The American Spectator : Saving Catholic Schools

Text Size

Saving Catholic Schools

By RiShawn Biddle on 3.5.10 @ 6:08AM

More and more of them are being shut down -- where they are needed most and where charter schools are in shortest supply.

The poor black and Latino children attending Sacred Heart School in the Columbia Heights section of Washington, D.C., probably don't know that Century Foundation Senior Fellow Richard Kahlenberg thinks their participation in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship and other voucher plans merely helps to make "'separate-but-equal' work." Chances are, they don't even know about the contention among progressives and even otherwise school choice-supporting centrist Democrats that public funding of parochial schools is somehow a plot among conservatives to cut government spending and violates the Constitution's ban against the intermingling of church and state.

Nor should they or their parents care one way or another. Although the District's traditional public school system is undergoing a much-needed overhaul led by Blackberry-touting reform maven Michelle Rhee, just 49 percent of its high school freshmen graduate four years later; a mere 12 percent of its 8th-graders in 2007 had reading skills rated "proficient" or higher on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal test of academic performance.

These families shouldn't have to wait until Rhee turns around the district's performance in order to avail their children of opportunities for high-quality academic instruction. Their interest in improving the quality of education for their children should outweigh concerns about the racial and ethnic segregation that they choose. And their hard-earned tax dollars shouldn't remain captured by a district that isn't delivering the goods.

Centrist and progressive Democrat school reformers are certainly familiar with these arguments. After all, they have successfully used them in beating back efforts by teachers unions, traditional school districts and some civil rights activists (usually the kind that spend more time on manicured Ivy League campuses than in gritty urban locales) to stamp out and restrict the existence of public charter schools, the publicly-funded-privately-operated entities that have become their favored form of school choice. And they should keep it in mind whenever vouchers (and similar tax credit programs) come up for discussion. If nonprofit- and for-profit operators can be trusted with public funding through charters, then school vouchers used for Catholic and private schools shouldn't be a problem.

Vouchers and Catholic schools are once again in the headlines thanks in part to an effort by U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman this week to revive the D.C. Opportunity program after it was all but shut down by Congressional Democrats last year. Despite attempts by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and others to quash discussion among Democrats about the program -- which helps 1,716 students attend Catholic and other private schools in the District -- calls for its revival continue to come not only from conservative Republicans, but even from the likes of disgraced former mayor Marion Barry, who launched his career as a member of the local school board. A similar plan may be considered in Illinois thanks to the decision by controversial state Sen. James Meeks to reverse his past opposition to vouchers.

It also comes as the nation's Catholic school systems, no longer able to count on nearly-free labor from clergy and lacking the taxing power granted to traditional school districts for financing their (equally-unsustainable) teacher compensation packages, continue their secular decline. Just yesterday, Baltimore's archdiocesan school system announced that it would close 13 of its 80 school districts -- nearly all of them in the most-impoverished inner city areas. The fact that Mob Town has just 34 charter schools -- and that Maryland is one of the most-restrictive states for starting charters -- means that 2,152 soon-to-be former Catholic school students have even fewer options for high-quality instruction. This has Thomas B. Fordham Institute scholar Andy Smarick wishing that "we could give a little attention to preserving the high-performing, high-poverty private schools that are disappearing before our eyes."

Certainly the school reform movement -- especially centrist Democrats -- can claim stunning success in getting policymakers and even parents to embrace their prescriptions of standardized tests, stricter accountability measures, mayoral control of school districts, and expansion of charter schools. Even President Barack Obama has embraced reform through his $4.3 billion Race to the Top effort; the program has helped convince legislators and governors in states such as California to turn their back on their allies and eliminate restrictions on the geographic and demographic growth of charters. But even as they have spurred the creation of new charters, reformers are letting dissipate the other choices for poor urban and rural families to escape the worst traditional public education has to offer.

The number of Catholic schools in the United States -- 42 percent of which are located in big cities -- has declined by 12 percent between the 1998-1999 and 2008-2009 school years, according to the National Catholic Educational Association. But it isn't just diocesan and parish schools shutting down. Eleven hundred sixty-two urban parochial schools shut their doors between 2000 and 2006. The impact of these closures on urban poor and even middle-class families cannot be underestimated, especially given the success of parochial schools in improving student academic achievement, stemming dropouts and even sparking college completion. The average nine-year-old Catholic school student scored 8 percent higher on the 2007 NAEP than his counterpart in a traditional district; that gap remained constant among middle-school and high school students tested.

It is especially problematic given that other school choice options aren't nearly as plentiful. Intra-district choice options such as magnet schools -- long touted by Kahlenberg and others as the best solution over vouchers and charters -- hardly exist. When they do, these options usually end up being used by middle-class households, who use their strong political connections (and exploit ability tracking systems that serve as the gateways into such schools) to assure seats for their own children.

Charters -- the more-preferable school choice option among reformers -- have generally proven to be better than magnets in promoting choice and improving academic achievement; a study released last March by the RAND Corporation shows that children attending charters in Chicago and Florida are 7-15 percent more likely to attend college than those attending traditional public schools. But, until recently, many states have restricted the number and location of charter schools. And even with Race to the Top, teachers unions and school districts have assured that charters may not reach urban neighborhoods. Last month, legislators in Alabama, at the behest of the National Education Association affiliate there, rejected the latest effort to allow the opening of charters.

None of this, of course, sways progressive critics of vouchers (and ultimately, of private and parochial schools altogether). This isn't surprising. After all, Kahlenberg once declared that "the purpose of public schools is not to satisfy the individual preferences of parents." But it doesn't explain why centrist Democrats such as former New America Foundation scholar Sara Mead thinks vouchers "just change where pupils are allocated among existing schools."

