My connection with Catholic education is long and deep. It includes growing up attending grades 1-5 at a Catholic school, watching my two daughters progress through the Catholic education system, supporting my first wife as she happily labored for a decade as a Catholic Kindergarten teacher and most recently three years spent serving on the School Board of a Catholic Elementary School.
Catholic schools took root in the United States in the early 1900’s when church officials, responding to anti-Catholic sentiment in the public schools, urged every parish to build its own school. Enrollments peaked in the early 1960s, when there were more than 5.2 million students attending Catholic schools.
Staffed by religious orders the schools quickly gained reputations for discipline and academic rigor with results that showed Catholic school students significantly outperforming public schools students in reading and math.
Most educators know that Catholic schools work and have worked for a long time. A variety of studies have all supported the conclusion that Catholic schools do a better job educating children, especially the poor and minority populations, than public schools. How do they do it?
Discipline and Rigor
There is a joke about a kid whose parents were so fed up with their son’s constant discipline problems in the public school that they finally said, ‘That’s it! It’s Catholic school for you.’ They sent him and were surprised when they didn’t get any calls about their son’s behavior from the school. ‘What’s up?’ the dad asked. ‘The nuns been boxin’ your ears?’ ‘No,’ says the kid. ‘They didn’t have to. When I got to school, I saw this guy hanging from a cross with nails in his hands and feet and I figured they meant business.’
The grain of truth behind that joke is that Catholic schools are very good at getting kids’ attention. Catholic schools stand out because they establish order and discipline in all things: students must do their homework, eat their lunch, maintain good posture, demonstrate modesty in dress and behavior and be kind to one another.
Those of us who attended Catholic schools learned quickly that there were no prizes given for just showing up – if we mispronounced a word we had to put a nickel in the “mission box” and recesses were spent practicing poor penmanship until it was perfect.
It was explained that all of us were there for the greater glory of God and the curriculum was designed to deliver a comprehensive vision of life that revealed to students the truth of their duties to God, to themselves, and their neighbors. To prepare them to be ‘better’ so they could play a productive role in society and in God’s plan.
The research paper Catholic Schools and the Common Good reported that Catholic Schools’ consistent approach to education, which focuses on academics inside a disciplined and ordered environment, was effective because it did not just rely on the teachers. It succeeded even when the teaching and the curriculum were “ordinary.” The authors wrote that Catholic schools —“manage simultaneously to achieve relatively high levels of student learning, distribute this learning more equitably with regard to race and class than in the public sector, and sustain higher levels of teacher commitment and student engagement.”
Dedicated teachers and staff
With an average salary three times less than their Public school counterparts, it is obvious that money is not the motivating factor driving Catholic school teachers and staff. Despite the large discrepancy in pay, Catholic school educators consistently report having greater job satisfaction than their Public school counterparts.
Anyone who has ever been a Catholic school teacher will tell you that it is more of a “calling” than a “job”. With smaller class sizes, Catholic school teachers are better able to address the individual needs of each child and maintain high expectations for their students. They operate in a culture of caring that includes engaged parents, committed teachers and knowledgeable leaders – all who are invested in providing a quality education that is focused on developing the unique talents of each person.
Parents also expect Catholic school educators to serve as moral role models for their children. The CARA Institute at Georgetown University confirmed that “strong moral values” is the top reason parents choose to send their child to a Catholic school. Many of the parents who choose a Catholic school education want their child’s education at school to mirror the loving and supportive relationships they experience at home.
Academic Results
Catholic school students achieve superior academic results compared to Public school students. Consider the following research statistics:
- On national tests, Catholic schools consistently outperform public and other private schools by as much as 20 percentage points.
- Over 99 percent of catholic school students graduate. ACT scores are in the top 25 percent nationally.
- Over 88 percent of high school students go on to college.
- Catholic Schools were ranked #1 in the percentage of graduates who actively participate in civic and community activities.
Catholic school students learn that excellence is a response to God’s blessings. Students learn so as to help others, and make a difference in the world around them. They operate with the philosophy espoused by Cardinal Mercier that “All knowledge is sterile which does not lead to action and end in charity.”
Safe Environment
Quality education only occurs when an environment is safe, stable and caring. Catholic schools are known for providing a nurturing and supportive environment that allows students to grow and prosper. They provide a community where each child is accepted, respected and given individual attention.
School Uniforms
Most students who attend Catholic schools are not fans of the parochial school uniforms that all students are required to wear. In fact, a favorite way to reward students is to give them permission for a “free dress” day.
