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Catholic schools fall victim to charters, demand public bailout
The Archdiocese hopes for a government bailout in the form of vouchers. Ironically, Catholic school enrollment has declined 37 percent over the past decade in large part because of competition from publicly funded and privately managed charter schools.
Catholic schools fall victim to charters, demand public bailout
Today, Catholic school students, parents, alumni and teachers throughout greater Philadelphia found out that four high schools and 44 elementary schools would be shuttered or consolidated in another round of downsizing.
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia, however, is hoping for an all-too-worldly assist in the form of a government bailout: school vouchers. That means taxpayer money paying for private school tuition. As I noted in October, the Archdiocese has been a major supporter of legislation to create a voucher system in Pennsylvania.
“SB 1 will allow even more families a chance to get a Catholic education,” the Church wrote in a February 2011 email blast. “More students in our classrooms is good news for our schools; more students will help keep Catholic schools open.”
Ironically, experts say that Philly's Catholic school enrollment has declined 37 percent over the past decade in large part because of competition from booming publicly funded and privately managed charter schools. Charters and vouchers are two wings of the same “education reform” movement that seeks to turn an increasing share of public education dollars and public schools over to private management.
“Where charter schools are expanding, Catholic schools are dying,” education historian and reform critic Diane Ravitch — and a long-time admirer of Catholic education — told The New York Times. “But charter schools can’t do the same things. The Catholic schools have a well-established record of being effective, and they’re being replaced by schools that have no track record.”
The crisis of Catholic education appears to be the result of a decade of full-throttle education privatization and reorganization. As The New York Times points out, the very features that make Catholic schools so good at educating poor urban kids are the ones that education reformers oppose in public schools.
“When Ms. Ravitch assails the emphasis on standardized testing, particularly under the No Child Left Behind law, and when she exhorts schools to use a content-rich core curriculum and emphasize character and build ties to parents and neighborhoods, she is, without overtly saying so, extolling the essential traits of Catholic education.”
The New York Times steps way out on a limb by saying the traits Diane Ravitch identifies are somehow unique to Catholic schools. They are the essential traits of good schooling, particularly schools that see themselves rooted in community. Where I do agree is that the massive explosion in the number of schools but not necessarily the quality of schooling is the serious matter before Philadelphia and one clearly not being addressed. Two thirds of PA charters, according to a national study, do no better or significantly worse than the average District-managed school, compared to 50% nationally. There is nothing sacred or special simply because a school has "charter" in it's name.— Helen Gym
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