Adjusting the dropout rates for differences in student-body financial, human, and social capital among the three sets of schools by standardizing the population of the Catholic schools and other private schools to the student-body backgrounds of the public schools shows that the differences are affected only slightly. Furthermore, the differences are not due to the religion of the students or to the degree of religious observance. Catholic students in public school are only slightly less likely to drop out than non-Catholics.

XREF: This aligns with Coleman's school-effects research on Catholic schools and social capital, often cited in sociology of education debates about school quality vs. selection effects. Builds on: "What is most striking is the low dropout rate in Catholic schools."

Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, loc. 186