Private Religious Schools Research Articles

How do shocks affect enrollment in faith-based schools? Evidence from West Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed concerns about how shocks may affect religious and other private schools in low-income countries, especially when they do not benefit from state support. By reducing parental incomes, shocks – not only epidemics but also natural disasters and conflicts, reduce overall enrollment in school. But they may also lead to a shift from private to public schools with potentially differentiated effects by type of private school depending on context. In addition, household responses to shocks such as migration may lead to a change in the socio-cultural context in which households live, and these changes may also affect school choice. This paper explores the effects of shocks and migration on school choice in West Africa. Results suggest that shocks and migration lead to a shift from private to public schools, but with differentiated effects by type of private schools.

Under the Law: Gary B., Espinoza, and the fight for school funding

A pair of recent federal court decisions could have profound consequences for school funding across the country. In the first, Gary B. v. Whitmer, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of seven Detroit, Michigan, public school students who argued that their schools were so woefully underfunded as to deny them the opportunity to become fully literate, which is essential to the exercise of fundamental rights under the U.S. Constitution. In the second, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Montana could not block parents from using the state’s education tax-credit program to pay for tuition at private religious schools.

Private competition and market characteristics: evidence from public school efficiency

ABSTRACT The traditional market structure paradigm does not fully identify all components that determine the true degree and complexity of a market’s existing competition. Recently, researchers have redefined market structures and market competition using geographic spatial tools We follow this approach in developing a school competition index (SCI) for the state of Mississippi to define the K-12 market and to measure the competition public schools face from private schools. We separate religious private schools from non-religious private schools as an important market characteristic and create two variables to capture the degree of competition each public school faces from peer religious and non-religious private schools spatially located within their local market area. Results from two-stage stochastic frontier analysis indicate that private schools with a religious affiliation significantly increase public schools’ performance. The results also suggest that students’ race and their socio-economic standard significantly reduce public school efficiency. We conclude that policymakers should consider competition-based school reform policies to increase public school outcomes.

UJIAN CIRI PSIKOMETRIK KE ATAS INSTRUMEN PENILAIAN ORIENTASI MATLAMAT

This study aims to determine the degree of reliability and validity of Multidimensional Measures of Goal Orientation Scale by Zweig and Webster (2004) for measuring the goal orientation of religious educators in private religious school. Goal orientation construct has received much attention from researchers as to understand how one build, acquire or demonstrate proficiency in learning and performance. There are three (3) factors used to measure the Orientation Objectives, namely (1) Performance Approach Goal Orientation; (2) Performance-Avoidance Goal Orientation; and (3) Learning Goal Orientation. 171 Islamic education teachers from private religious schools in Negeri Sembilan were involved in the study. 21 items from original instruments were translated into Malay language and translated back to English language using the back-translation method. The reliability of the instrument was determined by using the internal consistency of Cronbach Alpha's method and the results showed the alpha values were between .74 and .91. The overall reliability coefficient for the total final items was .84. This instrument has met the psychometric characteristics of a good instrument and can be utilized in different studies context.

Changes in school-day step counts during a physical activity for Lent intervention: a cluster randomized crossover trial of the Savior\u2019s Sandals

BackgroundParticipation in regular physical activity (PA) has many health benefits for school-aged children. However, only about 20% of children worldwide meet recommendations for being sufficiently active. Children spend many hours per day at school and schools have a mandate for promoting PA. Private religious schools could serve as a novel source for religious-themed PA interventions.MethodsWe randomly allocated 2 clusters of 2 Catholic middle (grades 6–8) schools/cluster to a 2-week no treatment/4-week intervention crossover trial to determine the effects of a 20-day Lenten-themed PA intervention on 187 students’ pedometer steps taken at school. Specifically, students independently progressed through a workbook (Savior’s Sandals) that depicted and informed about 11 locations in the Holy Land where Jesus lived, visited, and/or ministered, and included Scripturally-based questions about each place for students to answer. In all, students would accumulate 110,000 steps if they completed the workbook virtual journey. General linear mixed models with restricted maximum likelihood estimation to compensate for missing data were used to compute the intervention effects on mean daily steps.ResultsThere were significant main effects for the intervention overall and by school and grade level. Follow-up tests isolated that a single school (Meandiff = + 2156 steps/day) and grade 6 students (Meandiff = + 1678 steps/day) across all four schools experienced the greatest treatment effects.ConclusionsReligious-themed PA interventions can be effective; however, specific adjustments may be needed to optimize the intervention’s effectiveness for a broader population of students.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN10273669. Retrospectively registered 23 Oct 2018.

