Catholic education: for those who can afford it or those who need it? - Column

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 10, 1997 by Joseph Claude Harris, Cornelius Riordan

Catholic schools have a deserved reputation for succeeding where others fail in educating the urban poor. When Cardinal John O'Connor a year ago said to the overcrowded New York public schools, "Give us your bottom 10 percent," his offer reflected a well-grounded confidence that the combination of discipline, academic seriousness and personal concern in Catholic schools would produce results.

Unfortunately, the Catholic school presence in the inner city may soon be a thing of the past. Rapidly escalating tuition charges threaten to price the urban poor out of the Catholic school market. If that happens, one of American Catholicism's most potent contributions to social justice will be diminished.

Thomas Bier, a Cleveland State University sociologist, studied patterns of migration from Cleveland to surrounding counties between 1988 and 1992. He concluded that Catholic families were moving to the suburbs in large numbers, in part because they didn't want to send their kids to the public schools and they couldn't afford the tuition at Catholic schools. The equivalent of the population of two parishes presently moves from urban Cleveland every year. Given such dismal demographics, Cleveland diocesan officials face considerable difficulty in maintaining the operation of existing urban schools.

Recently we presented papers at a Catholic school conference in Washington, both of which confirm that Bier's findings hold true on a national level. We documented increases in tuition charges and demonstrated their impact on the socioeconomic makeup of the Catholic school population. Together we showed that Catholic schools are serving an increasingly wealthy student population because only relatively affluent parents can pay the bills.

That Catholic school tuition increased between 1980 and 1993 should come as no surprise; the price of a pound of hamburger or a 747 airplane grew as well. Tuition in Catholic schools, however, has been rising at between two and three times the rate of inflation. Such increases put parents in a difficult spot as funds have to be taken from other family goals to make ends meet.

A look at the checkbook of an average Catholic family in 1980 with two children in a parish elementary school and one student in a secondary program reveals the increasing burden tuition charges place on household resources. In 1980 the average Catholic household made $21,265. Tuition charges for parish elementary schools that year averaged $490, while Catholic high schools normally charged $980. Our average family needed to spend $1,470, or 6.9 percent of their income, to send three children to Catholic schools for one year.

Now move the clock ahead 13 years and look again at the checkbook of a three-child family. Income doubled to an average of $41,429 in 1993. Tuition for two students in a parish elementary school now costs $1,591. Secondary school tuition averaged $3,220. That means the average 1993 family had to allocate $4,811, or 11.6 percent of their income, to send three children to Catholic schools. The fiscal burden -- defined as the proportion of income spent on Catholic schools -- increased by 60 percent over a 13-year period.

Since the price of Catholic secondary education increased by over 200 percent between 1980 and 1993, enrollment in these programs, based simply on the law of supply and demand, should have plummeted. While enrollment did drop, the percentage decrease did not parallel price increases. In recent years, Catholic secondary enrollment has been stabilized, in part, because the secondary school population in the United States has increased by 1.44 million. If Catholics constitute 21 percent of this group, as most estimates suggest, then the Catholic secondary population grew by 302,610.

Population growth is not the only reason, however, why Catholic high schools haven't lost enrollment as their prices have climbed. Their customer base has also shifted. Based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics, it is clear that Catholic schools have become significantly and dramatically more selective and less diverse in terms of socioeconomic status. The percentage of lowest quartile students has been cut in half, while the number of highest quartile students has doubled. Our schools, in other words, are serving a progressively more elite student population. The poor and working class are being squeezed out by rising cost.

That Catholic secondary schools attract students who can afford higher tuition should come as no surprise. Principals need to pay salaries and other bills, and tuition provides the only significant source of income. The present economic model functions about as well as can be expected. It follows that we can only modify the drift toward affluent households if we find new sources of revenue. Two strategies come to mind: Catholic educators must seriously pursue state and federal dollars, and principals and parents' boards must look seriously at raising income from the Catholic community itself.