Prof. Wayne Thompson asks: What makes Catholic parents enroll their children in Catholic schools?

Enrollment in Catholic elementary and secondary schools in the United States has declined steadily since the mid-1960s. Yet there has been hardly any research that examined why Catholic parents choose to enroll their children in those schools, or decide not to.

Wayne Thompson, associate professor of sociology and criminal justice, has conducted such studies in two Wisconsin communities, Kenosha and Marshfield. He is submitting an article based on his findings to the Journal of Catholic Education, based at Boston College.

"They liked it and wanted to publish it, which makes me happy," says Prof. Thompson, who is working on revisions to the article.

According to Prof. Thompson, "most Catholic school research is either on how well black kids do in Catholic schools, or grand visions, mostly from theologians," especially about how religion should be taught. "Actually listening to parents, there's nothing," he says, except for a 2005 Georgetown University study that surveyed Catholic parents nationwide.

Enrollment in Catholic elementary and secondary schools has dropped from about 5 million to about 2 million in less than 50 years. One big reason is the shrunken number of nuns.

"The cheap labor, with the nuns, is gone," Prof. Thompson says. "You're lucky to find any in Catholic schools now." The need to pay salaries for lay teachers has caused tuition to rise steadily.

But Prof. Thompson stresses that "there's more to the story than that it's expensive. It's not just about money."

Prof. Thompson says his survey found Catholic parents were more likely to enroll their children in Catholic schools if they were active parish members, or if they had attended Catholic schools themselves. A major reason for parents to shun Catholic schools, or to transfer their children elsewhere, was if Catholic schools lacked particular academic programs or extra-curricular activities. The perceived quality of other schools in a community was another consideration for parents.

Prof. Thompson says he first became involved with the topic four years ago, when a Catholic pastor asked him to work with a task force studying the future of Catholic schools in Kenosha. He found the topic to be emotion-laden.

"It's like walking into the middle of some family's therapy session," he says. "I've seen people screaming at each other. People care about this."

Marshfield was the location for the second study, because Prof. Thompson grew up there. He jokes that he was the only non-Catholic student at the city's Catholic high school.

Prof. Thompson has previously studied how and why religious congregations grow or decline, and the relationship between religion and media. He says his research on Catholic schools is a tribute to the man he calls his mentor.

Rev. Andrew Greeley, a longtime professor of sociology at the University of Arizona, was "probably the best-known sociologist in the world," says Prof. Thompson, who earned his master's degree at Arizona. Rev. Greeley was a prolific author, whose work ranged from sociological surveys to best-selling novels.

"They used to say about him, 'no thought unpublished,'" Prof. Thompson jokes.