Certainly their discomfort with handing money over to religious operators comes into play. But as pointed out by Fordham in a 2008 report on reviving urban Catholic schools, the federal government already pours $3 billion annually into Catholic Charities alone. And don't forget that school reformers are more than happy to back charters, which are operated by nonprofit and even for-profit organizations. Considering that as much of the decline in the number of urban parochial schools is related to the competition for instructors -- fueled largely by the dealmaking between school districts and teachers unions that have made teaching the most-lucrative profession in the public sector -- a redistribution of wealth back to the urban parents (who must pay for both private schools out of pocket and traditional districts out of payroll withholding) wouldn't seem all that unfair.

There are efforts underway to preserve Catholic schools, even if they aren't exactly providing religious education. In D.C., the Archdiocese of Washington has spun off seven of its schools and converted them into charters; a similar effort is likely to take place in Indianapolis, where two schools are considering a conversion. But in the process, the schools do end up losing some of the faith and values that have helped make Catholic education successful in the first place. To be sure, American public education has always provided something similar to the religious instruction in parochial schools in the form of civics (including pledging allegiance to the flag); in fact, teaching students about American values was one of the foremost reasons why public schools were created. This is the argument that may come to play in the next year as Brookwood Presbyterian Church, a Columbus, Ohio church, sues state officials after they rejected its efforts to sponsor a charter school.

Given the success of charters, Centrist Democrat school reformers can no longer argue against voucher plans. And if the ultimate goal is to assure that every child, no matter their race or wealth of their parents, has opportunities for high-quality education, then preserving Catholic and other parochial and private schools (and in turn, supporting voucher plans) is no longer just an option.

topics:
Charter Schools, Catholic Schools

About the Author

RiShawn Biddle the editor of Dropout Nation , is co-author of A Byte at the Apple: Rethinking Education Data for the Post-NCLB Era. He can be followed at Twitter.com/dropoutnation.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (72) | Leave a comment

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 3.5.10 @ 6:38AM

Many members of the public are drawn to outdated concepts and believe that supporting those outdated concepts will somehow improve things.

The public school system in this country has never been more inefficient or suffered larger failures in terms of dropouts. Several large cities have drop out rates in excess of 60%. No business in this country could suffer that failure and continue.

It's time to let the market decide the future of education including charter schools. They either need to raise their rates and succeed on their own merits or close.

In the meantime I expect that the number of home schooled will continue to increase and I also question the value of packing students into outdated schools, just to teach them liberal concepts based on secular humanism.

Alan Brooks| 3.5.10 @ 10:05AM

Agreed.

If this is the greatest country in the world, then why do we have an education system that is ranked somewhere around #12 in the world? Perhaps the truth is we only have the greatest agricultural 'system' in the world, and nothing more.

alan| 3.6.10 @ 12:37AM

saving catholic schools?

I don't think it is necessary

maybe someday Catholic will disappear

http://bit.ly/dgc9Lq

Alan Brooks| 3.6.10 @ 12:52AM

I did not write this imbecilic, Daphne Kenward comment above. Oh here we go again, people using other commenter's names to score a cheap shot.

Alan Brooks| 3.6.10 @ 12:55AM

... BTW, his link is to a Toshiba advert, so it's an Asian spammer playing games.

basur| 10.27.10 @ 9:16AM

I don't consider the Federalist papers anecdotes.

To hell with your massive spending increases. There is nothing government can do, that the free market can't do better.

basur| 10.28.10 @ 9:01AM

eyvallah

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 3.5.10 @ 6:38AM

Many members of the public are drawn to outdated concepts and believe that supporting those outdated concepts will somehow improve things.

It's time to let the market decide the future of education including charter schools. They either need to raise their rates and succeed on their own merits or close.

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 3.5.10 @ 6:38AM

Many members of the public are drawn to outdated concepts and believe that supporting those outdated concepts will somehow improve things.

It's time to let the market decide the future of education including charter schools. They either need to raise their rates and succeed on their own merits or close.

Kenny| 3.5.10 @ 6:57AM

Several points:

1. Yes, I'm, all for vouchers -- a full blown reform where vouchers are available to ALL parents.

2. The main reason Catholic schools are closing is because their true intended use is to propagate the Catholic faith, not to function as a charity outreach to the underprivilage, as noble as that my be. Once the Catholic base of an area is gone, the funding disappears, too.

Stuart Koehl| 3.5.10 @ 9:00AM

You are correct that the primary function of Catholic parochial schools is to propagate the Catholic faith. Can you think of a better way of doing that than exposing non-Catholic children to the faith at an early age?

At the very least, this experience has served to reduce the endemic anti-Catholicism that plagued this country (and still does, in some circles).

Patrick| 3.6.10 @ 11:38AM

While the above is true, the main purpose of Catholic parochial schools is to propagate the Catholic faith to the next generation, most often to families already Catholic.

Stuart Koehl| 3.7.10 @ 3:11PM

Since Lumen Gentium, the Catholic Church has considered that all Christians are mystically connected to her; Unitatis Redintegratio makes restoration of the unity of Christian one of the Church's principal missions. Finally, there is the Great Commission itself, which requires us to "make disciples of all nations". Educating the young in a Catholic environment, familiarizing them with the Catholic faith, is an outstanding way of doing this.

Roger| 3.5.10 @ 7:00AM

Some Catholic schools, at least in Wisconsin, have been shuttered because of declinng enrollment as well. Not that I don't believe this article has merit, but in some cities where traditionally the Catholic schools have been well attended the dioceses have responded to the market and combine 2-3 shrinking K-6 schools. You don't see much of that on the public side, they just want more money to keep all the schools open regardless.

Patrick| 3.6.10 @ 12:04PM

True. Of course in Soviet Wisconsin, who has money to pay for a parochial school? We have lower than national average in wages combined with a crippling tax burden. Add into the mix a government that actively tries to destroy business and a teachers' union that owns the votes of every school board from Kenosha to Superior, and Catholic school is viewed by the majority of interested parents as an unreachable luxury.

