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As we observe our annual Catholic Schools' Week celebration, it seems to me that our Catholic schools are more front and center in our nation's psyche than at any time in recent memory.
* Within the past few months, for example, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek magazine and our local papers have featured columns and news articles heralding the "Catholic school miracle" and the "parochial school mystique."
* Federal courts in Ohio and Wisconsin are wrestling with the constitutionality of school voucher programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee.
* Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City stated that our Catholic schools should be a model for reforming public schools and is helping to raise private funds to respond to Cardinal John O'Connor's proposal to accept into the Catholic schools of the Archdiocese 1,000 students from the lowest performing five percent of students in the public school system of New York City.
* Locally, the "A Better Choice" program has granted scholarships to 50 youngsters from public schools to attend Catholic or other non-public schools. Of the 52 scholarship recipients, 50 chose to attend our Catholic schools; and the sponsors of the scholarship program are monitoring closely the impact that such education has on the students' academic performance.
Why all this sudden interest in Catholic school education? There are a variety of reasons, but two, I believe, are particularly noteworthy. First, our Catholic schools offer an excellent academic program in an environment of respect for students, of discipline and of parental involvement that challenges each youngster to his or her potential.
Our Catholic schools operate on the principle that "no one who works hard will fail" and that to achieve academic success, there must be a partnership between students, teachers and parents or guardians. And when so many schools are failing, Catholic schools remind us of how to succeed in education.
Secondly, our Catholic schools offer a strong values-laden approach to education, where the spiritual dimension is an integral part of the curriculum. In a society that is increasingly violence-prone, amoral and materialistic, people at long last are beginning to appreciate what we in Catholic school education have known all along: namely, that you cannot prepare young people for life's challenges, careers, parenting and citizenship without giving them a foundation in values upon which to build.
While this renewed interest in Catholic school education can be found at all levels within our society, as evidenced by the steady growth in Catholic school enrollment over the past five years, after a period of sharp decline, there is a particular focus today on the extraordinary contribution Catholic schools are making in our blighted urban areas.
Sol Stern, a Jewish journalist writing in The Wall Street Journal, states that Catholic schools are doing a better job educating disadvantaged students because those schools emphasize academic courses, discipline and order. He offers an impressive number of statistics to support his case: Minority students from similarly desperate family circumstances are less likely to drop out of parochial high schools than public high schools and are more likely to go to college; they score higher on SATs and go on to earn 27 percent higher salaries.
Stern concludes that our Catholic schools are a valuable public resource "not just because they profoundly benefit the children who enroll in them but because they challenge the public schools' monopoly, constantly reminding us that the neediest kids are educable and that spending extravagant sums of money isn't the answer."
Mr. Stern's observations are supported by the wealthy non-Catholic benefactor, Charles Benenson, who guided both public school and Catholic school students as part of his "I have a dream" program offering college tuition to minority students who finish high school. In the public high school class he "adopted" in the South Bronx, only two of 38 children made it to college. In the Catholic school class, 20 out of 22 went to college.
"They were the same kids from the same families in the same housing projects," said Benenson. "In fact, sometimes one child went to a public school and a sibling went to Catholic school. We even gave money to the public school kids for tutoring and afterschool programs. It's just that the Catholic schools worked and the others didn't."
None of this comes as a thunderbolt from the blue. Thirty years of research, including an extensive study by the prestigious Rand Corporation, have consistently shown that Catholic schools in our urban areas outperform public schools, usually at a fraction of the cost. While this excess is due in large measure to the herculean efforts of the administrators and teachers in our Catholic schools, it does not necessarily constitute a criticism of public school educators, who are often equally dedicated and committed.
However, as Dr. Peter Holland, the superintendent of schools in Belmont, Massachusetts and the co-author of "Catholic Schools and the Common Good" suggests, it is difficult to create an inspirational ideology in a pluralistic society that is comparable to the sacramental rites, images of the saints and sense of spirituality that pervade the Catholic school.
Unfortunately, present public policy does not allow many low-and middle-income families to access a Catholic education for their children because the tuition rates in our Catholic schools, modest as they are in comparison to the per-pupil cost in public schools that are underwritten with governmental funds, are beyond the "family pocketbook."
That is why there is an increasing groundswell in support of various proposals that would provide parents with vouchers, tax credits or equity grants to allow them to choose their child's education. For example, education policy analyst John Chubb of the Brookings Institute has concluded that the best way to improve education in our country is through "a system of competition and choice." This finding is also supported by the 1993 report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Catholic schools chaired by former Governor Hugh Carey and with Dr. Seymour Lachman of the City University of New York as Vice Chair.
As we look to the future of our children, then, especially those in our urban areas, it is patently clear that it makes eminent sense, both academically and fiscally, to reconsider a failed public policy that refuses to consider governmental assistance in some form to parents who want to choose schools for their children's education: schools with a proven track record of academic excellence, of providing sound moral education, of calling youngsters to a life of service and love and of emphasizing self-restraint and personal responsibility -- in short, schools whose main purpose is, as one author put it, "the architecture of the soul."
Our Catholic grammar and high schools are precisely such educational institutions. I urge all Catholics and all who are concerned about our society's future, therefore, to contact our Governor and state legislators and to urge them to have the vision and the political courage to make school choice for both public and non-public schools the educational policy in our Empire State.
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