Writing short stories to describe literary language use and perceptions as writer

This qualitative case study aims at describing the process followed by ninth grade students at a private religious school when using and analyzing literary language. The instruments used to carry out this study were: students’ artifacts to identify and analyze the literary language used, field notes, and interviews. During this process, the learners as authors generated the construction of meaning and developed their competence in writing. The results show that students used metaphors and similes (literary features) to express ideas and details about their contexts in written production. In turn, students profited from the poetic function of the language where their voices as authors describe their perceptions and experiences as writers.

Does Private Islamic Schooling Promote Terrorism? An Analysis of the Educational Background of Successful American Homegrown Terrorists

Some commentators argue that private religious schools are less likely to inculcate the attributes of good citizenship than traditional public schools, specifically proposing that private Islamic schools are relatively more likely to produce individuals sympathetic to terrorism. This study offers a preliminary examination of the question by studying the educational backgrounds of Western educated terrorists. While data are limited, in accord with prior work findings indicate the vast majority of both Islamic and reactionary terrorists attended traditional public schools and had no religious education; hence findings suggest that early religious training and identification may actually encourage prosocial behavior.

Analyze the Writing Skills among the Students of the Private Religious School

The purpose is to analyze the writing skills among the students of the private religious school. Students' writing skills are very weak as their study syllabus focuses on the subject of Diniiyah. In this study, the Master should first be prepared with the knowledge and skills of the discourse in writing skills in order to channel the knowledge properly to the pupils despite the time constraints during the R & D process. This paper is important to illustrate how important it is to master the writing in accordance with the principles of correct discourse in order to preserve Malay language apart from helping students to excel in the examination.

Latter-day Saint and Catholic Interactions in the Restoration of Historic Nauvoo

The rural Midwestern town of Nauvoo, Illinois, was once the center of an American religious narrative. As the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as Latter-day Saint or Mormon) in the mid-nineteenth century, the community suffered religious tension that culminated in the murder of the faith’s founder, Joseph Smith, and the expulsion of most of the group’s adherents. In this wake, a wave of largely Catholic immigrants arrived to occupy the vacant homes and create their own story, one of prosperous farms and vineyards and a stately private religious boarding school. In the twentieth century, however, religious tensions reemerged when the Latter-day Saints returned from the West, seeking to restore Nauvoo as a religious heritage site for their past. Through competition, and eventually collaboration, Catholic and Latter-day Saint interests merged to preserve a story of American religious life. In doing so, they modelled how diverse faith traditions can cooperate to craft a common future.

Editorial Note

Editorial Note

KEBIJAKAN PEMERINTAH TENTANG YAYASAN DAN EKSISTENSI MADRASAH SWASTA DI INDONESIA (Antara Solusi dan Permasalahannya)

The Government Policy on Foundations and the Existence of Private Religious Schools in Indonesia: The establishment of religious schools is the participation of the community in achieving the goal of the nation that is to develop the mentality people. Therefore, the government supports the establishment of foundations where the community are concerned with the education of people. So far, the support obtained is just in the form of non-material things because private religious schools are much dependent on the foundations under which they exist. The government support to the foundations that are developing very steadily can be seen from its policy through the Acts number 16 the year 2000 on Foundations. The impact felt by the community with the birth of this policy is that the legal status of the foundations is clear in the national constitutions so that they can run their programs smoothly. In addition, the role of the community, in this respect,, the builders of the foundations is limited so that the owners may not run them as they wishe. On the other hand, the impacts of the Acts on Foundations towards the religious schools which operate under their umbrellas are progression in various aspects. For example, the foundations are more proportional in giving the rights of the schools which have so far been dominated by the owners especially in financial matters. But one of the negative impacts of the Acts on the part of the owners of the foundations is that the owners do not manage the educational programs seriously which may affect the progress of the foundations.