Of course, it's not all the government's fault. Catholic parishes and dioceses are still blighted by aging "Spirit of Vatican II" hippies. This, sadly, will only be remedied with time, as the dirt takes them.

Stuart Koehl| 3.5.10 @ 7:02AM

At the end of the day, the failure of the Catholic parochial school system is entirely the fault of the Catholic Church--both the hierarchy and the laity alike.

The hierarchy are to blame for frittering away their diocesan funds defending against law suits and paying damages resulting from the clerical sex abuse scandals. All those millions, had they not gone into the pockets of lawyers and plaintiffs, would have been available to fund Catholic education. As it was the duty--indeed the primary duty-- of the bishops as "episkopoi" (overseers) of their dioceses to maintain discipline and good order amongst their clergy, the fault is entirely theirs, no excuses can be accepted.

The laity are to blame for their failure to open their wallets when the collection plate comes around. As compared to many of their Evangelical brethren, the Catholic laity have always been relatively tight fisted (perhaps they believe all those stories about the wealth of the Church); certainly the Catholic who actually tithes is as rare as that man without sin who Christ wanted to be starting pitcher.

The failure of the bishops to deal with the clergy abuse scandals certainly undermined the confidence of the laity in the fiduciary rectitude of the hierarchy--collections dropped precipitously once the scale of the legal settlements became known, putting a further crunch on parochial school budgets.

Finally, it seems clear that for many years the business model of the parochial school has been broken. Half a century ago, the majority of the teachers at such schools were religious--nuns, monks and mendicants--who, working under a vow of poverty were just about the cheapest labor one could hope to find. With labor costs low and property tax exempt, maintenance and supplies were the major costs, and these could be met by tuition and donations due to the size of the parishes, despite chintzy offerings.

Today, most of the teachers are secular, and even though parochial teachers make far less than their public school counterparts in both salary and benefits, and even though they frequently dual-hat to reduce overhead, labor costs at these schools are several orders of magnitude higher than they were, in real terms. Budgets for these schools ceased to be realistic some time ago, and tuition has not kept pace with costs, in the admirable aim of making parochial education available to all.

If the parochial school system is to survive, then several things must happen. First, the bishops must cease insisting that the schools be self-supporting; dioceses, if they think the schools are important, must resolve to pay for them. Second, some increase in tuition is probably unavoidable, and ways should be found to get private funding for scholarships to subsidize low income families. Third, the laity are going to have to let go the death grip on their wallets and fork over more than a fiver when the plate comes around. Priests should preach the virtues of tithing (even if insisting on it is unrealistic), and the bishops should make clear in advance that a specific portion of the collection will go straight to the school system. Only in this way will the Church regain the trust of the people that their money will not be diverted to unseemly purposes, which, one hopes, will improve cash flow at the parish and diocesan levels.

Jeannine| 3.5.10 @ 8:33AM

Stuart,
I agree w/everything you have written. I would like to make a clarification. The high schools operating independently from the diocese by religious orders, ie, Jesuits, Domincans, etc..., are generally self-sufficient but must obey any rules that the local bishop imposes on them. The elementary schools & diocesen high schools do receive financial assistance from the local bishop. Although, it never seems to be enough!

I heard of a new business model that seems to be working comes from the Kansas area. Practicing Catholics & maybe others (Catholic schools generally do not discriminate when it come to educating a child in my experience.) can send their children to the Catholic schools for free. Apparently everyone is "taking ownership" for these schools. I'm not too sure how they're doing it but I bet tithing is a big part of it.

IMO, increasing the tuition should not be part of any model. Poor parents in urban areas will have to tolerate their horrible public schools & suburban parents will send their kids to the local public schools for at least an OK education.

Stuart Koehl| 3.5.10 @ 8:57AM

You are correct. We have several excellent independent Catholic High Schools in Northern Virginia, including Bishop O'Connell and Paul VI. Their tuition is quite reasonable as compared to other private schools, including Episcopal day schools. Their facilities are not state of the art, but are well maintained. A lot of sweat equity seems to be involved.

detroitlionsfan| 3.5.10 @ 11:40PM

When I came home from the service in 1979, we were practicing Catholics and when it came to putting our children in the local Catholic school they demanded twelve hundred dollars, which I could not afford. So while my children had to attend a Detroit public school non-Catholics attended our church's school for free. I then found a job and we were off to a small town on the outskirts of suburbia. I then could afford to send my children to Catholic school but I didn't. I am forgiving but anyone who steals from my children I remember well. I've always noticed that companies and organizations that claim to be diversified are always full of exclusionary groups. I have always wanted to start an organization or group whose only requirement would be you had to want to be a member.

mickeymat| 3.6.10 @ 12:01PM

Agree with Stuart totally but also believe the laity is at fault for not demanding the Bishops clean their filthy house of the deviants who molested children. Instead, they refused and persecuted those who came forward-a horrible thing for victims who were already dealing with the psychological suffering. It is corruption plain and simple and who would wish to contribute to such a corrupt group? As difficult as it is to succeed in teaching these days, Catholic schools have and have done so with inner city children that had been given up for dead. What a travesty that such success was squandered by using money intended for investment in the future on evil scum bags who deserved nothing but scorn.

maverick muse| 3.6.10 @ 4:00PM

Stuart, good call.

Having served in several parishes, the money gets spent on appearances.

ds80| 3.5.10 @ 7:16AM

"bishops must cease insisting that the schools be self-supporting"

Don't make sweeping unsubstantiated statements. I sent my 2 children to Catholic grade school and high school in the Atlanta, GA area and the diocese helped fund all of the Catholic schools.

As a life-long Catholic, I agree that parishioners are tight-fisted.

