Catholic schools to be church-run charters
The Archdiocese of Indianapolis has announced that it will convert two Catholic schools into publicly funded charter schools – but will continue to run them itself through a corporation it controls. The decision to retain control of the schools – absent religious trappings – is a first (The Washington and Miami archdioceses have both turned schools over to other charter-school operators.).
This has led to worries that the separation of church and state will be violated. I will leave that to others and instead express concern for what this development means for Catholic schools. How important is the Catholic faith to the quality of education provided in Catholic schools? What will be the effect on other Catholic schools if parents can send their children for free to a charter school run with the blessings of the archbishop?
As I’ve written earlier in Commonweal [r.r.], these are issues that Catholics need to discuss nationally because this movement toward charter schools will change the nature of the Catholic school system in the U.S.
Paul, I believe your concerns are well-founded. My prediction is that these schools will be Catholic in the same sense that Northwestern is Methodist or University of Chicago is Baptist – that is to say, in no meaningful sense at all. There will be a history, there may still even be a chapel preserved, but they will be religious institutions in no real, practical sense.
I see it as counterproductive of the archdiocese. There are no good reasons that Catholic schools cannot be eligible for government assistance and yet continue in their faith mission. The archdiocese is surrendering an importrant principle.
Given the continuing loss of Catholic elementary schools in low-income, urban (and rural) neighborhoods, some new sorts of sustainable funding need to be explored. Continuing the same pattern of funding — small tuition, inadequate parish subsidy, over-strained diocesan scholarship program — will get the same results: more schools closed each year. New ventures such as the NativityMiguel schools (and the related ACCESS Academies) are achieving high levels of academic success as well as holding their own financially. The expriment in Indianapolis is well worth the effort if it can provide solid academic formation along with a wrap-around faith development program that works and, at the same time, pay the bills.
Paul–
I enjoyed your thoughtful article when I read it in Commonweal last December, and as someone who attended Catholic schools through college, and whose children attended Catholic schools, I can relate to the “inspiritional ideology” you mentioned that pervades a good Catholic school.
There are many relevant–and difficult–issues associated with with the conversion of Catholic schools to charter schools, even charter schools affiliated with church-generated business entities, but maybe Archbishop Wuerl, whom you quoted in your article, said it best under the circumstances: “[F]or us, the best education is going to be a Catholic school. The best alternative is a values-based charter school.”
However, I think this sentence in your article best expresses my strong hope with respect to this issue: “If a few charter-school conversions can prompt a broader examination and appreciation of what makes Catholic schools special, perhaps U.S. Catholics will find the will to donate the money their schools need to survive.”
Catholicism is more middle class and financially well-off than it has ever been it its history in this country.
The schools that fostered this successful Catholicism were built and supported by a church much more persecuted, much less well-off and peopled by relatively unlettered immigrants.
I guess Catholics are now getting the type of schools they value and are willing to support.
More’s the pity. I guess large mortgages, 3 cars and huge credit card debts are more important.
I can’t really disagree with anything that has been said here. “Absent religious trappings” is the ultimate sacrifice to “stay in business”, and then I really don’t think these schools can call themselves catholic. With the soaring cost of a college education, less middle class people are willing to make the tuition sacrifice for the Catholic schools. This, then, is different that from years past. What is values education, and how will it be delivered? It certainly won’t replace religious education.
Thanks for all of these thoughtful comments. I do think the real issue is the will of the Catholic community as a whole to fund the schools.
Maybe it’s time for Catholics to explore the Mormon Institute of Religion idea:
http://institute.lds.org/
“I do think the real issue is the will of the Catholic community as a whole to fund the schools.”
Unless they supported the politicians who advanced the political policies which created these conditions, I would not think it is fair to blame the will of the Catholic community generally for the ever shrinking individual liberty they have to educate their children in the manner they choose.
Before I make any comment perhaps Paul might explain to me/us how the “charter school” will be “absent religious trappings”.
Questions like “What will be the effect on other Catholic schools if parents can send their children for free to a charter school run with the blessings of the archbishop?” or statements like “this movement toward charter schools will change the nature of the Catholic school system in the U.S.” make no sense to me at this point.
Paul if I may read an interpretation into your words I might infer that the “Catholic school system will change in its nature because in the future it will own and operate “public schools” which are not Catholic schools. Is that what you mean by that statement?
The next inference is that the bishop/archbishop will now bless those who go to the charter school because it is a public school which is owned and managed by the Catholic corporate entity and not because of its “faith” component. Is that what you are implying?
Where Catholic schools have become “charter school” operated by “charter school operators” how are those charter schools different in their nature, curriculum and/or outward and inner trappings than when (one) they were Catholic and (two) from their now public school counterparts now that they are ‘charters”?
Do you see any way within the American context of public school education that “faith” could be imbued throughout the curriculum of such a school without the external trappings to which you refer? For example I understand it does not violate separation of church and state to have religious clubs in a public school. Could the charter school day be extended such that all students attended religious education in the extended part of the school day? If that is legal could it be argued that once the school day is extended then such classes could be offered anytime through out the school day as long as the day was extended?
