Glimmers of hope for Catholic schools
This Wall Street Journal article [or here] finds glimmers of hope for Catholic schools, reporting:
For the first time in decades, Catholic education is showing signs of life. Driven by expanding voucher programs, outreach to Hispanic Catholics and donations by business leaders, Catholic schools in several major cities are swinging back from closures and declining enrollment.
Chicago Catholic elementary schools saw enrollment increase 3% this year and 1% last year—the first two-year growth spurt since 1965. Greater Boston elementary schools had a 2% bump—the first in 20 years. And Los Angeles, Indianapolis and Bridgeport, Conn., also added desks for the first time in years.
I can’t recall the last time I read anything so upbeat about the prospects for Catholic education. Although I do think publicly funded vouchers can be part of the solution, the headline – “Vouchers Breathe New Life into Shrinking Catholic Schools – overstates their role. Outreach to Latino Catholics and donations by business leaders, as the article notes, are also key.
The article glosses over another reason the enrollment picture seems to be improving. “Years of overhauls in public schools have yielded only modest progress,” it says.
That is, it has become clear that years of so-called reforms involving high-stakes testing and charter schools, changes in school governance and teacher contracts, etc., have produced only mixed results in public education, leading more parents to look once again at Catholic schools as an alternative.
Beyond the factors mentioned in the article, I’d add one more that is still needed: Catholics need to be enthusiastic about Catholic schools if they’re going to succeed. Without that, I don’t think major donations from the business world or government money would do it.
We have had, in this country, 30-some years of “education governors” and some “education presidents.” If my state is typical, we have also had no end of state legislators who would rather toil to invent new hoops for teachers to jump through and new penalties to impose on teachers than to balance the state budget. It is no surprise, therefore, that parents are looking around for alternatives. If the looking strengthens Catholic schools, I’m all for it. But to the extent it attracts the interest of “education governors” and “help” from state lawmakers, I worry about the future.
The parents of students attending a Catholic school need to be enthusiastic about the school if the school is going to succeed.
But the parents of students attending a public school also need to be enthusiastic about the school if the school is going to succeed.
There is good news from Philadelphia on this front too. Despite all the distraction from the recent sex abuse trial, local businesses, philanthropists and, of course, parents have rallied to save local Catholic schools and chart a path for their future. Archbishop Chaput has been leading the charge and deserves to be commended (even on dotCommonweal).
Success might be better measured in terms of an evangelical Catholic identity, and not just economic survival.
In my mind, the benchmark of Catholic school success is that believers are invited and urged into an evangelical mindset. Too often, Catholic school culture replaces parish culture rather than supplements it. And that culture, even if it promotes neo-orthodoxy (by any definition) is essentially a secular American one. The result may be a youth-focused sub-culture. And the modern efforts in developing alumni support are borrowing social tactics from secular universities.
As means of supporting and maintaining Catholic identity, these can be good things. But the mission of lay believers in the world is to spread the Gospel. When the focus is on institutional survival, we’ve lost something.
My sisters’ High School (St Huberts) and my mother’s (West Catholic) were slated to close in Philly and have been saved. Abp Chaput does deserve a lot of credit for that.
Catholic parents definitely need to support Catholic schools, but Catholic leaders do, too.
Irene–
What do you know–our mothers graduated from the same high school. Our son just graduated from Monsignor Bonner, which was also saved.
Paul,
Don’t you see the decline of the Catholic schools as related to the question of Church? While of course finances play a huge role, since so many Catholics feel disaffected from the institution, doesn’t that influence their desire to send their children to a Catholic school. I would like to see this question explored a bit more
A
On the night Scott Walker turned back recall, Dianne Ravitch was interveiwed by Ray Suarez on PBS as par tof their education series.
She stated that in union states, education was doing OK bur in non-union States education was suffering because of poverty and racial exclusion.
In some circles you’re not supposed to bring up those topics, but my wife (a retired teacher) and I thought it rang true.
The browning catholic Churc hwil need to think about this very much ISTM in planning about Catholic schools, otherwise we’ll be going down the rode we’v ebeen mainly going with a few notable exceptions.
What is a union state? A northern state?
The pnes cited were -see if you can find the interview at the PBS site along with the Mrs. Gates one and join the broad education discssion .
Mark Proska and Irene Baldwin:
I am a product of Catholic education in Philadelphia. Well, what do you know…
Irene:
Re your comment about the Catholic high schools that were saved from closing, Irene
“Abp Chaput does deserve a lot of credit for that.”
