'Crisis' with loss of Catholic schools

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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.