Stuart Koehl| 3.5.10 @ 8:59AM

As with all diocesan matters, your mileage may vary. However, when schools have been closed in the DC metro area, the invariable excuse offered was they were not self-supporting and had become too costly to subsidize.

Liberal Reader| 3.5.10 @ 8:16AM

School vouchers seem to me one of the best conservative ideas out there, but I would support them only if they were accompanied by necessary increases on public spending on education. As a percentage of GDP (the best way to measure these things) public investment in education has been decreasing since 1980s, and the results are in.

Catholic education is a wonderful institution. If I ever have children, I will certainly send them to Catholic schools.

One thing worth pointing out is that Catholic schools do NOT have such great success because they administer all kinds of standardized tests, tests that represent the worst in conservative thinking on education.

Children learn well NOT from standardized education programs, but from good teachers. School systems need to attract good teachers and give them the independence any teacher wants in the classroom. Mandating topics day to day, in the end, is boring, and a bored teacher is a bad teacher.

Stuart Koehl| 3.7.10 @ 9:06AM

Using percentage of GDP as a measure of investment in education is disingenuous. One should look instead at increases in spending per student (K-12) in constant dollars. Since the 1960s, spending on public education has more than tripled, but student achievement has declined precipitously. Furthermore, study after study has demonstrated no correlation in education spending and student achievement; in fact, many countries that routinely outperform the U.S. in elementary educational achievement spend only a fraction per student as compared to the U.S.

I agree that good teachers are one element of educational success. The corollary is the ability to fire bad teachers--quickly and with minimal fuss and bother. I do agree, however, that standardized testing and rote learning are meaningless. The former provides benchmarks whereby we can determine who is learning and who is not. It many not be perfect, but I defy you to suggest another way that is not hopelessly subjective and thus prone to manipulation. The latter provide the necessary foundation for "critical learning skills". My personal experience teaching at the high school and college level has convinced me that without mastery of basic facts and techniques that can only be learned through repetition and memorization, all of those higher critical functions are useless--garbage in, garbage out.

It is perhaps not coincidental that those countries whose school systems consistently outperform those in the U.S. rely heavily on these supposedly antiquated and useless techniques.

Finally, I will say that learning should be fun. I always found it to be, and in my own discipline I try to make the subject matter interesting and relevant. But never forget that a large part of learning is just hard work. Not everything you need to learn will be interesting, or seem particularly useful in your daily life at the time you learn it. As you grow in wisdom and maturity, as you begin to make the connections between subject areas, as you being to do real work in the real world, then the value of that knowledge and those skills will become apparent. Finally, a lot of real world work is dull, repetitious, boring and apparently futile. Get used to it in grade school, because it only gets worse.

Stuart Koehl| 3.7.10 @ 9:08AM

In paragraph two, line three above, "I do agree" should read, "I do NOT agree".

Please forgive this error made in haste.

TennesseeVolunteer| 3.5.10 @ 8:21AM

My wife and I have worked for Catholic schools and universities for over 30 years. The philosophy of Catholic churches and schools is that you go where you are needed. My parish in Mt. Healthy, Ohio closed its school last year because there just aren't the demographics for a school in that small town anymore. While sad, it was not regrettable. Why would you keep funding something where there is no population to sustain it? A lot of these schools and Churches were started when there were horse and buggies!
I worked for the Christian Brothers for 15 years and they have always had the same philosophy, you educate where you are needed and can sustain the school. Makes perfect sense to me.
My wife is the President of a Catholic elementary and secondary school. She has pioneered laptop education with the Apple Lighthouse program, sits on Apples educational board and built the first Apple Cybrary in the country...AND THE DIOCESE DID NOT PAY ONE THIN DIME FOR IT!
You have good Catholic schools, and not so good Catholic schools. Her school has a waiting list even thought the tuition is necessarily high and her financial aid budget is not as much as she would like (she did raise 10 Million for endowment two years ago for this purpose).
She has proven that people will go for quality even when it hurts. Most of her new demand for places in the school is from public school parents who have given up on the local public schools.
In our city, we have 10 Catholic schools that have been resurrected to educate the poor, most of whom pay no tuition. The only downside is that the diocese has cut back on its support of local parish schools and now they are beginning to suffer. (A little bit of taking individual parish monies and then spreading it aroound to other places to the detriment of the local parish school because they are not keeping up).
Stuart, there is not a unlimited pool of money. We have to be good stewards with what God has given us. You can pile on Catholics all you want. You can try to require abortion in all those Catholic hospitals too. It ain't gonna happen. We Catholics know all too well the imperfection of our Church, our leaders and ourselves. We don't go to the government for handouts. We do our best to take care of our own and as many of yours as we can.
Even our Church is going through a spasm of change and contraction but I believe new growth will come out of it. There are several orders of Nuns who are going back to the old fashioned way of being a Nun and their recruitment is exploding. There are groups like the Lasallian youth who are going to teach in tough areas after their Catholic college education. The Catholic college I went to, and worked at for fifteen years, has the highest percentage of minority students of any private college in Tennessee. We also enrolled the first African American student in our city, (before any public school) except for the historically black college that has barely kept its doors open, mostly with federal largesse.
Stuart, we have much to do and are doing it. We aren't sitting at our computer screen telling you what to do. We are out there doing all we can.

Stuart Koehl| 3.7.10 @ 9:20AM

My dear volunteer,

I do not pile on Catholics, being one myself. I merely report what I observe. As a Greek Catholic, the total budget of my eparchy (diocese), covering the entire East Coast from Maine to Florida, is smaller than that of many Roman Catholic parishes. We pinch pennies, but I also know that the faithful do not put in the collection box anything approaching what they could without incurring particular hardship.

