The poor black and Latino children attending Sacred Heart School
in the Columbia Heights section of Washington, D.C., probably
don’t know that Century Foundation Senior Fellow Richard
Kahlenberg
thinks their participation in the D.C. Opportunity
Scholarship and other voucher plans merely helps to make
“‘separate-but-equal’ work.” Chances are, they don’t even know
about the contention among progressives and even otherwise school
choice-supporting centrist Democrats that public funding of
parochial schools is somehow a plot among conservatives to cut
government spending and violates the Constitution’s ban against
the intermingling of church and state.
Nor should they or their parents care one way or
another. Although the District’s traditional public school system
is undergoing a much-needed overhaul led by Blackberry-touting
reform maven Michelle Rhee, just 49 percent of its high school
freshmen graduate four years later; a mere 12 percent of its
8th-graders in 2007 had reading skills rated “proficient” or
higher on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the
federal test of academic performance.
These families shouldn’t have to wait until Rhee turns
around the district’s performance in order to avail their
children of opportunities for high-quality academic instruction.
Their interest in improving the quality of education for their
children should outweigh concerns about the racial and ethnic
segregation that they choose. And their hard-earned tax dollars
shouldn’t remain captured by a district that isn’t delivering the
goods.
Centrist and progressive Democrat school reformers are
certainly familiar with these arguments. After all, they have
successfully used them in beating back efforts by teachers
unions, traditional school districts and some civil rights
activists (usually the kind that spend more time on manicured Ivy
League campuses than in gritty urban locales) to stamp out and
restrict the existence of public charter schools, the
publicly-funded-privately-operated entities that have become
their favored form of school choice. And they should keep it in
mind whenever vouchers (and similar tax credit programs) come up
for discussion. If nonprofit- and for-profit operators can be
trusted with public funding through charters, then school
vouchers used for Catholic and private schools shouldn’t be a
problem.
Vouchers and Catholic schools are once again in the
headlines thanks in part to an effort by U.S. Sen. Joseph
Lieberman this week to revive the D.C. Opportunity program after
it was all but shut down by Congressional Democrats last year.
Despite attempts by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and others
to quash discussion among Democrats about the program — which
helps 1,716 students attend Catholic and other private schools in
the District — calls for its revival continue to come not only
from conservative Republicans, but even from the likes of
disgraced former mayor Marion Barry, who launched his career as a
member of the local school board. A similar plan may be
considered in Illinois thanks to the decision by controversial
state Sen. James Meeks to reverse his past opposition to
vouchers.
It also comes as the nation’s Catholic school systems, no
longer able to count on nearly-free labor from clergy and lacking
the taxing power granted to traditional school districts for
financing their (equally-unsustainable) teacher compensation
packages, continue their secular decline. Just yesterday,
Baltimore’s archdiocesan school system announced
that it would close 13 of its 80 school districts — nearly
all of them in the most-impoverished inner city areas. The fact
that Mob Town has just 34 charter schools — and that Maryland is
one of the most-restrictive states for starting charters — means
that 2,152 soon-to-be former Catholic school students have even
fewer options for high-quality instruction. This has Thomas B.
Fordham Institute scholar
Andy Smarick wishing that “we could give a little attention
to preserving the high-performing, high-poverty private schools
that are disappearing before our eyes.”
Certainly the school reform movement — especially centrist
Democrats — can claim stunning success in getting policymakers
and even parents to embrace their prescriptions of standardized
tests, stricter accountability measures, mayoral control of
school districts, and expansion of charter schools. Even
President Barack Obama has embraced reform through his $4.3
billion Race to the Top effort; the program has helped convince
legislators and governors in states such as California to turn
their back on their allies and eliminate restrictions on the
geographic and demographic growth of charters. But even as they
have spurred the creation of new charters, reformers are letting
dissipate the other choices for poor urban and rural families to
escape the worst traditional public education has to
offer.
The number of Catholic schools in the United States — 42
percent of which are located in big cities — has declined by 12
percent between the 1998-1999 and 2008-2009 school years,
according to the National Catholic Educational Association. But
it isn’t just diocesan and parish schools shutting down. Eleven
hundred sixty-two urban parochial schools shut their doors
between 2000 and 2006. The impact of these closures on urban poor
and even middle-class families cannot be underestimated,
especially given the success of parochial schools in improving
student academic achievement, stemming dropouts and even sparking
college completion. The average nine-year-old Catholic school
student scored 8 percent higher on the 2007 NAEP than his
counterpart in a traditional district; that gap remained constant
among middle-school and high school students tested.
It is especially problematic given that other school choice
options aren’t nearly as plentiful. Intra-district choice options
such as magnet schools — long touted by Kahlenberg and others as
the best solution over vouchers and charters — hardly exist.
When they do, these options usually end up being used by
middle-class households, who use their strong political
connections (and exploit ability tracking systems that serve as
the gateways into such schools) to assure seats for their own
children.
Charters — the more-preferable school choice option among
reformers — have generally proven to be better than magnets in
promoting choice and improving academic achievement; a study
released last March by the RAND Corporation shows that
children attending charters in Chicago and Florida are 7-15
percent more likely to attend college than those attending
traditional public schools. But, until recently, many states have
restricted the number and location of charter schools. And even
with Race to the Top, teachers unions and school districts have
assured that charters may not reach urban neighborhoods. Last
month, legislators in Alabama, at the behest of the National
Education Association affiliate there, rejected the latest effort
to allow the opening of charters.
None of this, of course, sways progressive critics of
vouchers (and ultimately, of private and parochial schools
altogether). This isn’t surprising. After all, Kahlenberg once
declared that “the purpose of public schools is not to
satisfy the individual preferences of parents.” But it doesn’t
explain why centrist Democrats such as former New America
Foundation scholar Sara Mead
thinks vouchers “just change where pupils are allocated among
existing schools.”
Certainly their discomfort with handing money over to
religious operators comes into play. But as pointed out by
Fordham in a 2008 report on reviving urban Catholic schools, the
federal government already pours $3 billion annually into
Catholic Charities alone. And don’t forget that school reformers
are more than happy to back charters, which are operated by
nonprofit and even for-profit organizations. Considering that as
much of the decline in the number of urban parochial schools is
related to the competition for instructors — fueled largely by
the dealmaking between school districts and teachers unions that
have made teaching the most-lucrative profession in the public
sector — a redistribution of wealth back to the urban parents
(who must pay for both private schools out of pocket and
traditional districts out of payroll withholding) wouldn’t seem
all that unfair.
There are efforts underway to preserve Catholic schools,
even if they aren’t exactly providing religious education. In
D.C., the Archdiocese of Washington has
spun off seven of its schools and converted them into
charters; a similar effort is likely to take place in
Indianapolis, where two schools are considering a conversion. But
in the process, the schools do end up losing some of the faith
and values that have helped make Catholic education successful in
the first place. To be sure, American public education has always
provided something similar to the religious instruction in
parochial schools in the form of civics (including pledging
allegiance to the flag); in fact, teaching students about
American values was one of the foremost reasons why public
schools were created. This is the
argument that may come to play in the next year
as Brookwood Presbyterian Church, a Columbus, Ohio church, sues
state officials after they rejected its efforts to sponsor a
charter school.
Given the success of charters, Centrist Democrat school
reformers can no longer argue against voucher plans. And if the
ultimate goal is to assure that every child, no matter their race
or wealth of their parents, has opportunities for high-quality
education, then preserving Catholic and other parochial and
private schools (and in turn, supporting voucher plans) is no
longer just an option.