How so? I read that it was a local developer, Brian O’Neill, who organized a group that was responsible for raising at least $100 million.
Helen: My pediatrician told me I should gracefully accept compliments about my children; he said that I’ll definitely get all of the blame, so I might as well take the credit, too. I think leadership works that way, as well: the Archbishop will take enough hits for things wrong with the Archdiocese, he should get some credit for what works.
But the Archdiocese does seem to be making Catholic education a priority: I read the on-line Catholic Standard & Times (catholicphilly.com) there seems to be a constant stream of articles promoting Catholic schools and urging the passage of legislation to support those schools.
Helen–
Brian O’Neill played a major role in rounding up big money donors and making the case (from what I’ve heard). They’ve raised $10+million and the goal is to raise $100 million. You don’t get people, even people with lots of money, to donate unless they’ve got a lot of confidence in the man running the show (Chaput). Chaput cancelled a visit to Rome so that he could work through the details and I’ve been told the negotiations were long and thorough, requiring significant time and effort from many people. This may be unfair to Cardinal Rigali, but my sense is that he could not have gotten done what Chaput accomplished.
Regarding AA’s question about the question of church, I don’t thing people are disaffected, but they are not as “affected” as they used to be. My sense is it’s not related so much to the sexual abuse crisis, it’s just a general drift. Money seems to be the main reason parents don’t send their children to Catholic schools, though from my expereience they do send their children to CCD classes. There’s also the perception, perhaps not completely unfounded, that the public schools in our area offer the children a wider array of classes/technology, etc.
“That is, it has become clear that years of so-called reforms involving high-stakes testing and charter schools, changes in school governance and teacher contracts, etc., have produced only mixed results in public education, leading more parents to look once again at Catholic schools as an alternative.”
Please come to New Orleans before you pronounce the experiment in education reform a foregone conclusion.
“When the focus is on institutional survival, we’ve lost something.”
As nuns become rarer how much more will the nature of the Catholic school change. Lay teachers with families may not have the time and with the restricting rules, while necessary, on contact how will this affect discipleship. Even though Catholic schools may have a lot to do with Empire building there has always been a soft spot for a Catholic school upbringing in so many. What are the elements needed to make Catholic schools more an example of discipleship than desirable baby sitters for parents?….
Jeff ==
Yes, the success of the badly failing N. O. school system does inspire hope. I continue to be amazed for the simple reason that the City has been trying to improve the schools since my own childhood.
Here is the way a NYT editorial from 11-11 begins:
“Before Hurricane Katrina, more than 60 percent of children in New Orleans attended a failing school. Now, only about 18 percent do.
“Five years ago, less than a quarter of the children in a special district set up by the state to manage the lowest performing schools scored at or above the “basic” level on state tests. Now, nearly.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/opinion/sunday/lessons-from-new-orleans.html?_r=2&hp half do.?
The Times doesn’t talk about financing — it has been very expensive,but lots of outside money has come to the rescue. and there have been s lot of contributions from idealistic college graduates from all over the country who have come to teach. Parents have become involved in the most successful school, in some cases actually helping to rebuild devastated school buildings. Principles are allowed to make more decisions as needed. The State has been very supportive. Plus we lucked out with some particularly fine administrators.
The point is that it can be done. What about the Catholic schools? They mostly were pretty good but New Orleans has always had a relatively big affluent class, so there was some money for the middle-class parish schools. But with the nuns a thing of the past, for all the Catholic schools to prosper I think there will simply have to be vouchers.
And, for the sake of both the public and Catholic schools, I’m convinced the local colleges’ education departments will have to raise their standards enormously. You’ll notice in the Times editorial that after Katrina only about 20% of the old public school teachers were allowed to get their jobs back. I see that as being a result of how easy it has been to pass many education courses: because the courses are so easy pass, the least good students major in education (they can’t make it in other fields), and ultimately the children suffer for it. Not that all grammar and high school teachers are in the lowest quartile of college graduates, but many, too many of them are. And they go into both public and Catholic school classrooms.
@Bill Mazzella (6/10, 10:26 pm) Maybe I’ve been hanging out in the wrong circles, but I don’t know any parents who think of their children’s schools—whether public, private or parochial—as “desirable babysitters”.
Irene Baldwin and Mark Porska:
Thanks for the information about Achb. Chaput. I am a big supporter of our Catholic school system of education, having received its benefits from first grade through graduate school and having taught in a Catholic high school (14 years) and a Catholic college (12 years).