When I look at RC parishes, I see an abundance of riches mostly frittered away. My parish has one paid, full-time employee: the pastor. We have two other priests (one married with children) who support themselves with outside work. There is a part-time secretary who answers phones and helps with the mail. Everything else is done by volunteers without pay (and often with substantial out of pocket expenses). In contrast, most RC parishes have a plethora of paid "ministers"--music, religious education, outreach, etc., as well as paid clerical and maintenance support. No wonder priests gripe about money. On the other hand, be honest--how many people in your parish plop a dollar bill in the plate and think they've done their part. In short, I don't think that we HAVE been good stewards of what we have been given. Blame begins with the bishops and works its way down. There's enough to go around, so don't be shy.

Regarding your jibe about wanting abortions in Catholic hospitals, just where did you get that? If you want to see what I believe about abortion, just check the comments in the reader's mail section for this day.

Judging, however, by your pained response to my comments--all of which I can validate and document--I would guess I hit a nerve. Catholics need to stop worrying what other people will think about the Church if we speak honestly about it in public. That's the only way that true reform and renewal will take place. I've seen what happens when people worry more about appearances than substance within my own particular Church.

Tim| 3.5.10 @ 8:33AM

Tuition Tax Credits would seem the way to go ,where parents and donators could fund The Catholic School Choice.

Stuart Koehl| 3.7.10 @ 9:22AM

As with higher education, in primary and secondary education funds should attach to the student, and not to the institution. If you get a government loan or scholarship, nobody tells you which college you must attend in order to spend it. The same should go with elementary and secondary schools. Public, private, secular or religious, parents should be able to choose how their children are educated.

Northern Rebel| 3.5.10 @ 9:42AM

I am not a catholic, but I respect catholic schools, because they actually teach values along with math, science, and english.

Public schools are too busy showing Algore's fictional movie, rather than teach children what is important.

My youngest daughter was taught "whole language" (memorization) rather than phonics in public schools, and has suffered and struggled to read, even now in college. I had to teach her to read, because public school failed.

However, she knew which animal was on the endangered species list!

I'm grateful she graduated before they started singing love songs to Obama.

Public education is the equivalent of the post office. If both were privatized our country would be better for it.

Ted| 3.5.10 @ 10:07AM

Public schools, teachers unions, and their political friends are engaging in continuing their monopoly. I find it interesting that no one objects to Pell Grants, which are attached to the student and can be used at any college. However, there are howls when we try to attach money to the child at the elementary and high school levels (like they do in some European countries) for the students to use at any school they wish to attend.

Sean| 3.5.10 @ 11:07AM

Here is a little comparison of a Catholic school versus a public school.

California Catholic elementary/junior high in a violent gang area.
1st-8th grade: 240 students
faculty and staff: 15
Classroom environment: orderly

Texas suburban junior high
6th-8th grade: 680 students
faculty and staff: 95 not counting the bloated district office and bus drivers.
Classroom environment: disorderly

Sheila| 3.5.10 @ 11:11AM

Most comments, it seems to me, presuppose that the education of children is not primarily the responsibility of the parents - a premise I utterly reject. While Ms. Biddle correctly notes that purportedly teaching children American values was one justification for establishing public education, she neglects to elaborate that Horace Mann and John Dewey, those godfathers of American public education, also openly wrote and spoke of training servants of the state. To present Catholic schools as a cure-all ignores that traditional reasons for their success - the devoted, low-cost nuns as teachers, the common values and accepted disciplinary practices, the ability to deny entry or to remove excessively unruly students - no longer exist. An old friend of mine - huge Obama supporter, abortion supporter, and open atheist - sent her child to Catholic schools to avoid the worst of the gangs and behavioral excesses of public schools. While I cannot speak to the quality of the child's education, certainly any traditional Catholic values - even if they were transmitted - were utterly unsupported by the parents. To subsidize the cost circumvents the whole of human experience: that for which we sacrifice most we value most. Private education costs are painful to bear - that I can speak to directly - but the results can be priceless IF the parents are truly seeking both academic and moral values and are willing to sacrifice accordingly. This country was settled by primarily God-fearing people who, just as soon as they had a sufficient number of students - voluntarily pooled their money to pay for a schoolteacher. Modern taxation and the public school bureaucracy is not in any way equivalent. On what grounds should childless couples pay the same taxes that a multiple-child family does? Why should the retired have to continue to pay education taxes long after their children have left public school? Those parents who willingly farm out their offspring to others - for reading, math, civics, and sexual education - have ceded parental authority to the state. Presuming that adding public monies - forcibly confiscated by the power of the state - to Catholic or any other private or semi-private educational institution - would not further extend the public problems is foolish at best. Public schools fail because parents who choose public education fail - they refuse one of their most basic responsibilities for their children: to raise them up in the way they should go.

RiShawn Biddle| 3.5.10 @ 8:17PM

That's Mr. Biddle, to you. But thanks for commenting.

jd| 3.5.10 @ 11:14AM

I am a product of both Catholic and public schools, but the only schools I have sent my kids to have been Catholic schools. By far, they are the best choice for any parent to make. Not only do they educate with less money per pupil then the public schools, but they offer a far superior academic education. They always top the charts when it comes to standardized testing and graduation rates. Combining that with the teaching of values, morality and public service, it is a financial sacrifice that I am only too happy to make. Most parents that I know of that send their kids to Catholic schools receive some form of financial help. I think it is deplorable that inner city black children will be denied such choices when it comes to education. That they are political pawns of the Democratic party is something that the average black family fails to comprehend.

Goodeye| 3.6.10 @ 3:55AM

I agree wholeheartedly with you. I attended both public and Catholic schools. Although I never had children, my sister and her husband struggled and sacrificed to put their five children through Catholic schools, while stilll paying taxes to fund the failing public schools. My sister received some financial aid and my parents helped with the tuition but my sister participated at every fund raising event and did yard duty, etc. to help fund her children's education. The Catholic schools should be used as a model for all schools. Discipline and parental involvement are the keys to their success. When a parent is making a direct, substantial financial investment in their children's education, they tend to not allow it to go to waste.

