The Results Are In: Christian Education Pays Off!
Our work at Children’s Jubilee Fund has always been very focused. We provide tuition-assistance scholarships which enable low-income Philadelphia-area students to attend the K-12 Christian schools in our network. And we take the Christian school aspect of our mission seriously.
Why? Two reasons. First, we want our students to intentionally encounter Jesus. We want them to get to know him and his people through being in our Christian schools. And as they get to know and build relationship with Jesus, they also get to experience the world through a Christian worldview—understanding creation, people, society, work, and relationships all through a distinctly Christian lens.
And second, we know that the education that our students receive in our network schools is typically a better quality education than they would receive in the public schools they’d otherwise attend. Because our network Christian school teachers and staff serve out of a sense of mission and love for their students, they offer intangible benefits that many public schools aren’t able to consistently provide.
What are those intangible benefits? Things like conflict resolution that moves toward repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. An understanding and compassionate ear from teachers and staff when a student is discouraged. Extra, one-on-one assistance when a student needs help understanding a particular academic concept or skill. Encouragement to seek and rest in the Lord when hard things in life happen.
And prayer. Prayer throughout the school day, and prayer when hard things happen in or out of school.
We’ve seen the results since Jubilee began 25 years ago: 95% of Jubilee scholars graduate from high school (compared with 69% for Philadelphia public school students), and 90% of twelfth-grade Jubilee scholars enroll in post-secondary education (nearly half of Philadelphia public high schools have college enrollment rates lower than 60%).
But that isn’t the end of the story. This week, a New York Times opinion piece quantified the benefits of Christian faith to helping students succeed in school. A researcher from Tulane University looked at 3,290 American teens and their academic journeys. The results in this article are encouraging—students with a Christian faith typically had better grades in high school, and were more likely to complete high school and move on to college than their unbelieving peers.
These are the kinds of benefits we see in our network Christian schools, only we believe our results are even better than those reported in the Times piece.
Our ability to help Philadelphia-area students depends on the generosity of people who believe in our mission and are willing to support it through their financial gifts and prayer. Would you consider supporting Jubilee today and making a difference in a child’s life forever? Thank you!