Maybe it’s time for us to re-envision what catechesis is. As someone who has worked in parish catechesis for twenty five years, I see much to hope for in the development of approaches to weekly religion classes that support the growth of faith in our young parishioners. There’s more than one way to education for faith.
Make that last sentence: there’s more than one way to educate for faith.
In our rural area, an adjoining parish has a Catholic school able to accommodate three or four times the number of students it attracts. Or it could go fromK-12 instead of just K-8.
One of the reasons parents don’t send their kids there is b/c they can’t afford out-of-parish tuition, transportation is hard to arrange, and the school requires a level of parental involvement that makes it difficult for working parents in another town to fulfill.
The diocese suggested that parishes in the area band together to support the school. In exchange, parents in parishes that finance the operation would be charged in-parish tuition.
Carpooling from the local parish to the school was also encouraged as well as rethinking ways to make parental involvement less difficult.
So far, none of this has happened for a variety of reasons (already costs too much to run the parish without adding extra for a school, not many parents interested in Catholic school, etc.).
But it struck me as a good idea. Would be surprised if the idea hadn’t been floated in other dioceses.
Perhaps tangentially related to this conversation: This article by Steve Chapman talks about charter schools, tuition vouchers and other good education ideas that don’t seem to actually deliver a better education:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-0415-chapman-20100415,0,7825146.column
I find this related because we know that Catholic schools *do* deliver a better education. (At least, I think we know this? Maybe I’ve just been drinking the Catholic school Kool-aid, but my impression is that it’s well-established).
So then: why it is it that Catholic schools as a whole seem to outperform public schools in the same community, but sending some of the community’s public school students to the Catholic schools (via tuition vouchers) doesn’t raise the education performance of those students?
I would like to know more about the makeup both in terms of ethnicity and income level as well as numbers and class sizes in the two schools converted.
I find it interesting that the Church is providing the oversight board to insure compliance with government regulation (say, as opposed to being conjoined to a local school district.)
That tells me that the driving motivation is SERVICE – which i presume is the first priority of the church in education.
So I don’t think all is lost in the move.
While Catholics are better off finanacially, as Jean pointed out, tuition costs are steep in many parochial schools.
When i attended Catholic school many moons ago, tuition was 50 cents a month and rent in our cold water New York apartment then was $28 per moneth.
With what we had, tuition was affordable and, of course, all classes were taught by nuns.
A very different picture today.
I think we’re kidding ourselves if we think we can go back to the old days – in more ways then one.
We want our youth better informed about our faith which means better religious ed but not just pure indoctrination and better adult ed too, but not just indoctrination.
If we want to really attract and maintain people to and in both, I beleive, our commitment to service must shine forth.
Not to be confrontational, Jim, but DO Catholic schools provide better education?
Or do Catholic school students get higher grades b/c the problem kids are weeded out?
Or that the parents who can afford Catholic school are better educated and more involved with their kids’ educations?
Or that Catholic schools offer smaller class sizes and teacher-to-student ratios?
“Not to be confrontational, Jim, but DO Catholic schools provide better education? Or do Catholic school students get higher grades b/c the problem kids are weeded out? Or that the parents who can afford Catholic school are better educated and more involved with their kids’ educations? Or that Catholic schools offer smaller class sizes and teacher-to-student ratios?”
How the heck do I know? :-)
FWIW, when our oldest was ready for first grade, we looked into the local Catholic school. (She went to kindergarten at the local Lutheran school – long story, but good school and it worked just fine for us). (Another perenthetical comment: the public schools where we live are actually pretty good, so we don’t perceive a big quality differential between the two options).
Anyway, at that time I went to a parent open house at the Catholic school and listened to the principal’s sales pitch. Standardized test scores would be one obvious way to compare performance between public and Catholic schools, but it turns out that the Catholic schools at that time used a different set of standard tests (Terranova) than the public schools (ISAT). So no apples-to-apples comparison was possible. He reported that they tracked the academic performance of freshmen at the area high schools that this school would feed into, and allegedly his students were 2nd best of all the feeder schools (the only one outdistancing his, ironically enough, being the local Lutheran school).
I’ll say this – in terms of budget, there’s no comparison. For things like size and breadth of library, science equipment, computer equipment, gym and playground equipment, overall facilities – the public schools are just in another league.
The public schools also offer special services, like special ed and gross- and fine-motor-skill therapy and language development that the Catholic schools don’t have. But statutorily, the public school district needs to provide them to all kids regardless of school, so Catholic school kids get the same services if their parents are willing to drive them to the public school.
The teachers in the public schools seem uniformly pretty good – a cut above the Catholic schools, who have some wonderful teachers and some not-so-wonderful. I’d guess that the Catholic school teachers average less than half the salary of the public school teachers, and I’m sure the Catholic school benefits are a lot worse. A guy who tried to support his family on a Catholic school teacher’s salary – and there were one or two at the local Catholic school – is embracing a life at the economic margins.
My kids went to Catholic schools for a while, now they’re in public schools (another long story). When they switched, they experienced the bumps and dislocations that all kids experience when they’re put into a new school. Then they adjusted. Bottom line is, they did reasonably well in Catholic school, and now they seem to be doing reasonably well in public school.