Ken| 3.5.10 @ 11:30AM

I have experienced Catholic School Education as a member of a diocesan level school board. The role was consultative but illuminating. The article everyone is commenting on fails to articulate an elephant in the room. Secularists do not want school children to be surrounded by people who hold certain creeds and values sacred. The intent of those who argue against vouchers for Catholic or other parochial schools is to prevent this source of passing on such values from surviving. It's really nothing more than that.

I know, I know... you are thinking "this guy must be one of those kooks who breathes in the Relativism stuff and sees it all around him." Well, it is all around me and you too!

The LaSalle orders are superb in their mission and yes, nuns are filling up expanding houses in the mid-west. But the key is what Tennesee Volunteer writes: "We don't go to the government for handouts. We do our best to take care of our own and as many of yours as we can."

That's not true. Somewhere on a dispersal accounting sheet, you have taken some money from the government. And they are coming to extract a pound of flesh. Anyone who doesn't recognize this is not connecting the dots with all the talk about NCLB and RTT grants.

At a NCEA conference I listened to a "consultant" tell Catholic School Administrators how to access their share of "stimulus" money. They were in rapt attention. So was the crowd yelling "Crucify Him."

Wake up folks. Close the Department of Education before it consumes you.

Northern Rebel| 3.5.10 @ 11:48AM

It's interesting to note that the Constitution of The United States of America, says nothing about government involvement in the education of our children.

I think they forsaw what has become reality:
Government using schools as a way of indoctrination, rather than education. I think they also suspected that it would become the bloated bureaucracy it now is, and become a tool for misuse. (Can you say teacher's union?)

Privatizing education would only benefit children, and public schools, the Post Office, and everything else run by government, would die on the vine of competition.

BTW:
I reread the constitution, and it says nothing about health care either!

HUH!

Liberal Reader| 3.5.10 @ 2:18PM

Northern Rebel --

Your post represents an excellent teaching moment.

The idea that the absence of specific mention of education in the Constitution offers ANY evidence that the Founders did not intend the government to be involved in education is simply false.

Indeed, the Founders -- to a man -- believed that education was one of the PRIMARY roles of government. I urge you to read some history. For starters, read a good biography of Jefferson, perhaps the founder most hostile to government power. Jefferson was a strong propenent of publicly funded FREE education, as was Thomas Paine, another hero of the know-nothings now masquerading as partisans of the Constitution.

Reading your post it seems pretty clear to me you know little about education.

While any schmuck can find anecdotes here and there of abuses in the school system, what he cannot do is sensibly weigh the numbers: in a country of over 300 million, the notion that some anecdotes would not be discoverable is absurd.

I agree that school systems do stupid things, but simply scrapping the idea of public education would be catastrophically foolish.

Your proposal that we privatize education, while it sounds good, is as ignorant of history as the rest of your comments. The very education system the Founders did NOT want was privatized.

The major problem with public education is that the amount we invest in it as a percentage of GDP has steadily decreased since Ronald Reagan took office to free us all of the horrible burdens of good governance and public institutions.

We need massive spending increases on education if we hope to compete with the Indians and the Chinese, and I can tell you for absolute certain: they are not farming education out to the lowest bidder.

Ken| 3.5.10 @ 3:13PM

With the stimulus add-ons, tax payers will pay $667 billion in 2010-11 to educate 50 million K-12 students in public schools. That's over $12,000 per student per year. Since the article all these comments amends is titled "Saving Catholic Schools" it should be noted that the range of yearly tuition for K-8 parish schools is $2500 - $5000 depending on the region of the USA you're in.

Now, I'm in that stupid schmuck category too, but not so dumb that I can't see that Catholics, even though their schools close because -- let's postulate here -- because too much money is taken from the pie and wasted in pubic schooling?

Is that a possibility "Liberal Reader" ?

Liberal Reader| 3.5.10 @ 4:02PM

Ken --

The raw numbers actually don't tell you all that much. In a country as large and populated as the United States, I'm actually surprised the numbers even now are so low.

Education is one of the central functions of human culture.

In the decades between the 20s and the 70s the U.S. had a public education system that was they envy of the world.

The difference between then and now is -- in fact -- about investment. In those days, we simply invested more of our GDP in education.

Our society was not mobbed by clamorous anti-establishmentarians -- from the right or the left -- who wanted to tear down every institution out of resentment and greed.

The U.S. still has the best university system in the world ( a function of massive investment), although conservatives across the country are doing their best to pull them down into the same squalors that have captivated the grade schools.

Ken| 3.5.10 @ 5:14PM

This is beginning to sound like Paul Ryan and Obama last Thursday. Well, at least you get to play President. But you really need to let facts get in the way sometime. Maybe you can use this weekend to advantage with that.

victor| 3.6.10 @ 4:25PM

Ken:
"But you really need to let facts get in the way sometime."

Facts? Really? Facts?

Liberal Copy Reader doesn't let facts get in the way of a good old fashioned pror/lib/soc tirade.
Facts are garlic to liberal vampires.
Vampires, of course, suck the life-blod out of us and society.

To quote Liberal Copy Reader:
"The U.S. still has the best university system in the world".

It must be if they teach college courses and remedial high school courses at the same time and to the same students.
70% of state funded schools have remedial education for "college" ready students.
This is from 1983, but don't think it has changed any.
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDoc...../fe/c6.pdf

Today:
http://www.insidehighered.com/.....california

Troll Watch| 3.5.10 @ 5:16PM

Our educational system is being destroyed by a subsidiary of the Democratic Party. We spend more than twice as much in constant dollars since 1985 and get nothing for it. The Liberal Reader likes the system because she is a shallow ideologue and likes the way government schools indoctrinate. If we care what the little ones are learning then we'll try using free market approach where the parents are the customer, not the Democratic Party.