I wonder if his academic background, an MA in religious Education from Catholic University, influences his decision making. I wonder, too, if he is unique among the U.S. Bishops. Most seem to have advanced degrees in Canon Law and/or Theology.
My hat’s off to him.
Correction: Mark Proska
I am a product of 16 years of Catholic education. The only way I would send a child to a Catholic school would be if it reflected a Catholic education that asked questions, encouraged social justice, and challenged them to look deeper into life and religion than the status quo and reflected the insights of Vatican 2. I couldn’t find that when my own child was going to school, only Catechism-based, super-orthodox teaching, so I opted for public education. I would have been willing to pay the tuition, get involved, everything – but it just wasn’t there.
“The Times doesn’t talk about financing — it has been very expensive,but lots of outside money has come to the rescue (of New Orleans schools).” (Ann Oliver, 1:14 a.m.) Those are PUBLIC schools getting the outside money. As a citizen, I want to know why the PUBLIC doesn’t pay for public schools. As a taxpayer, you may tell me you “can’t afford to.” Let’s go to the casinos over in Biloxi, and you can tell me that again.
If “outside money” is paying for PUBLIC schools, that outside money isn’t available to pay for private and parochial schools. Hence, the privates are asking the putative party responsible for the public schools — i.e., the public — to help out with private education. In my first post, way up on top, I complained about how “reforms” were killing education. This buck-passing, in which outside money pays for what taxpayers and pandering politicians say they can’t afford, is one outcome of many left behind by our preening reformers.
“This buck-passing, in which outside money pays for what taxpayers and pandering politicians say they can’t afford, is one outcome of many left behind by our preening reformers.”
Excuse me, but I DO pay for public schools, and I have the tax bills to prove it. And they have steadily increased year over year. But when you have an FBI field office set up in the Public School Board’s own offices to monitor things, I don’t think you can really blame some of us taxpayers for thinking that more and more money is the only solution.
Jeff, I didn’t say that more and more money is the “only” solution, just that the money, whatever amount is needed, should come from the public. If you have money with the way your public body handles it, get your fellow taxpayers to straighten up.
I meant, if you have problems with the way the public body handles money,get your fellow taxpayers to straighten it out.
Before anyone talks out of local experoence as paradigm, I think the PBS initiative in talking to and studying responses from people in the field across a dozen or so major cities makes good sense.
Anyone with “answers” needs to step back and say we have a long way to go.
It would be nice if the Church also had a unified view of catholic schools in their complexity – and I still think the approach developedby then Abp. O’Brien in Baltimore could be something of a model to then be expanded across,say, a number of large Archdioceses that can at least try to fund Catholic schools with broad stakeholder involvement.I repeat the importance of loking at future demographics in considering what I hope we’d all agree is a mission of service in this area.
“I am a product of 16 years of Catholic education. The only way I would send a child to a Catholic school would be if it reflected a Catholic education that asked questions, encouraged social justice, and challenged them to look deeper into life and religion than the status quo and reflected the insights of Vatican 2. I couldn’t find that when my own child was going to school, only Catechism-based, super-orthodox teaching, so I opted for public education. I would have been willing to pay the tuition, get involved, everything – but it just wasn’t there.”
Beth, this is very interesting, because I know one or two folks who came at it from the other angle – they would send their children to a Catholic school only if it was super-orthodox. There are Catholic parents who home-school their children because in their estimation, the diocesan Catholic schools are too infected by the spirit of the age (or something along those lines).
My parents, who were pre-Vatican II, tended to view Catholic schools as a sort of monolithic quality brand, without much differentiation from one school to another. But perhaps, in their day, there were elements such as the Baltimore Catechism that really did drive quite a bit of consistency from school to school.
By and large, I view the Catholic schools around here through the same prism as my parents did: I don’t see a big ideological component in their content, one way or another, and they all seem more or less equally acceptable to me. But I wonder how many “choosier” parents than me there are out there, who decide not to send their children to a particular Catholic school, or to any Catholic school at all, because of distrust of the content.
I would add this: one factor that would steer me clear of sending my children to a particular school is perceived financial health. If it appears to me that the school is teetering on the brink of insolvency, I wouldn’t commit my children to it. I’m sure this is the sort of self-fulfilling behavior that drives some schools under, and I’m sorry about that, but it just seems to me to be the prudent thing to do. But then, I have the luxury (and it really is a blessing) of living in a community with very good public schools, so I’m not faced with the difficult decisions that many parents are.
