The Cathoholic

Sotomayor: Catholic school grad

Would Judge Sonia Sotomayor have reached her present position as a nominee for the Supreme Court without the help of a Catholic education? It's impossible to answer the question, but an article in today's New York Times notes that both Sotomayor and Justice Clarence Thomas, an African-American Catholic, attended Catholic schools. Sotomayor's mother, like many parents residing in public housing projects, struggled and sacrificed to find the cash to enroll her daughter. Was it worth it? It would appear so, and many parents from racial minority groups find a way to do precisely the same thing. In the past, research has supported their choice: Catholic schools have a much better track record of educating and graduating inner-city minority students than their neighborhood public school alernatives. Dropout rates are much lower, and most head to college, just like Sotomayor. 

But if Sotomayor lived in Washington, D.C. and her mother couldn't afford to fork over the dough for a Catholic school, she would be in a fix -- just like many participating families in Washington, D.C.'s school voucher program. Recently, they were devastated to learn that the voucher program would be discontinued with President Obama's apparent blessing. The ensuing controversy led the president to encourage a slight adjustment--the students presently enrolled in the voucher program--including children at his daughters' elite school--Sidwell Friends-- would be allowed to finish their education. No new students would be added to the program. That decision doomed the siblings of participating students to a less than ideal future in the only other option available to them: D.C.'s struggling public system. 

The decision is controversial, even within Democratic Party circles: many African Americans support vouchers as the best choice available to them. The Washington Post provided a roundtable discussion that offers a variety of viewpoints.

D.C. Voucher Program Dies

The Archdiocese of  Washington, D.C. has been fighting to reverse the decision to shut down the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides vouchers for 879 children attending Catholic schools in the District of Columbia. An editorial in USA Today criticized the Democrats, backed by President Obama, for shutting down the program. The president has vowed that his education policy will be non-partisan:  "[Education] Secretary [Arne] Duncan will use only one test in what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars," says the president. "It's not whether it's liberal or conservative, but whether it works." But it hasn't turned out that way.

This is bad news for the students, bad news for the struggling inner-city Catholic  schools that serve these children, and for D.C.'s generally desperate public schools. When inner-city Catholic schools close, bad public schools no longer feel pressure to measure up. The USA editorial lays the blame squarely on the teachers' unions, and the Democratic politicians who do their bidding:

".....it was curious that when President Obama recently allowed 1,716 of Washington's neediest schoolchildren to keep, until graduation, the vouchers they use to escape their failed public schools for higher-quality private ones, he also closed the program to new applicants. All this occurred as the Education Department reported that voucher participants show superior skills in reading, safety and orderliness. The news was buried in an impenetrable study released without a news conference.

"Why the ambivalence? Because teacher unions, fearing loss of jobs, have pushed most Democrats to oppose vouchers and other options that invite competition for public schools. Put another way, they oppose giving poor parents the same choice that the president himself — along with his chief of staff and some 35% of Democrats in Congress — have made in sending their children to private schools."

Check out this  tv spot on the voucher impasse..

Postscript: Just came across Jay Mathews--the Washington Post's excellent education reporter, who provides additional political context for the failure of the D.C. program.