Students may not like the old-fashioned look of the uniforms and the way they feel it suppresses their individuality, but each uniform serves to deliver these important messages to the school community:
- Every student is a child of God, made in His image and a treasure of great worth.
- Every student has value regardless of their race, sex, ethnicity, religious beliefs or socioeconomic status.
Catholic educators believed in the No Child Left Behind philosophy long before it became a Government program. The uniforms are a reminder that every student will be treated fairly and justly, that special privileges or advantages will not be extended to some students just because they have wealthy parents and can afford lots of stylish material things.
Commitment to Service
Catholic school students are taught that we are all brothers and sisters in the Lord, therefore, we have a responsibility to respond to the needs of others because we are all part of God’s family.
They recognize the signs of God’s love around them and are encouraged to become instruments of God’s grace in their own families, neighborhoods and the world around them by becoming actively involved in Service projects that make their communities a better place.
If Catholic schools are so good, why are they disappearing? What happened to a school system that at one time educated one of every eight American children? And did it quite well.
Despite all the positive benefits of a Catholic education, enrollment at Catholic schools continues to decline. According to the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA), more than half of the nation’s Catholic schools have closed since 1960 (12,893 down to 6,429) and enrollment has plummeted from 5.2 million to 2.3 million students. Only 508 inner-city elementary Catholic schools remain in the country.
The same Catholic Elementary school where my children went to school, where my wife taught, and where I served on the Advisory Board recently closed their doors for good after 110 years of providing quality education to the inner-city children of Nashua NH.
Serving as a member of the school Advisory Board during this tumultuous time provided me with a close-up view of the challenges that many Catholic schools are struggling with today.
Rising Costs
I read a story about two fathers who were picking up their kids from a Catholic school. Both fathers were graduates of the Catholic school system and they were discussing the lowered standards and increasing costs of today’s Catholic schools compared with the Catholic schools they experienced a generation ago. At the end of the conversation one father succinctly diagnosed the root cause of the problem with the remark “Nothing wrong with this place, that a busload of nuns wouldn’t solve.”
Catholic schools are caught in a vicious cycle – the operating costs of the schools are rising at the same time the number of students enrolling is declining – forcing parents to shoulder a greater percentage of the costs. Put simply, the rising cost of providing a Catholic education has made it more difficult for parents to meet those rising costs.
A big component of those rising costs has been the steep decline in the number of nuns who are available to provide their professional teaching services. The Catholic schools systems were originally built and run for several generations on the backs of these guardians of moral order and academic achievement.
The ranks of religious sisters serving in Catholic schools has declined 70 percent since 1965 (from 180,000 to 54,000) and the Catholic schools have had to replace nuns (who only received room and board at the convent and very small annual stipends) with more expensive lay people who receive health care and pension benefits.
That large loss of cheap labor (only 3.2 percent of the professionals at today’s Catholic schools are clergy or in religious orders) has resulted in soaring tuition costs at Catholic schools. The average annual tuition at Catholic elementary schools has climbed 69% over the last ten years to $3,673.
The tuition at the elementary school where I served was $5,550 at the time it closed and even at that price, cost cutting measures like combining classes had to be employed and major fundraisers were required during the year in order to balance the budget – further taxing the school community.
These high costs work to price out the low and middle-income children the Catholic schools were designed to serve and even though scholarships are often available, many families are afraid to even consider Catholic schools because of the sticker shock.
Decline in the number of practicing Catholics
One of the factors in the decision to send our children to Catholic Elementary school back in the 1990’s was the support and encouragement we received from our Catholic Parish. We were part of a vibrant Parish community that consisted of many young families.
Every year, the Parish pastor would welcome a representative from the local Catholic schools to speak to the community and promote their schools. The Parish encouraged families to choose Catholic schools by offering subsidies that would lower the cost of tuition for their parishioners.
Since that time, weekly church attendance among Catholics has steadily declined. According to the Pew Research Center only 24% of Catholics regularly attend church services. The clergy sex-abuse scandal, which cost the U.S. church about $3 billion in settlements helped drive some people away. Less money in the collection plate meant less money to subsidize school tuition.
Many of the Churches that were once a spawning ground for funneling the next generation of students into the Catholic Elementary schools are now primarily populated only by middle-aged and elderly parishioners and Pastors are now reluctant to become ardent cheerleaders for Catholic education.