Two of the five board members of the local public school district are members of my parish. Members of the parish seem all over the PTAs. So it’s not like Catholics are excluded or discriminated against. It’s probably more like the Supreme Court – we’re over-represented.
But there is no religious instruction at the public school (although there is some values instruction – do other areas teach Character Counts, too?), and that is a very big difference.
In response to John Borst’s questions: “Absent religious trappings” means that these charter schools will have to be non-sectarian, like any other public school.
There is social-science research showing that good Catholic schools succeed because of their “inspirational ideology,” that is, the Catholic faith. It creates a sense of mission that leads to measurable results in terms of how well teachers do their job. There is a commitment to the whole person, rather than to teaching a curriculum. I don’t know if this worldview will make the transition from Catholic school to charter (that is, public) school. Voluntary religious clubs in public schools are great for the students who participate, but I don’t think one would really infuse an entire school with the sense of mission that makes a good Catholic school effective. Nor would voluntary after-school religion classes.
I don’t mean to imply that the archbishop of Indianapolis would encourage parents to send their children to his charter school instead of to his Catholic schools. But the fact that a charter school is both free and run via the archdiocese would be a powerful incentive for parents to take their children out of Catholic schools and send them to the charter school.
Yes, Jim, the main benefit–and it wasn’t a small benefit by any means–of Catholic school was the fact that religious education was woven into my son’s Catholic school curriculum.
On the other hand, the rest of the education was extremely poor.
So we chose public schools and hoped to fill in the CCD with “home schooling” re religion. Results are still pending …
Jean: we don’t really have a traditional religious ed program in our parish. We have something called LIFE which is whole family learning (which means the parents attend the sessions, too). As you say, results are pending.
Paul, I just wrote a detailed response and went to send it and lost it. Sorry, but thanks anyway.
Jim’s experience with Catholic schools is very much like my experience was several years ago when my kids started at a catholic school, and then later switched to public schools. I agree with many of your observations, Jim. I also know that those observations can change geographically. Jean Raber, your questions are very insightful. I have been a public school teacher for enough years to know that performance is tied to the questions Jean raises. That’s why teacher pay cannot be tied to student performance.
I tried to say a critical issue is service say in the role of oversight the Church provides,
I just read that a very popular priest near here is leaving (under strange circumstances) on sabbatical and perhaps monastic life.
He began a charter school which was conjoined to the local school district.
He served as president of its board.
Now there are questions abou tfinacial improprities thereand in the parish.
Setting up value based schools, particularlly where poor public education is the alternaive, is real service.
Providing competent vigorous oversight there to is also service that redounds.
I hope Indianoppolis succeds in its efoorts.
I’m still thinking about Paul’s original question: How important is the Catholic faith to the quality of education provided in Catholic schools?
I’d say that faith and quality of education are linked in two ways, at least when the Catholic school system works as it should:
1. A Catholic education injects knowledge of arts and sciences–which should be taught by knowledgeable professionals–with Catholic sensibilities. An education teaches us what we’re good at. A Catholic education teaches us that we have a duty to use what we’re good at in the service of God and his people.
2. A Catholic education immerses a child among those who show what it is to live a Catholic life in their calling as teachers. Not only do teachers transmit the traditions and teachings of the Church, but demonstrate daily how those teachings play out in real life. With the understanding that most of us aren’t saints, of course.
I don’t know how well Catholic schools overall succeed at these two criteria, but if I were to send my kid back to a Catholic school at considerable expense and inconvenience, I’d have to be persuaded the school would deliver those two things.
My son’s public school does a good job teaching civic-based values, and I have found the school staff fair and attentive. They could be more knowledgeable and experienced, but I’m looking at 20-something teachers as a 55-year-old parent, and I have to learn to appreciate their stamina and enthusiasm more.
“There is social-science research showing that good Catholic schools succeed because of their “inspirational ideology,” that is, the Catholic faith. It creates a sense of mission that leads to measurable results in terms of how well teachers do their job. There is a commitment to the whole person, rather than to teaching a curriculum.”
Paul – but if that’s teh case, wouldn’t you expect (a) that public school students who “voucher” over to the Catholic schools would experience the same mission-driven benefits, and (b) charter schools, a number of which also seem to be characterized by an ‘inspiriational ideology’ / distinctive mission, would deliver good results? But the Chapman article I linked to suggests that neither experiment has yielded measurable improvement.
I’m not arguing for Catholic exceptionalism here. I just think it’s a complicated issue as to why a kid doesn’t do better in school, and the schools themselves can’t control for all the variables that affect academic success.
(But if that’s the case, then why do Catholic schools, on the whole, succeed? It’s a head-scratcher.)
Btw, one of my children starts middle school next year, and I went to an open house last night. I can’t give enough credit to middle school faculty and administrators. I’d run screaming out of that building after five minutes if I had to help kids in that age group learn and master anything. To do it day after day, year after year – it really hit home to me last night that I don’t have that calling.
it has been awhile but this editorial on this issue appeared today:
see rest at http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20100420/OPINION/4200301/1014/EDITORIAL–Church-schools-without-church