Liberal Reader| 3.5.10 @ 8:01PM

I'm not sure what you mean by "we get nothing for it."

Do you have any facts to back that up?

Indeed, we could be doing much better. We SHOULD be doing much better. It's utterly shameful that people sit around murmuring masturbative and flacculent and cynical nonsense about the public schools.

Ours were once the BEST in the world and could be again.

It would require massive reform and massive increases in spending.

It is true, and Obama has joined conservatives in arguing, that the grip of the teachers unions is becoming poisonous.

But this resigned collective shrug on the part of you "conservatives" is utterly contemptible!

Get some balls!

Demand EXCELLENCE of your schools, no matter what the cost or sacrifice.

You'll have something you can be proud of -- something other than the bitter taste of resentment that's left over after you've done all your ceaseless and womanish whining.

Troll Watch| 3.5.10 @ 10:41PM

Turning schools into brainwashing camps is contemptible. Obama is part of the problem, not part of the solution. He is a liar and his words don't mean anything to me. None of this happened by accident. Blaming problems on money when the money has went up with no results is part of the problem. There is nobody to work with on the left. They use money to buy off their friends and hurt their enemies. They have sold out to teacher's unions and don't care about students. The Liberal Reader is a phony who dissimulates at every turn. The left is a cancer and is not sustainable. It needs to be eliminated. It kills everything it touches.

Liberal Reader| 3.5.10 @ 11:21PM

Troll --

Among your other absurdities, you write: "The left is a cancer and is not sustainable. It needs to be eliminated."

Aside from the creepy undertone, what you're saying here is illogical for at least two reasons.

An unsustainable cancer is hardly worth worrying about; if it's unsustainable, there's no reason to eliminate it.

You call me a liar. This is easier than making an argument.

You are a child molester. You are a goat fucker.

How do I know?

Well, like you, I'm now just making stuff up, relieving myself of the terrible burden of thinking. Now that I try it, I can see why you like it, after all.

But you know what? I'm bored. Twenty seconds of fun. But now I'm bored. So have a nice day, troll watch. Watch an extra hour of Fox News for me!

Goodeye| 3.6.10 @ 4:05AM

I had a logic teacher who told me that, in a debate, if you lose your temper and start yelling, you've lost your argument, you've lost the debate. I believe the same is true when a person resorts to obscenities.

Troll Watch| 3.6.10 @ 2:34PM

Wow. This was too easy. The Liberal Reader seems a bit unhinged. I have seen the articles about progressivism being a mental disease and have never paid them much mind. I am coming around to the idea. Maybe she should give up politics for a while. Things are going to get much worse for her and she can't seem to handle the truth. I maintain she is a liar with simple-minded demagogic tricks. I am sure they are very effective with her half witted friends but nobody here is buying.

By the way when the cancer kills the patient, it dies with the patient. It grows and steals from the productive parts of the body but is really not sustainable. Progressivism is like that. Our only hope is to excise it from our system before it spreads into too many critical parts of our body. If a cancer or a liberal could think, I am sure they wouldn't like this process. We need to do it to survive. A sign of health would be to take back the teaching function from progressives and return it to its better past. Private Catholic schools provide a good model for how we might do that. Progressives shouldn't be trusted around children.

maverick muse| 3.6.10 @ 3:47PM

Liberal Reader| 3.5.10 @ 8:01PM

"I'm not sure what you mean by 'we get nothing for it.' Do you have any facts to back that up?"

The nation's rate of illiteracy in high school graduates added to the nation's drop-out rate.

Margie| 3.7.10 @ 5:26PM

Point of interest: LibRead (and other Leftist posters) always demand "the facts" and "proof". Constantly. When in reality~they could care LESS for facts. Anyway, the facts are all around them.
Their single-minded agendas are all that really matter to them.
But hanging with conservatives is still a good thing, I always say!

jd| 3.6.10 @ 5:54PM

Liberalreader,

Archive the American Spectator regarding public education funding versus private. There is a reason why the university system in the US is still tops in the world but it explains beautifully what has happened to the state of public education from elementary through high school. I suggest you read it. It will explain why all the money thrown at public education over the years has done nothing to improve the education of students.

Northern Rebel| 3.5.10 @ 3:10PM

I don't consider the Federalist papers anecdotes.

To hell with your massive spending increases. There is nothing government can do, that the free market can't do better.

Go mail a letter, if your skeptical. UPS would do it twice as efficient, for half the price.

To hell with your massive spending increases, sir.

Liberal Reader| 3.5.10 @ 3:58PM

The idea that there is nothing the government can do that the free market can't do better flies in the face of ALL American history. You're a shallow ideologue, and like all such, you really don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Margie| 3.6.10 @ 2:59PM

Of course and as usual, just the opposite of what you say is true.
Dejavu!

victor| 3.6.10 @ 3:23PM

Copy Reader:
"The idea that there is nothing the government can do that the free market can't do better flies in the face of ALL American history."

Your president said it best
"'UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It's the Post Office having problems"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqUmuZnmf7A

How did Art Linkletter put it?
Kids say the darndest things?

UPS and Fedex are booming, while the Postal office has to keep raising rates and cutting services.
For the last several months we have been getting our mail only five days a week.
Some weeks it's Wednesday, some it is Thursday, a lot it is Saturday. Today being no exception.

Stem cell research is another example.
Government is still pushing embryonic stem cell research and getting nowhere fats, while private research has come up with over a hundred therapies involving non-lethal stem cells, i.e. adult cells, retinal cells, blood cells, skin cells and bone marrow cells.