Understanding the Establishment Clause: A Revisit

Understanding the Establishment Clause: A Revisit

The Sexual Integrity of Religious Schools and Tax Exemption

Many private universities and other schools adhere to religiously grounded codes of conduct that embrace heterosexual monogamy as the sole moral context for sexual relationships. The federal income tax exemption of these schools has been questioned following the recent Supreme Court opinion of Obergefell v. Hodges. In Obergefell, the Supreme Court held that the right to marry is a fundamental constitutional right that same-sex couples may exercise. The relevance of this decision to the federal tax status of private religious schools arises from another Supreme Court decision, Bob Jones University v. United States. The Court in Bob Jones held that two schools with racially discriminatory policies as to students were not entitled to exemption from federal income tax because the policies violate established public policy. The issue now is whether the sexual conduct policies of private religious schools violate the established public policy of the United States following Obergefell. After reviewing Bob Jones and surveying the application of the public policy doctrine by the IRS and the courts, this article argues that, regardless of the factual context of a controversy in which the IRS seeks to invoke Bob Jones to deny or revoke federal income tax exemption, the public policy doctrine should be narrowly construed. Applying a suggested framework for limiting the public policy doctrine coherently, this Article argues that schools maintaining sexual conduct policies that prohibit sexual activity inconsistent with their religiously informed, traditional view of marriage remain tax-exempt after Obergefell. Apart from the proposed framework, this Article further explains why Obergefell’s analytical approach, language and tone are inconsistent with applying Bob Jones to the disadvantage of religious schools that maintain sexual conduct policies.

Making My Pitch: A Woman’s Baseball Odyssey by Ila Borders, Jean Hastings Ardell

Reviewed by: Making My Pitch: A Woman’s Baseball Odyssey by Ila Borders, Jean Hastings Ardell Ron Briley Ila Borders with Jean Hastings Ardell, Making My Pitch: A Woman’s Baseball Odyssey. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. 224 pp. Cloth, $26.95. Ila Borders, who pursued her baseball dream by peaching collegiately in California and professionally in the independent Northern League, is a courageous young woman whose contributions to the game should enjoy more widespread acknowledgment by baseball fans. The memoir Making My Pitch which Borders wrote in conjunction with baseball historian Jean Hastings Ardell, author of Breaking into Baseball: Women and the National Game (2005), should help to correct this oversight and render Borders the recognition she so rightly deserves. While Making My Pitch offers plenty of “inside baseball” regarding such topics as pitch selection and how to throw the screwball, what makes this memoir truly outstanding is the courage displayed by Borders in addressing such difficult topics as a dysfunctional family, religion, sexual identity, love life, sexism in American society, and her life beyond the diamond. While grit, determination, and talent allowed Borders to pursue her baseball dream, she laments that her fears of openly acknowledging a gay sexual orientation endangered her baseball career and limited her pursuit of happiness and companionship. Borders concludes, “I realized I had made the mistake of finding my self-worth in what I did for a living, instead of who I was” (183). This level of insight allows Making My Pitch to extend beyond the baseball diamond and shed considerable light into issues of gender and sexuality within contemporary American society. Borders and Ardell also provide a unique structure for the memoir which focuses upon a July 30, 1998, game started by Borders for the Duluth-Superior Dukes against the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks following her first professional win a week earlier. The RedHawks were the best hitting team in the Northern League, and for six innings Borders pitched scoreless baseball. The bullpen, however, could not hold back the RedHawks who won the game in extra innings. By stringing together twelve scoreless frames, Borders was at the apex of her professional career, yet there were no invitations to spring training or a tryout offered by any club in Major League Baseball. The six innings against Fargo-Moorhead correspond with chapters on Borders competing in Little League, middle and high school, college, and two seasons in the Northern League with the St. Paul Saints, Duluth-Superior Dukes, and Madison Black Wolf. It is a story of hard work and talent storming the barricades of prejudice in baseball and American society. Borders pursued her dream of a baseball career but at considerable personal cost. [End Page 235] Growing up in a Southern California working-class family, Ila’s interest in baseball was supported by her father, who taught his daughter how to play the game and insisted that Ila focus upon baseball and not be siphoned off into softball. Ila’s relationship with her father was complicated. She appreciated his support and as a high school athlete even played alongside him on male semi-professional baseball teams. He was tough on her, but the father fostered his daughter’s sense of determination. Yet, his discipline often bordered on abuse of Ila and her siblings, and later in her professional career, he appropriated endorsement money that his daughter earned. He also drank heavily and carried on an affair with another woman, doing little to conceal the relationship from Ila’s mother. Ila initially found her mother to be weak, but she was impressed as her mother learned to live on her own and struggled to deal with Ila’s same-sex attraction, a part of Ila’s identity which her father could not seem to recognize. In addition, Ila had to deal with the death of her maternal grandmother who drowned in the family pool while swimming with her granddaughter. The religious family was concerned with Ila’s aggressive behavior during grade school, and for middle school and high school she attended religious private schools. While some teammates and parents believed that it violated Christian principles for a girl to play as an equal on...

