FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

24 March, 2026

The relative strength of emphasis on religious formation during the school years is connected to graduates’ faith-related outcomes and values, a new report finds.

The report, “Enduring Faith: Patterns of Religious Practice and Values Among Religious School Graduates,” draws upon nearly a decade of survey data from the Cardus Education Survey (CES). The CES examines a range of outcomes for a nationally representative sample of American adults aged 24 to 39 who attended traditional public schools, Protestant schools, Catholic schools, nonreligious independent schools, or were homeschooled. The CES examines respondents’ academic, spiritual, cultural, civic, and relational outcomes, as well as their life patterns, views, and choices.

“By comparing results from the 2014 and 2023 US surveys, our report traces the long-term trajectories of religious practice among graduates from different school sectors. We found that even after controlling for graduates’ demographic backgrounds, faith-based schooling is positively correlated with better outcomes when it comes to faith formation,” said Dr. Lynn Swaner, President, US, at Cardus and co-author of the report.

Both the 2014 and the 2023 CES asked graduates to report how often they engage in reading the Bible or a sacred text, how often they pray, and how often they attend religious services (other than weddings or funerals).

For all three religious practices and across both administrations of the CES, a greater percentage of graduates of Protestant Christian schools reported engaging in these practices at least once a week, as compared with graduates of all other school sectors. This held constant even after controlling for the range of respondents’ demographic characteristics, which suggests that the observed differences between sector graduates are likely due to school type.

Additionally, these outcomes appear to be related to the strength of a school’s spiritual preparation. “Graduates who say their schools prepared them well for a vibrant spiritual life were more likely to engage in these practices—which suggests that the strength of a school’s spiritual formation efforts matters when it comes to graduate outcomes,” Swaner said.

“Enduring Faith: Patterns of Religious Practice and Values Among Religious School Graduates,” was written by Dr. Lynn E. Swaner, Cardus President, US; Jonathan Eckert, EdD, the Copple Chair for Christians in School Leadership and professor of educational leadership at Baylor University, and a senior fellow at Cardus; and Albert Cheng, PhD, a Cardus senior fellow and assistant professor in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.

The research was jointly funded by the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, the Baylor Center for School Leadership, Baylor University, and Cardus.

The paper is freely available on the Cardus website. Past studies in the Cardus Education Survey series are available here.

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Note to reporters and editors: High-resolution headshots of co-authors Lynn E. Swaner, Jonathan Eckert, and Albert Cheng are available here for download.

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