There are more, but even you should get the picture, eh?

Margie| 3.6.10 @ 8:19PM

Liberal Reader will not engage you because he has met his opposition match.

John2| 3.5.10 @ 5:03PM

Dear Liberal Reader,

Thank you for:
"...conservatives across the country are doing their best to pull (universities) down into the same squalors that have captivated the grade schools. "

Surely you don't think 'conservatives' are the ones doing that. I hope it is just a typo.

opal| 3.5.10 @ 5:42PM

One book-Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Gatto.

We need no more money WASTED on the public school system. We need no more indoctrination for the children. Have you ever read John Dewey? He acknowledged that children who grew up on farms were more knowledgeable, attentive, respectful, diligent and capable than children that were schooled all day long. But he decided that in order to further along the Brave New World, we as a society should seperate children from their family and Churches in order to make them dependent on the schools. He advocated for longer days and preschool at very early ages, not to make children smarter but to cut the ties to family as soon as possible. He had no interest in teaching children facts, or wisdom. His interest was only in teaching them submissiveness so that could be controlled and managed by the government and industry. He succeeded. That is why my children don't attend school and never will. Personally, I think the average child would be far more intelligent if they never went to school and were just given a library card. At least then they could truely think for themselves instead of regurgitating whatever the brainless teacher asked them to regurgitate...

And anyone who expects that getting government money is good for the Catholic school system is foolish. The government will expect its payback at some point in time. Probably in the manner that England is abstracting it from the Catholic school system....by refusing to allow any Catholic school in England to teach Catholic morality on abortion, the sanctity of marriage and the 6 and 9 commandments.

maverick muse| 3.6.10 @ 3:42PM

Brava!

Of course Socialism requires children to abort their familial ties and responsibilities, enabling indoctrination into neo-serfdom.

The entire system of taxation to support union run public education (originally established to freely distribute information) needs to be addressed. Contributing to the public cause is not really a choice -- home school families still pay their share of taxation providing public education as do people with no children. But what we demand from our contributions needs to be achieved. The present point for parents to get a "voucher" might avoid the English abstraction given the correct/necessary wording to avoid the pitfall of either double taxation or loss of integrity organizing curriculum.

buy sexy corsets| 3.6.10 @ 9:08AM

[b][ur]=http://www.yo2underwear.com]buy sexy corsets[/url][/b] are hot sale now,[b][ur]=http://www.yo2underwear.com/asian-style-tapestry-pink-corset-p-12.html]Asian Style Tapestry Pink Corset[/url][/b],only $47.89

Northern Rebel| 3.6.10 @ 10:50AM

Liberal reader:

Go back to the Daily Koz, or the Puff post, nobody here is swallowing your bullshit.

You are a fool, and a tool, and you're no longer eligible for any of my time.

Naive Jackass, or calculating jackass?
You make the call folks!

Clinton Lovell| 3.6.10 @ 2:19PM

Our literacy rate is now lower than Costa Rica. We now spend more than anyone and all we can say about our liberal public education system is that we spend (in inflation-adjusted dollars) more than 247% more today than we did in 1962 to get only 49% of our kids to graduate? When will we admit that liberalism is a complete failure and demand real accountability? When will we force educators to live up to their rhetoric? Oh, that's right; it's not rhetoric to socialists and communists because they believe that (someday) it will work if we just throw enough money at it and all believe that pigs will fly if you can load enough of them into a slingshot.

The idea behind public education has completely failed. It failed a long time ago. Who cares what the educators think? It's obvious these people are too STUPID and too INEPT to do the job, so why would we take their word for anything? We need to admit that only a real reform would work and a complete privatization of the system with real-time peer comparison-based market competition will work because that is the only thing that has ever really worked.

maverick muse| 3.6.10 @ 3:29PM

I understand that the parish sponsoring a school funds it through donations and tuition.

Why have American Catholics not united to specifically fund their financially ailing private schools in poverty areas? Funding from all of the nation's united dioceses would go a long way in sustaining educational opportunities for charity schools. Deep at the heart of this issue, why wouldn't the Catholic Church, from the Vatican, not sponsor the schools for poverty Catholic students?

There's a lot to be said for the independently responsible parish schools within each diocese. But it also shows who and what really matters.

"God bless the child who's got his own."

Ignazio| 3.6.10 @ 7:05PM

Regarding the author's idea of taking closed Catholic schools and turning them into charter schools:
a) a charter school is a public school. Just because it may be located in a former Catholic school building does not make it a "quasi-Catholic" school.
b) a charter school is not free to incorporate the Catholic faith, or any other faith - save secular humanism, into the instruction.
c) that said, charter schools are left to only "mimic" what they believe are the essentials of Catholic schools: a strict discipline and uniforms.
d) in time, the test score differential between regular public and charter schools narrows, as the novelty of the program wears off.
e) Catholic schools which impart the faith, recognize the parent as the primary educator - and stress this responsibility in the home - and encourage families and their children that there is a higher meaning to life and to take seriously one's vocation as a student, usually find that the development of the whole person (academic, spiritual, moral, etc.) works much better than a system that does not do this.

I say this as a product of Catholic schools and as a parent of several, school-age children currently enrolled in a Catholic school in Chicago.

Ed Crusader| 3.6.10 @ 7:24PM

Catholic's and non-catholics should know of this, for homeschool or as a basis for a HIGH standards, non-nonsense, rigorous education that is quite inexpensive to implement. For a school, only a few praeceptors needed, and that need only be a dedicated parent!
http://www.classicalliberalarts.com/

George F| 3.7.10 @ 12:34PM

This country's public school system fails at it's primary goal of educating children. I believe this is by design. Uneducated people are easier to lie to and control.

Those persons and groups who are against the betterment of our schools through the use of vouchers which makes for more competition do not have our citizens' best interests at heart.