“Religionless” Religious Private Schools? Secularizing for the Common Good through Tuition Voucher Programs

ABSTRACTThis article is a creative application of “secularizing” for the common good to the scope and function of religious private schools. Secularizing is not secularism; in fact, it transcends both secularist and religionist ideologies. As religious private schools participate in state-funded tuition voucher programs, they can “secularize” in terms of emphasis and mission, but retain their essential religious commitments. At the same time, such “religionless” religious private schools may seek to serve public needs and solve social crises rather than to simply remain internally focused. Through participation in publically funded tuition voucher programs, religious private schools may thus become a valuable and contributing voice in the public square that is focused “outward” rather than “upward” or “inward.” If religious private schools open themselves to secularizing, they can effectively partner with public school districts to meet the real and pressing needs of the community at large.

Faith in Yourself: Self-Esteem in Guatemalan Religious Schools

This study examines the effect that private religious schools have on self-esteem. Using data collected from 21 Catholic, evangelical and secular private schools in Guatemala, comparisons are made to determine if there are differences between these school types in students’ self-esteem and academic confidence. Hierarchical linear models are constructed to further examine school differences in the presence of controls for gender and gender ideology, family influence and various religious measures. Contrary to many previous findings, results in this study show that Catholic school students generally have lower levels of self-esteem and academic confidence than students at other types of private religious schools. These lower Catholic school findings persist for measures of reflected appraisals and math confidence even in the presence of relevant controls. Full models also show that gender ideology, family background, and religious beliefs and practices have a significant effect on student self-esteem and academic confidence. Overall, results highlight the key role that religious beliefs and religious saliency have on student self-esteem.

Autoeficácia na solução de problemas matemáticos e variáveis relacionadas

Based on Albert Bandura’ Social Cognitive Theory the objective of the present study was to verify the existence of relations between self-effi cacy beliefs and performance in mathematical problem solving. It also sought to evaluate the mathematical self-concept and self-effi cacy for self-regulated learning. We attempted to study the correlation between the instruments and evaluate the mathematical self-concept and self-effi cacy for self-regulated learning, and other relevant variables. Participants were 131 fi fth graders, 72 males and 59 females from in a private religious school in a large city in the southeast of the country. Data have been collected in regular class schedules and included the following instruments: self-effi cacy scale for regulated learning, self-concept-scale, importance of mathematics, and mathematics self-effi cacy instruments 1 and 2. Results revealed that both mathematics self-effi cacy, and self-effi cacy for self-regulated learning were related to performance on solving problems. These data have

