The Cathoholic

Catholic Schools/Charter Conversion

I have been covering the crisis facing Catholic schools, and the recent initiatives in Washington, D.C. and Brooklyn to "save" parochial schools by converting them into publicly-financed charter schools. Here is an interesting New York Times followup to the D.C. effort. The story is surprisingly balanced in its coverage of the school communities' transition from a religious to a secular environment. So sad: one student plaintively asks how he will "survive" without Christ in the classroom. The story also notes an important difference: Catholics constitute a solid 80 percent majority at the Brooklyn schools, but a minority at the inner-city D.C. schools.  No doubt, both communities will feel the impact of the shift in school culture, and the Church must adapt to this new development and figure out how to reach both populations: the Catholic children who are the Church's future, and the non-Catholic poor who have welcomed these schools as "an oasis" in the midst of chaos and dysfunction -- if only they could afford them.

'School Choice' for Democrats

A few days ago, I noted that 1,700 students in Washington, D.C. would soon lose their federally-funded vouchers for private and parochial schools. Here's a Wall Street Journal Online op-ed that examines the spectacle of Democrat politicians, who send their children to private schools, but oppose voucher programs for children who need tuition subsidies to attend such schools. 

The WSJ op-ed tells the story of the Parker children, who attend the same elite private school as the Obama children. But there is a crucial difference: the Parkers can't afford the school tuition without help from the District's voucher program. And now that subsidy is at risk. 

Like many African Americans, Obama has expressed frustration with an indifferent status quo that ignores the poor quality of inner-city public education. The Journal quotes this statement from Obama, the one-time community organizer: "The biggest source of resistance [to reform]," he said, "was rarely talked about . . . namely, the uncomfortable fact that every one of our churches was filled with teachers, principals, and district superintendents. Few of these educators sent their own children to public schools; they knew too much for that. But they would defend the status quo with the same skill and vigor as their white counterparts of two decades before."

Apparently, Obama also knows "too much" to permit his own daughters to enroll in the District's public school system. He has followed the lead of President Bill Clinton, who sent his daughter to Sidwell Friends School. Deemed one of the most academically rigorous schools in the Washington, D.C.-Metro Area, it boasts highly competitive admissions standards, with a long waiting list of qualified students. If proponents of the D.C. voucher program don't succeed in reviving support for this initiative, students like the Parker children will leave the school and a few spots will open up for children who can pay full freight. No doubt, some of those lucky students have parents that work on Capitol Hill or in the White House and share  Obama's conflicted view of the status quo. They will happily snap up those open spots at Sidwell Friends, and, when asked about the fate of the Parker kids, they will sadly shake their heads. 

Brooklyn Diocese -- More Charter Schools?

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Mayer Bloomberg and the Brooklyn Diocese are negotiating on a plan to convert a handful of Brooklyn parochial schools into publicly funded charter schools.

Last year, I wrote  about the Archdiocese of Washington's controversial struggle to "save" seven of its inner-city parochial schools by converting them into charter schools. The Washington archdiocese sought to retain the staff, curriculum and basic moral values of the parochial schools in the conversion process. Let's hope that the Brooklyn Diocese will negotiate with the city to achieve a similar result. The Times story notes that one key stumbling block is the city's sex ed curriculum: Church officials do not want lessons that contradict Catholic teaching on sexuality morality and contraception taught in any schools it leases to the city.

While the city and the Brooklyn Diocese continue to work out the details of the plan, education reform expert, Diane Ravitch proposes in the New York Daily News  that Caroline Kennedy, who has raised over $200 million for the NYC's public schools, marshal her formidable fund raising talents to come to the aid of the collapsing Catholic system. Sounds like a good plan to me.

What Ravitch doesn't say in her Daily News commentary, but researchers have noted in the Winter 2009 issue of Education Next, an important education reform publication, is that the moderately-priced Catholic parochial system has provided much-needed competition for the public school system. Not only do the parochial schools provide an oasis for inner-city students, their educational outcomes (graduation rates, testing results) provide an essential point of comparison with the public system. The Education Next article looks at some fascinating attempts "to measure systematically the causal impact of [private-public] competition by looking at variation across countries." If you read the article, you may well conclude that if the parochial model loses further ground, the likely result will be a rapid decline in our overall educational outcomes.