Faith, family help minorities bridge education gap

WACO, Texas — The academic achievement gap between Anglo students and their black or Hispanic peers disappears when the students have intact, religious families, a new study says.

William Jeynes, a nonresident research fellow for the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion and a professor of education at California State University at Long Beach, said religious commitment and intact family structures bridge the achievement gap for students in both public schools and private religious schools. Furthermore, in single-parent families with a deep religious commitment, the gap between black and Hispanic students and Anglo students is cut in half, he noted, suggesting that devotion to faith makes a key difference in academic success.

Jeynes’ findings came from an analysis of the National Education Longitudinal Study and were printed in an article published in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.