Study of Education Outcomes Places Adventist Schools Significantly Ahead of Public Schools

Barbados SDA Secondary School

"The first analysis of all available research comparing religious, public and charter schools was released recently in a presentation at Notre Dame University and the author had positive comments about Adventist schools. The meta-analysis combined data from all 90 studies on this topic published in recent years, most of them in refereed academic journals. It is the first such analysis ever undertaken comparing the three types of schools and included both elementary and secondary students.


Dr. William H. Jeynes, well known for his meta-analytic research on a number of topics, is a senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, and professor of education at California State University, Long Beach. He is known as the architect of the economic and education plan that enabled the Republic of Korea to recover from the 1997-98 Asian economic crisis. He has authored more than 110 academic publications, including 10 books.

Students attending faith-based schools had an academic advantage of approximately one year over their counterparts in both public and charter schools, Jeynes stated in his Notre Dame lecture. Even when the data was controlled for socioeconomic status, ethnicity and gender this advantage was maintained. “I was quite surprised that students from charter schools did no better than their counterparts in traditional public schools,” Jeynes said. “I really expected charter school students to outperform pupils in traditional public schools. It appears that if this nation is to support the notion of a greater breadth of school choice, then religious schools should be included.”

 Schools operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church were included in the analysis and Jeynes spoke exclusively to Adventist Today about the results. “Students who attend Adventist schools score at an academic level about 11 months ahead of their counterparts,” he said. “Even when controlling for socioeconomic status, race and gender, the advantage is six months ...”"


Read more: http://www.atoday.org/article/1774/news/april/study-of-education-outcomes-places-adventist-schools-significantly-ahead-of-public-schools