By Amy Fagan - About 300,000 elementary and high school students have been displaced by the closure of more than 1,300 Catholic schools since 1990, mostly in cities, and this "crisis" should be reversed by church leaders, the public, philanthropists and lawmakers, according to a report made public yesterday.
The report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute comes on the eve of next week's U.S. visit by Pope Benedict XVI, who will speak to hundreds of Catholic educators at the Catholic University of America on Thursday.
"With Pope Benedict about to arrive in Washington and New York, the nation's attention will focus briefly on the church and its key institutions," said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of Fordham Institute. "Now is a terrific time to recognize that a national treasure — and one of the greatest accomplishments of the Catholic Church in America — is perishing and to consider what, if anything, can be done about it."
The Rev. David O'Connell, CUA president, said earlier this week that the pope's speech may touch on Catholic urban schools having been forced to close due to financial pressures. And the issue will be the subject of a White House summit on inner-city children and religious schools, set for April 24.
Since 1999, a total of 1,267 Catholic schools have closed and 374 have opened, according to the National Catholic Educational Association. The number of Catholic elementary and high schools fell from 8,719 in the 1989-1990 school year to 7,378 in the current year, according to NCEA data.
According to Fordham researchers, the NCEA data translates into about 300,000 students who have been displaced from Catholic schools, at a cost to taxpayers of about $20 billion as public schools absorb the students. In an interview last month with The Washington Times, Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington predicted that this trend would continue without government vouchers, saying the church faced continued challenges to "sustain all of these schools, particularly in the poorest, urban areas."
As Catholic families increasingly moved to suburbs in the 1960s and '70s, urban Catholic schools increasingly began educating poor, non-Catholic students, the report noted. There were solid academic results, it argued, citing evidence like Andrew Greeley's 1982 findings, which showed achievement of minority students was higher in Catholic schools than in public schools.
Fordham's report noted several reasons for the current Catholic school struggle, however, including the declining number of priests, nuns and religious brothers, This has required Catholic schools to hire more outsiders at salary, which has caused tuition increases that "exceed the reach of many poor families."
But the report also highlighted areas of the country where Catholic schools are being revitalized. In Wichita, Kan., for example, church leaders embarked on a "vigorous" campaign asking parishioners to tithe higher percentages of their income. The result is that Catholic school tuition in Wichita is now free for Catholic children and very low for non-Catholics.
The report authors also argued that private-school vouchers "are no panacea" — noting that programs in Milwaukee and the District have not really helped the Catholic urban schools there and the Archdiocese of Washington is turning seven of its schools into public charter schools.
The report makes several recommendations. Among them, Catholic leaders should follow Wichita and start "a serious campaign" to ask parishioners to tithe and make Catholic education affordable — even free — for all Catholics, which could especially benefit recent Hispanic immigrants.
Philanthropists, parishioners and Catholic school supporters, meanwhile, should support networks of Catholic schools that operate independent of diocesan structure, since these have the potential to be "high growth," according to the report, while policy-makers should try to find new ways to funnel public money to struggling urban Catholic schools.
Finally, if closures are inescapable, the report recommends that the church should either convert those schools to charter schools or sell them at discount to high-quality charter networks.
Patty Weitzel-O'Neill, superintendent of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Washington, said many Catholic educators are busily discussing new ways of funding their schools, new partnerships and new ideas. "It's really actually an exciting time," she said. Contrary to the Fordham report, she said, the D.C. voucher program has actually been "extremely beneficial" to about 1,100 District students who are now in Catholic schools.
This is a key moment for the nation and the church to focus on American Catholic schools, Fordham leaders said.
"We certainly hope that the pope and the church as a whole takes aggressive leadership to address these challenges. ... and understands that it's not inevitable that the American Catholic schools need to decline," Mike Petrilli said.
As part of the study, Fordham also commissioned a survey of 800 adults. The majority of adults surveyed chose Catholic schools as the best to offer a disciplined learning environment and instill moral values, and public schools as the best to work with economically disadvantaged students.
About 66 percent of the adults surveyed held a favorable view of Catholic schools and 58 percent held a favorable view of the Catholic Church. Numbers were much higher among Catholics — 88 percent and 89 percent, respectively. Seventy percent of Catholics held a favorable view of the pope, while 42 percent of the general survey population held such a view.
Meanwhile, Catholic University senior Peter Osgood was chosen by CUA leaders yesterday as the student who will personally meet the pope next week.
Mr. Osgood won an essay contest in which he praised his own Catholic elementary school, writing, "I remember vividly how each school day began in prayer. It was here that we brought to mind those in need, gave thanks for our many gifts and asked for help in all of our challenges. This truly set the tone for our learning throughout the rest of the day."
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