Over the last half-century, the number of Catholic schools has fallen to 7,000 from about 13,000, and their enrollment to barely two million children from more than five million. A disproportionate share of the damage has come in big cities.
So when a landmark topples as Rice [High School in Harlem] did ”” and as Cardinal Dougherty High School did in Philadelphia last year, and as Daniel Murphy High School did in Los Angeles two years before that ”” it ought to provoke more than sentimentality or tears. It ought to sound an alarm about a slow-motion crisis in American education.
To grasp what is being lost, one needed only to look through the roster in the graduation program for Rice. With a student body that is 98 percent black or Hispanic, with 80 percent of its students requiring financial aid, virtually every graduating senior was bound for college: Penn, Cincinnati, Holy Cross, Fairfield, Iona. Four of the Rice men had received scholarships in excess of $150,000.
interesting how the article ends up blaming Catholics for not working hard enough to keep these schools open. Catholics have been scraping to keep them open for 40 years after they became mostly non-Catholic institutions. Why didn’t the communities they served support them? Why did those communities constantly vote democrat and thus prevent voucher programs from saving those schools? Why does the NYT only praise such institutions when they go under? Why if those institutions are so valuable, does the NYT always find only negative things to report about Catholics, Catholicism and Catholic institutions? The NYT is as guilty for these closures as Catholics have been heroically responsible for their lasting 40 years after they communities they were built to serve moved on.
There is also the troubling element that the Christian Brothers were bankrupted by compensation arising out of sexual abuse. It is almost a classic case of the ramifications of sin going on and on. But it also raises the highly controversial question of whether those claimants are justified in claiming so much. Of course, if it was my child who had been abused, I would feel, I think, great hurt and anger towards the institution that had allowed this. And yet, and yet and yet … are there limits? Even the Vatican is now being sued in US courts. In addition there are still troubling attempts to seize parish properties in some areas. If a case is pursued to the uttermost does it end up extending the hurt?
I am a little surprised at this. Whilst I don’t have any figures, I believe that here in Australia, Roman Catholic churches have to turn away students from all backgrounds, i.e. they remain very popular.
Fr. J. is correct. Vouchers are exactly the remedy for such heartbreaking situations as these, yet the “V” word continues to be ignored by Democrats and their union cronies.
#4 — Seriously? The biggest foes I know of vouchers in this instance are the religious schools themselves. They don’t want their mission compromised by the state requirements and regulations that would come forthwith — and I don’t blame them in the least.
Vouchers wouldn’t “save” these schools — if anything, they’d be put out of business by the mandates they’d have to enact to accept vouchers.
Teatime2, the mandates you mention are the very tools being used to kill the possibility of a true voucher system wherein a parent would receive a “cash value” voucher that could be used for tuition at any public, private, charter or specialized school. Public schools would have to compete for students to be funded. Government regulations are the very barrier preventing this “free market” parent-empowering revolution.
#6 — Some of the mandates aren’t so bad. Requiring a teacher to be certified, for instance, is often a good thing. I pulled my son out of a Catholic primary school because I was appalled by the inadequacy of some of the teachers and inappropriateness of the staff. His ELA teacher, in particular, was abyssmal. No certifcation.
Ironically, too, the nun who taught religion made snide remarks to my son because he came from a single parent home, but the whole school celebrated the fact that the lesbian assistant principal and her lover adopted a baby. Sorry, but WTH?!
I’m not saying that certification ensures quality but it does help. These schools pay their teachers a fraction of what the public schools pay. Thus, they either have teachers who are devoted and committed to religious school teaching OR they get teachers who need a job and aren’t certified or employable for the public schools. If a new year is about to start and they still have teaching positions to fill, then the latter group fills the gaps.
Another reasonable mandate would be special education services. If a dyslexic student with a voucher, for instance, chooses a religious school, then he or she would need to be accommodated. The programs and staff training would need to be in place.
As it stands now, religious schools can be selective; public schools cannot. Vouchers would reduce or eliminate that selectivity.
Respectfully, every fiber of my being favors more choices for parents. That every school will be inconvenienced by having to provide quality and accessible education bothers me not in the least.
#6 Fradgan says:
Let me see if I understand this… you are talking about a system where the government gives money to people as a “free market” solution, and decrying the fact that the government might want to regulate the purposes for which the money it is giving away might be spent?
The “free market†solution is that rich kids get educated at the private schools their parents can afford, and poor kids get no education at all because their parents can’t afford to buy both food and schooling. Obviously there are no public schools and no “vouchers†in the free market; cash on the barrelhead for everyone.
I don’t know about you, but I’m happy that this is an area not subject to the free market.
As for vouchers, I don’t care for the idea myself — I don’t see why private schools wouldn’t just immediately raise their tuition to whatever they were charging before plus the amount of the voucher, which is a windfall for the private schools and makes them no more affordable than they were before — but if you’re going to advocate for it, at least be honest enough to admit you’re asking for a government handout.
Ross, the present education system is the ultimate government handout with layer upon layer of administration (Federal, State, county, city, and school district etc). This army of public sector administrators fare well even while the schools (and students) are shortchanged. If you can think of a way to prevent heavily funded and underperforming public schools and public sector unions from discouraging new schools, new ideas and new funding, I will listen. If vouchers are not the answer, what is? I believe with great conviction that our poorest students, our most gifted students, our special needs students, and our legions of bored and discouraged students are ill-served by our continued overfunding of a corrupt and inefficient system.