The 'Eliting' of the Common American Catholic School and the National Education Crisis

Abstract

Findings from a recent national assessment of the state of Catholic education show that Catholic schools are on the verge of becoming a system of proprietary schools that educate growing numbers of non-Catholics, children from the wealthiest strata of the society, and increasing numbers of children who do not consider themselves religious at all, Mr. Baker and Mr. Riordan assert. Over the past century, very few American institutions have survived the kinds of ups and downs that the American Catholic elementary and secondary schools have experienced. Like the family farm, the economically viable small town, and the orphanage, the Catholic school played an important role in the early 20th century, but like so many other 19th-century developments. by midcentury it was on the verge of extinction. However. Catholic schools have undergone a 180-degree reversal of fortune in recent years. In part, this change has come about as a result of the surprising role that Catholic schools have come to play in the national debate over the quality of education that has raged during the past 15 years. But the improved fortunes of Catholic schools stem mostly from changes that began in the 1970s and have quietly and steadily made of them something few would have predicted from their humble origins in the poor. immigrant, ethnic neighborhoods of the 19th century. Findings from a recent national assessment of the state of Catholic education show that Catholic schools are on the verge of becoming a system of proprietary schools that educate growing numbers of non-Catholics, children from the wealthiest strata of the society, and increasing numbers of children who do not consider themselves religious at all. In short, the old common Catholic school is fast becoming an elite private school in which indoctrination into the faith seems to be taking a back seat to academic preparation. And surprisingly, neither national leaders of Catholic education nor those who suggest that Catholic schools offer a model for fixing deficiencies in public schools have acknowledged this transformation and its implications both for the future of the nation's largest set of private schools and for the debate about educational quality in the nation. Our tale will no doubt strike various readers differently. For those who are primarily interested in the future of Catholic schools themselves, the newly uncovered national trends suggest that Catholic education may be on the verge of a major crisis of identity. The new breed of students attracted to Catholic schooling and other changes in faculty and tuition threaten the very core of the traditional mission: the education of the masses of Catholics. Furthermore, since the achievement advantage of Catholic schools relative to public schools is clearly and consistently limited to students who are economically disadvantaged, this march toward affluence could mean that the advantage that Catholic schools enjoy will diminish among regular students. For Catholic school educators, these trends should serve as a wake-up call for addressing the uncertain future of these For those readers interested in national education policy and reform, our tale will be a sobering one. Much caution is called for in extrapolating from studies of the effectiveness of Catholic schools to the problems facing public Like some institutional version of the mythical phoenix, by the early 1980s the once moribund Catholic schools had become the darlings of the political Right and of influential social scientists bent on saving public schools. Among the latter group, the Catholic school is held up as a sort of shining example of effective education for all children that, if used widely, could pull the public school system out of the educational doldrums. For example, extrapolating from the Catholic school experience has led to greater interest in school choice, in core academic curricula, and in school uniforms, to name a few issues. …

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