Families have more School Choices
If you look objectively at the problem of the decline of Catholic schools, one can say that it is simply the market talking. Families are deciding to send their children to other schools.
The expansion of charter schools, which offer an alternative to traditional public schools and charge no tuition, have hurt Catholic schools. It is estimated that one in three students gained by charter schools comes at the expense of Catholic schools. It is difficult to compete with an acceptable school alternative that doesn’t cost anything.
Catholic schools are at a disadvantage because the market they play in is not equitable. District-run public schools have students assigned to them and receive government funding. Charter schools also receive public dollars. Urban Catholic schools must rely on tuition and donations. When low-income families choose from a range of options, Catholic schools that charge tuition are disadvantaged.
Private-school-choice programs like voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs could help remove the inequities if they were extended to parents who choose catholic schools for their children, but these programs haven’t yet been adopted by the state and local governments on a scale that would stem the tide of closures.
One additional factor is that the public schools in the suburbs are not like the failing public schools that Catholics tried to avoid in the cities. Families who fled the cities for the suburbs discovered very quickly that it was expensive to build new schools and that the suburban public schools in their new communities were not as bad as the urban public schools.
Crumbling Infrastructure
One of my assignments while serving on the School Advisory Board was the Buildings and Grounds sub-committee. This sub-committee was responsible for assessing the operation and safety of the 80 year old school building and would recommend maintenance and upgrade projects to address failing and neglected school infrastructure.
As you can imagine, an 80 year old building requires a lot of maintenance and a lot of unexpected things, like burst pipes inside the walls, can happen at any time. Due to the school deficit, however, there was no money in the budget that was allocated for building repairs. Money for emergency school repairs had to come from loans from Church/Diocese or by targeting specific fundraising activities.
This is a common problem with many Catholic schools as most of them were originally built in the early 1900’s and are not up to the standards of more modern Public and Private schools.
This reality puts Catholic schools at a disadvantage when it comes to student recruitment as parents compare the building and ground facilities of the various schools and find the Catholic school facilities lacking. During my tenure on the Board, we tried for three years to find funds to add new playground equipment and new signs that would improve the appearance of our school – but it was not to be.
Decentralized Operation
Catholic schools are not run as a monolithic corporation. The Catholic school “system” is actually a loose and decentralized confederation of 6,500 schools supported by 18,000 different parishes in more than 150 dioceses. Most schools operate independently with some oversight by the Diocese while other schools are directly operated by religious orders, totally outside the influence of the diocese.
Instead of a school system, they can be considered a system of schools. The local parishes have traditionally been responsible for the schools and they can feel change happening at the local, neighborhood level quite quickly. But it takes time for the huge and institutionally undemocratic “Church” to see the trends and react, and they are just starting now to develop new regional strategies to respond to them.
Because of the independent organizations of the schools there is little coordination and cooperation between them. Some Catholic schools are thriving, with healthy enrollment numbers and surplus money, yet those schools are reluctant to provide assistance or share resources with other struggling Catholic schools because those schools are viewed as competitors rather than partners in Catholic education.
This lack of coordination also fails to take advantage of the savings that could be achieved through economy of scales if all of the Catholic schools were to pool their resources for such things as collecting tuition, enrollment allocation, custodial contracts, building maintenance, health care bargaining and common marketing.
What the future has in store for Catholic schools is unknown, but it is likely to look much different than the past.
The new reality is that Catholic schools will have to become expert fundraisers and marketers and promoters and lobbyists to survive.
Where Catholic schools are growing, it’s often because of innovative ideas, voucher systems, and outreach programs that target immigrant communities. School officials hope that smart planning can save schools and they are trying to improve finances by closing underused schools, consolidating schools into regional centers of control and consulting lay expert talent in the areas of marketing, finance and building management.
My role in actively supporting Catholic education has come to an end but I am still rooting for their success as should all people in the nation because Catholic schools not only work, they are good for America.
Catholic schools have established a solid reputation for safety, academic standards and moral values and they have provided families with a quality alternative educational choice for more than 150 years. This has been supplied at a nominal cost to families and at no cost to taxpayers – reducing the overall community tax burden and alleviating overcrowding in the public schools..
Their continued decline would have negative implications for public schools as NCEA estimates Catholic schools are a form of subsidy to the nation that saves public schools approximately $21 billion a year in costs.
Even though it is wishful thinking and unlikely to ever happen – there is one thing I am hoping the future does have in store for Catholic schools – busloads of nuns.
Words to Live By... 
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