Racial Diversity, Student Religiosity, and School Choice: An Empirical Case Study of Multi-Racial Religious Education

This article comprises an empirical case study of student religiosity in the context of urban school choice. The purpose of this study was to compare student religiosity in a racially diverse religious private school to determine whether religious faith is a unifying factor across racial categories. Insofar as school choice has been called “the civil rights issue of the 21st century,” religious private schools may provide opportunities for creating intentional multi-racial school environments in the face of rapidly re-segregating public school districts. This study was conducted in 2012 at an urban religious private PreK–12 school with a 57% poverty rate, 58% minority students, and 58% of its students utilizing state-funded tuition vouchers (N = 127). Student religiosity was not found to be significantly different across racial categories. Implications are discussed in relation to public policy and the future of school choice initiatives in relation to religious private schools. The study suggests that student religiosity establishes “holy ground” upon which racial understanding, appreciation, and reconciliation can occur in a multi-racial school environment. Recommendations for reform are made for both public policy and religious education.

How the structure of universities determined the fate of American legal education – A tribute to Larry Ribstein

Prior to 1862, with insignificant exceptions, American colleges and universities were either strongly tied to a particular religious denomination or they reflected an elitist social consciousness that, like religion, helped define the “mission” of the schools. The non-profit status (usually a charitable trust) was perfectly consistent with this mission, as the last thing wanted by the founders was consumer sovereignty or a competitive market for higher education. There were no “departments” as we know them today and little intellectual specialization; philosophy, the classics and theology constituted the standard curricular fare. These schools were “vocational” only in the ancient sense of preparing students for the ministry or possibly elementary-level teaching. Other kinds of vocational training, such as for engineers, chemists, architects, lawyers, or doctors, was done overwhelmingly through either apprentice-type training (actually a form of proprietary education) or in proprietary institutions. There had to have been – very little is known about this – an enormous and thriving for-profit educational sector. All this changed with the establishment of the land-grant schools under the first Morrill Act in 1862 which eventually caused massive failures of both the private religious schools and the proprietary ones. The land-grant schools were highly vocational in their mission, but they retained the governing structure of their private not-for-profit predecessors, a structure consistent with the fact that no one in charge really wanted consumer sovereignty or a competitive market for students. Vocationalism, of course, mandated specialization, and the departmental system was born. Each department (or “school”, as in the cases of medicine and law) became a semi-autonomous “firm” competing outside their hallowed halls only for the most appropriate new colleagues, i.e. those who would fit most tranquilly – and ideologically – with the existing faculty. Since there were no proprietary interests and success could not be judged by profitability, a status hierarchy evolved among departments or schools. Attitudes and approaches adopted by the school at the top of the hierarchy would be filtered down the hierarchy because professors, aspiring to gain the next higher level in status (and, it so happens, money), would tend to reflect the positions prevailing in that next higher rung. Thus, at any given moment, a single ideology or methodology would tend to dominate throughout a particular field. In law, as in other fields with no constraining market to answer to, schools tend to reflect the intellectual and ideological preferences of the faculties at the standard-setting schools, and their quasi-governmental powers are rarely noted.

Sexismo y características del centro escolar: diferencias en función del tipo de centro

The aim of this study was to explore any differences in sexism and perceptions of school in terms of type of institution (state nonreligious, private nonreligious, private religious), and to analyze the relationship between sexism and perceptions of school. We used a descriptive correlational design and administered the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory for Adolescents (de Lemus et al., 2008) and the School Culture Scale (Higgins-D’Alessandro and Sadh, 1997) to a sample of 1,455 secondary school students. The results showed that overall sexism scores were significantly higher in adolescents attending private religious schools. Students attending private nonreligious schools had a more positive perception of school. Significant negative correlations between ambivalent sexism and rule compliance, and positive correlations between ambivalent sexism and student-teacher relationships were found.