Faith and the Education Gap

As secularists crusade to remove the Bible from schools, researcher William Jeynes has discovered this effort might impede the academic achievement of African-American and Hispanic students. His three-year review of more than 1,000 studies on the achievement gap revealed that two factors predict academic success for minority students: a strong family and an active faith. It is unfortunate that, by those opposing school choice and even sometimes school choice advocates, these two critical issues often go unrecognized.

“African American and Latino children are the most disadvantaged by the absence of the Bible in public schools,” said Jeynes, a Witherspoon Institute Fellow, California State University professor, and Harvard graduate. “The meta-analysis yielded some amazing results. Not only did it indicate a powerful relationship between high levels of Bible literacy and strong scholastic results, but also of all the studies that have been undertaken on this topic not even one of them indicated a negative or neutral relationship. Every single study indicated that there existed a positive relationship. Such an overwhelming association is almost unheard of in the research world.”

Teaching the Bible as literature is gaining ground with lawmakers nationwide, and organizations like the Bible Literacy Project advance the idea that “An Educated Person is Familiar with the Bible.” Teaching the Bible as literature could practically eliminate the achievement gap among minorities. Ignoring their faith is not only intolerant, says Jeynes, but it may exacerbate the gap by discouraging students from drawing on a source of strength in their lives.