Catholic schools notably outscore their public school counterparts.

Another major issue in public schools is the major achievement gaps between students from different racial groups. The right side of the table above looks at those gaps.

For example, in 2022 NAEP Grade 4 Reading, white students in public schools scored 226 while Black students in public schools scored only 198, a gap of 28 NAEP Scale Score points.

In the same Grade 4 NAEP Reading Assessment, however, the white minus Black achievement gap in Catholic Schools was only 13 points, less than half of the public school gap. The gap situation for Hispanics in NAEP Grade 4 Reading was similarly impressive for Catholic Schools.

So, considering all of this, we summarize that:

• All students, especially minorities, attending the nation’s Catholic schools really benefit.

• Achievement gaps in Catholic schools tend to be smaller, sometimes remarkably smaller, that public schools experience.

These are pretty nice reasons for students of color to want to go to a Catholic school.

But, what about other private school situations? While we don’t have any recent data from NAEP to show you, it seems likely that parents who chose those schools also see better outcomes for their children.

All of this makes it even sadder that the Kentucky Supreme Court recently killed a bill that would have created funding to provide scholarships to low-income students to attend a private school. House Bill 563 was well-intentioned, but thanks to the court is looks like a constitutional amendment is going to be needed to finally give Kentucky’s students better access to the kind of success that students around the nation are already experiencing in private schools like those the Catholic faith operates.

Tech Note: All NAEP Scale Scores were extracted from the NAEP Data Explorer.

The gaps are the author’s calculations.