Measuring Catholic school performance

Public Interest, Spring, 1997 by Neal Derek

Many scholars and commentators have recently noted the rising economic disparity between the well educated and the less educated in our country. Real wages for high-school dropouts have fallen substantially since 1980, and, given the changing nature of work in our economy, there is no reason to expect that the real wages of unskilled workers will rise significantly any time soon. If our cities continue to produce millions of young people who are not prepared for work, our cities will continue to be troubled places.

Voucher experiments

Many advocates of large-scale plans to provide public money for private schools through tuition vouchers may point to my study to support their position. However, I believe that my results do not speak directly to the potential consequences of such plans. My study demonstrates that the existing stock of Catholic schools manage to succeed in precisely the communities where public schools often fail. However, we have no idea how the quality of Catholic or other private schools might change if full-scale voucher plans dramatically increased the demand for their services. Can the Catholic schools of Chicago, New York, or other cities increase their enrollment tenfold and still maintain quality without spending more per student than public schools currently spend? I am inclined to believe the answer is yes. Though no data exist to support my hunch.

But many experiments are underway with positive results. In Ohio, the state assembly has recently taken control of the Cleveland city schools, which were plagued by mismanagement and ineffectiveness. The reform plan, imposed on Cleveland by the state, includes a small voucher experiment. Only low-income families are eligible for the program, and the amount of the vouchers depends on family income. The maximum voucher is $2,250, and participating families are required to pay between 10 percent and 25 percent of tuition costs in the schools they choose.

One statistic provides the most compelling evidence that this program is needed in Cleveland. While the program provides vouchers for roughly 1,700 children, more than 6,000 families applied for the program. These families obviously believe that the public schools in their neighborhood are not serving their children well; they are so firm in this belief that they are willing to pay part of the tuition if the state will simply help them gain access to private education for their children.

Similar programs have been proposed, but not yet adopted, in both New York City and the District of Columbia. Over the past several years, Cardinal John O'Connor has repeatedly offered to educate the lowest performing 5 percent of children in the New York public schools. The Cardinal is offering to educate these children for roughly $2,500 per student; the public schools currently spend more than twice this figure per student. (The offer has not yet been accepted.) Last spring, Representative Steve Gunderson, a Republican from Wisconsin, sponsored a bill to establish a small voucher program for low-income families in the District of Columbia. The measure was included in a larger bill that authorizes federal funds for the District. But President Clinton threatened a veto, and a group of Democratic senators filibustered the authorization bill, effectively killing the proposal.