Catholic schools can't ignore trends in catechesis, finance: rising tuition costs threaten mission

National Catholic Reporter, March 27, 1998 by James Youniss

I am a member of a social science team that has been studying Catholic schools in order to suggest policy and aid planners. The comments that follow are designed to share insights that might be of broader interest.

I have learned that opinions about Catholic schools can be controversial, even when they are backed by empirical evidence. This, I believe, is due to a deep reservoir of respect for the schools, which have undergone a long struggle to prove their worth to outsiders and to survive in a climate of increasing costs and disadvantageous population dynamics. Hence, some observers tend to view anything less than total commitment to a certain image of the schools as an attack that weakens them.

I do not agree with this defensive posture. I believe that in order to shape sound policy, planners must take an honest look at the facts and the surrounding context in which the schools operate. It is to this end that the present comments are directed.

Elementary and secondary schools took shape in the mid-19th century when some bishops decided to create a duplicate Catholic structure for all the institUtions that the state provided. Charles Morris sees this as the driving force behind the expansion of the American Catholic church through the World War II era.

Another cause of growth was internal competition among immigrants. In many cities, groups of immigrants seeking to retain their respective ethnic identities established schools within their neighborhoods and parishes. If the Irish,' for example, had a school, then only blocks away the Germans or Poles wanted their own schools. When the bishops proclaimed in the 19th century that every pastor was obliged to establish a school, a dynamic was set in motion that resulted in a large and competing system that grew to parallel public schools.

It is generally agreed that the schools were successful in three specific respects. They helped create an adult population that was knowledgeable and loyal to the institutional church.. They developed generations of able adults who were steeped in a classical European academic tradition. And they socialized immigrant children into functional American citizens. These achievements were due to the commitment of parents and the dedication of women and men in religious orders who made Catholic education their vocation.

If there was any blot on this record, it was the doubt that some had about the quality of the schools, when, in the 1950s, some asked why this system of education had produced so few Catholic intellectual leaders. But shortly thereafter, the work of Fr. Andrew Greeley and others responded with data showing that academic achievement in these schools was at least as high or higher than achievement in public schools.

Reversing growth

The mid-1960s are the next point of focus. Around 1965, 13,000 schools. enrolled. 5.6 million students, constituting perhaps 30 percent of Catholic school-age children in some cities. These large numbers were made possible by a teaching staff Of 114,000 women and men religious.

But four elements appeared like lightning to stop and reverse the growth.

* The Second Vatican Council stimulated a new definition of Catholicism that loosened the tie between believers and reliance on the institutional church.

* The religious teachers whose sacrificial lives had enabled this system to thrive suddenly began leaving their congregations, bringing a new financial burden to the schools and abetting the growing confusion about relations with the institutional church.

* As racial integration in northern cities became a fact, Catholics who had populated urban ethnic neighborhoods for several generations began to move out to the suburbs, leaving parishes to their elderly parents.

* The Catholic population that had been historically confined to the working class made a great leap forward after World War II.

By the late 1960s, the Catholic population was college educated, ensconced in the professions and well-represented among the political and commercial leaders. Whatever the combination of factors, by 1970, school enrollment had shown a sharp decline that continued until quite recently. This decrease was exaggerated by Catholic couples having smaller families, but in actual terms, Catholic schools lost substantial market share.

It is not an exaggeration to say that a cloud of despair surrounded the schools as even strong advocates wondered aloud whether the schools could or should survive. In the midst of this self-doubt two unforeseen events brought the schools back into the spotlight and offered grounds for optimism.

Greeley's research on the quality of the schools received new support from the work of James Coleman and his sociologist colleagues. They reported that Catholic high school students were doing better academically than were their public school peers. This was especially true for inner-city, minority students who earned high achievement test scores, had low dropout rates, went to college in the majority and were considerably less prone to delinquent behavior.