Saving Catholic Schools
Religion & Liberty Online

Saving Catholic Schools

In many urban areas, maintaining Catholic schools and maintaining some semblance of educational choice are synonymous: the old Catholic schools represent the only alternatives to a big, clumsy, and often unsatisfactory public school district. The issue is especially poignant because the student populations served by these schools are frequently the most educationally challenging populations in the nation. Thus, proponents of school choice are dismayed at the continued shuttering of dozens of major-city Catholic schools across the country. The search for solutions—such as conversion to charter schools, highlighted in this recent story from Baltimore—continues.

A phenomenal new resource in this area is Saving America’s Urban Catholic Schools, just released by the Philanthropy Roundtable. The main purpose of the book is to guide philanthropists who want to assist, but it would be beneficial reading for anyone interested in education policy or involved in education as a teacher or administrator. It covers some of the same territory, and takes much the same perspective, as my 2009 CSTS volume, Catholic Education and the Promise of School Choice, but it delves more deeply into topics whose surface my analysis merely skimmed. Authors Stephanie Sarocki and Christopher Levenick persuasively show why this problem is urgent not only for Catholics but for all Americans, while they balance the portrayal of crisis with real-world examples of victory against long odds and concrete ideas for future improvement. Highly recommended.

Kevin Schmiesing

Kevin Schmiesing, Ph.D., is a research fellow for the research department at the Acton Institute. He is a frequent writer on Catholic social thought and economics, is the author of American Catholic Intellectuals, 1895-1955 (Edwin Mellen Press, 2002) and is most recently the author of Within the Market Strife: American Catholic Economic Thought from Rerum Novarum to Vatican II (Lexington Books, 2004). Dr. Schmiesing holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in history from Franciscan University ofSteubenville. Author of Within the Market Strife and American Catholic Intellectuals, 1895—1955 (2002), he serves as Book Review Editor for the Journal of Markets & Morality. He is also executive director of CatholicHistory.net.