The annual release of state test results in New York State saw rising scores across the board — as well as debate about what, exactly, that meant. But for a half-dozen inner-city Catholic schools, the results brought some unequivocal good news: Their students' gains outpaced not only their public-school peers, but also the city's charter schools, which are being lauded for outsize gains.

Collectively, the Partnership Schools increased student proficiency rates by 16 percentage points in language arts and 13 percentage points in math. Where they once trailed statewide averages in student achievement, they now surpass them.

Gains in a group of inner-city New York Catholic outpaced even high-performing charter schools. Source: Partnership Schools

The Partnership for Inner-City Education is part of the national Catholic school renaissance.

The proliferation of school choice programs, the growth of new organizations devoted to academic excellence in Catholic education, and the pressures created by what partnership superintendent Kathleen Porter-Magee calls a healthy fear of closure have prompted a growing number of Catholic schools around the country to explore new approaches to academic improvement and rediscover their calling to serve disadvantaged students.

An agreement reached in fall 2013 allowed the partnership to take over academic operations for six schools in Harlem and the Bronx. They serve about 2,100 students in grades Pre-K-8, 80 percent of whom qualify for federal lunch programs. Some 72 percent of their students qualify for financial aid, which Jill Kafka, the partnership's executive director, said is provided through roughly $3 million in privately funded scholarships.

Catholic schools' efforts to improve education of low-income students have a champion in Pope Francis, who visited one of the partnership schools — the 124-year-old Our Lady Queen of Angels — last fall.

Writing in Flypaper, Porter-Magee notes it wasn't long ago that Catholic schools were widely cited as a source of hope in urban education. (more…)

Greeley

Editor’s note: Among many other things, Father Andrew Greeley, who passed away last week, was a champion of Catholic schools. According to the New York Times obituary, “His research debunked the received view at the time that Catholics had low college attendance rates. He found instead that white Catholics earned bachelor’s degrees and pursued advanced degrees at higher rates than other whites, and he attributed their success to the quality of education in parochial schools, a controversial assertion in a time of public school ascendancy.” As John E. Coons writes in this post, the school choice movement also considered him one of its own.

Andrew Greeley was a friend and a puzzle. We first met in 1978 at a conference of the National Catholic Educational Association. James Coleman - that other splendid Chicago sociologist - had written the introduction to a new book of Steve Sugarman’s and myself; it was about school choice, and Coleman thought Andy and we should connect. Sporadically, over the next 30 years we enjoyed a rather lively reciprocity.

I had known Greeley’s work on Catholic schools and their role in the larger civic order. His 60’s book with Peter Rossi - "The Education of Catholic Americans" - was suggestive to anyone hoping to liberate the inner-city child from a public system that only helped secure his permanent dependence. Sugarman, William Clune, and I took added confidence in arguing (1968, 1970) that any constitutional solution to our warped and irrational distribution of support among public schools not foreclose the state’s assistance to families to make their own choice - including private religious schools.

In respect of school choice Greeley contributed principally - but very effectively - as an intellectual source. His work in the 80’s with Michael Hout on the social picture of life in Catholic schools and their intellectual and social payoff was, I think, a constant resource for those more on the front line. He was emotionally committed to the institution and publicly regretted what he saw as the shameful and unnecessary closing of parish schools in Chicago. All choiceniks saw him as an ally. If not a spear carrier, he was the ideal quartermaster. His relative distance from politics preserved his academic stature, and – prudently - he stayed in the intellectual background and fed the troops. (more…)