Reasonable people can disagree over whether government should be paying for children to attend religious schools, but Florida’s latest ballot initiative reminds us how little reason plays a role in Blaine amendment debates. The Florida Education Association already has sued to remove Amendment 7 from the 2012 ballot, and it[Read More…]
Catholic Schools
Interest spiking in Indiana voucher program
by Kenya Woodard While a group of educators and clergy are challenging Indiana’s voucher law in court, more than 125 schools have submitted applications to participate in the program, according to The Associated Press. About 80 have been admitted to the program, considered one of the most sweeping voucher efforts in[Read More…]
Old arguments on capacity overlook new trends
Education Week has sustained the conversation about the capacity for private schools to meet the demand for school vouchers, and policy analyst Sara Mead has added an additional argument: As they’re currently devised, voucher and tax credit programs do little to increase the number of high-quality schools. These are, of[Read More…]
A slow-motion crisis quickens
The New York Times seems to be specializing in a new genre of news writing: The decline of the Roman Catholic school. Its most recent story comes from David Gonzalez, who crafts an opening that is equal parts heartbreaking and maddening as it focuses on the principal of St. Martin of[Read More…]
A crisis in slow-motion
From Samuel G. Freedman in The New York Times: Amid the grandeur and permanence of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, they marched down the aisle in pairs, the graduating seniors of Rice High School in Harlem. They were the 70th commencement class in the school’s history, the latest to bear the venerable[Read More…]
Superman didn’t come here
For two months, the leaders of Rice High School in Harlem, challenged by a six-figure operating deficit and a 44 percent enrollment decline over seven years, have searched for ways to keep the boys preparatory school open. This wasn’t just another financially struggling Catholic school. This was a financially struggling[Read More…]
Are school choice and collective bargaining politically exclusive?
Not according to the Catholic Conference of Ohio. The Catholic Church has long supported school choice measures, particularly for disadvantaged children. But it also has been historically aligned with the labor movement, as evident in this excerpted statement from the Ohio bishops on proposed legislative changes to their state’s collective bargaining laws[Read More…]
Taking the crucifix off the wall
In a story published today on Educationnext.org, Fordham fellow Peter Meyer explores the story of the Christian Brothers and the Catholic order’s entry into public education, specifically charter schooling, a story that Meyer describes as “a fascinating tale of grit and determination, about a committed group of Catholics who gave[Read More…]