The dropout advantage of private schools persists when controlling for student backgrounds

Evidence

Adjusting the dropout rates for differences in student-body financial, human, and social capital among the three sets of schools by standardizing the population of the Catholic schools and other private schools to the student-body backgrounds of the public schools shows that the differences are affected only slightly. Furthermore, the differences are not due to the religion of the students or to the degree of religious observance. Catholic students in public school are only slightly less likely to drop out than non-Catholics. — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 186

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s Coleman/Bellodi axis: a population-level advantage that survives individual-level statistical controls — structure does more than composition. Resonates with network-closure theory’s claim that the third-party mechanism depends on the arrangement, not the people. — connects to: Religiously-founded private schools show low dropout rates matching Catholic schools; Schooling attainment depends on family background as much today as fifty years ago — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 438
• QUESTION: If the effect isn’t from religion per se or student composition, where exactly does the private-school advantage originate? Worth chasing the mechanisms Coleman invokes.

Related

• Catholic schools have far lower dropout rates than public or private schools. (similarity 0.88)
• Religious communities’ intergenerational closure replicates Catholic-school dropout benefits. (similarity 0.86)
• Social capital in the surrounding adult community lowers student dropout rates. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Religiously-founded private schools show low dropout rates matching Catholic schools #expands (0.82)