Making Catholic Schools Research Relevant: Assessing Contemporary Trends in the Field of Catholic Education

Despite the outsized influence the Catholic school sector in the United States has on policymaking, research into the organization of Catholic schools has not kept pace with contemporary educational research trends. In this brief paper, we diagnose how conceptual and empirical decisions made within the field of Catholic education resulted in the field’s relative isolation from other research communities and highlight additional explanations for the diminished relevance of research into Catholic schooling in the United States in recent years. Following this diagnosis and synthesis, we argue that Catholic educational research would be enhanced by considering contemporary organizational and policy research trends and propose new directions that may allow U.S. Catholic school researchers to increase their field’s relevance.