only 4% of Hispanic school-age Catholics are enrolled in Catholic schools. By comparison, among all school-age Catholics (including all races/ethnicities), 12% are enrolled in Catholic schools.44
Catholic school data for the academic year 2013–14 reveals that only 15% of students enrolled in Catholic schools were Hispanic.45
Hispanic Students in Responding Schools
Enrollment
Reponding principals report that the median percentage of their school’s student body identifying as Hispanic is 16%. However, this proportion varies widely based on region: principals from the South and the Midwest said that only about 10% of their students are Hispanic. This figure increases to 16% in the Northeast, and 33% in the West. (See Figure 5)
Hispanic students represented by the survey attend schools with an average enrollment of 272 students compared to the national average of 295 based on NCEA data (2014–15). Yet over half of these Hispanic students go to schools where the majority of the student body is also Hispanic. Roughly one in four attends a school where over 75% of the student body identifies as Hispanic and over half of Hispanic students attend schools where 10% or less of the students are white.
Catholic schools serving Hispanic students report an average of four different languages used by their students in addition to English. In decreasing order of frequency, languages most commonly spoken include Spanish, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Chinese.
Sharing the Workload
As might be expected, Hispanic students are not evenly distributed across all participating study schools. Instead, just 15% of responding schools educate over half of the Hispanic students represented in the study. These schools—which enroll approximately 140 or more Hispanic students—are not concentrated in any one region. Instead, their distribution (19% in the Northeast, 22% in the Midwest, 30% in the South, and 29% in the West) generally aligns with the regional distribution of all survey respondents.
Where Were Responding Schools’ Hispanic Students and Their Parents Born?
Among schools surveyed, the median percentage of enrolled Hispanic students born in the United States was 80%. The median response ranged from 63% in the Northeast to 86% in the West. By comparison, national-level data for all Hispanic children in the U.S. indicates that 93% of Hispanic children were born in this country.46
While the vast majority of Hispanic children in the study schools were born in the United States, most (53%) have at least one foreign-born parent. For approximately 38%, both parents are foreign born.47
FIGURE 5
HISPANIC ENROLLMENT AMONG ALL RESPONDING SCHOOLS, BY REGION
The Catholic School and the Hispanic Family
The term family resonates strongly in the ears, minds, and hearts of Catholic educators and Hispanic Catholics. Our shared Catholic heritage constantly invites us to affirm the communal dimension of our faith as members of one family: God’s family. On the one hand, Hispanic cultures embody a strong sense of family life, expressed through multiple levels of relationships that begin with parents and children and regularly embrace relatives as well as many others through bonds of faith and friendship. On the other hand, Catholic schools are family-supportive environments in which educators birth new life as they share knowledge and faith, care for the whole person, work with children and adults as partners, prepare young people to be active citizens in society, and shape souls to achieve fullness across generations. That Catholic schools and Hispanics coincide in the affirmation of the familial bond is not an accident. It is the starting point of a relationship that deserves to be affirmed.
Catholic Schools as Resources
The Hispanic presence is transforming the entire American Catholic experience. In several parts of the country, to speak of Catholicism is to speak of how Hispanic Catholics are witnessing their faith and building the Church. The greatest treasure that Hispanic families have is their children. When asked about the American Dream, most Hispanics name a better future for their children as the number one expression of their vision. For Hispanic Catholic families this new future includes a stronger Catholic identity and better opportunities to contribute to the life of society. One of the best resources that the Church in the United States has to partner with Hispanic families and achieve these goals is Catholic schools. Yet the small percentage of Hispanic children attending our Catholic schools is appalling, especially knowing that the majority of school-age Catholics is Hispanic. Catholic schools need to be resources to Hispanic families not because the Church as an institution finds itself compelled to provide a service to them but because these families are also the Church—along with Catholic families from various other cultures—and their children are vital to its future.
Hispanic Families as Partners and Contributors
In the history of education in the United States, Catholic schools stand out as institutions that take seriously the conviction that welcoming a child means welcoming a family. Many are the stories of women and men religious, priests, deacons, and lay teachers/principals in Catholic schools who took time, again and again, to engage families, making a memorable difference. We need to continue to do this with renewed commitment in an increasingly Hispanic Church. Engaging Hispanic families requires that all in our schools understand the complexity of the Hispanic experience: not all Hispanics are immigrants, though many are; not all Hispanics are poor, though many are; not all Hispanics speak Spanish, though many do. Hispanic families have much to contribute to our Catholic schools. But such contributions are only possible when schools genuinely create the spaces for these families to truly express their voice—and this happens very often in Spanish. Hispanic families can be instrumental in exposing the Catholic school community to the richness of cultural traditions that today give a new air to American Catholicism. The very presence of these families challenges our educational institutions. They often pose questions that perhaps the majority of families attending our schools until recently had ceased to ask. When Hispanic families see themselves as true partners and contributors to the success of our Catholic schools, they will not hesitate to invest in their growth just as countless Catholic families have done in the past. ■
Questions for Dialogue and Reflection
1. Why is it important that everyone in the Catholic school, parish, and diocese takes the time to learn more about the social and cultural realities that shape the lives of Hispanic families and children?
2. What is your reaction the fact that barely 4% of all Hispanic Catholic school-age children are in Catholic schools? What strategies do you suggest to significantly increase that percentage?
3. What must change to start treating Hispanic families as partners of Catholic schools and not merely as recipients of a benefit?
“The greatest failure that an educator can have is to educate ‘within the walls.’ To educate within the walls: walls of a selective culture, the walls of a culture of security, the walls of a social category that is affluent and no longer goes forward.”
—Pope Francis, Address to Catholic Educators, World Congress on Catholic Education (Nov 21, 2015)
Section III: Stewardship Dynamics