“I meant, if you have problems with the way the public body handles money,get your fellow taxpayers to straighten it out.”
We have, largely be electing politicians who have committed themselves to breaking the stranglehold monopoly our corrupt and corruptible public school boards have exerted over public education in favor of reforms that introduce some modicum of accountability, transparency and immediate relief many of the poorest children trapped in a school system organized largely against their best interests.
And, by the way, at least in Louisiana which has always had a very large parochial school system because of the large Catholic population, many taxpayers have paid BOTH property taxes for public schools, as well as private tuition, fees, etc. to support the parochial system that many have sent their children to.
In “The News Hour” segment Bob referred to, Ravitch voiced concerns about the influence on educational foundations, which require schools to dance to their tunes in order to get the money.
Does anyone have similar concerns about the effects big private donors might have on Catholic schools?
While it’s true that there is a lack of transparency in some public school boards, and that boards can be corrupt and stupid, Is there anything in the way Catholic schools are set up that would make them superior in this regard?
Paul, the article is subscriber-only so I’ll have to read it another way. Very interesting. I am always conflicted about Catholic schools because while I think they are a great witness in urban, often non-Catholic areas, and a great means of catechesis for Catholic kids in other areas, I have also seen so many parishes eviscerated by efforts to keep a failing school alive — at the expense of the parish’s faith life and outreach — and then by battles over closing the school. I just don’t think the old model will work, and new models are welcome, though the Sugar Daddy model is my least favorite.
I am conflicted about government as Sugar Daddy too, in that shoring up public schools is so important. And I think that when bishops have one hand out for government money while they bash the government with the other for perceived persecution it gets a bit, well, hypocritical.
All that said, I wonder if the article explores the dynamics at work in the recent upticks — there have been so many closings, and enrollment overall in Catholic schools continues to decline. What’s at work here? Is this perhaps the result of closings, and a focus on making remaining schools work? This doesn’t sound like the old parish-based model. Is this serving all people who want a Catholic education.
I am a great fan of the Cristo Rey model, which is new and promising. But is it sufficient to bring back the glory days of Catholic education? It’s such a shame that this new wave of immigrants, Latinos, doesn’t have the good virtually free Catholic education that earlier Catholic immigrants did. That’s how you lose the future, and the culture.
But how do we get the money when they can’t afford it and no free labor with nuns and brothers and priests?
My sister in law sends her (and her Buddhist husband’s) daughter to a parish-based elementary school in Northern California. It costs them $1100 a month +++ The only way one can hope to get one’s child in is if the child starts in the kindergarten class and then advances on.
The waiting list for the school is quite extensive. Yes, this is an affluent suburban parish of 3,000 families. The local public school system has a reputation of being good, so evidently the parents (Buddhists and all) have found something with this school that makes them want to send their children there – and can/will come up with the money, individually and parish collectively, to make that happen.
I do know that there is a scholarship program for families who cannot afford any/all of the tuition. All parents, however, are expected to be active in the parish, support fund-raising activities, and volunteer in some way, shape or form at the school. (The Buddhist is a computer executive and has been able to get equipment and software donations from his employer to the school.)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Investigate and adapt the LDS concept of Institutes of Religion. They’re cheaper and seem to work. Of course, they are religion as opposed to general education focused.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Religion
I am conflicted about government as Sugar Daddy too, in that shoring up public schools is so important.
The government pays money for children to be educated. If the children have the option of getting that education in a private school rather than a public school, why does that deserve a derogatory term? Do you say that the government is being a Sugar Daddy to private doctors, because it allows Medicare to be used at their offices?
And I think that when bishops have one hand out for government money while they bash the government with the other for perceived persecution it gets a bit, well, hypocritical.
What’s hypocritical about saying: 1) Some of the $12,000 that the state and local government plans to spend per year on a child’s education should be available to take to a private school; and 2) The Obama administration shouldn’t force religious institutions’ healthcare plans to include contraception and sterilization as an add-on. If one objects to any act taken by any government, one therefore isn’t allowed to benefit from the act of a different government?
Stu’s back I see.
I thought the thread was about cathlolic schools, their goals, their support and their accountability within the missions they have.
These issues wil continue to shake out as we see closings/reortganizations and maybe some genuine attempt at staking out r some clear positions on the issues.