She won’t have the chance to be New York’s senator, but Diane Ravitch has another job in mind for Caroline Kennedy. “She can save New York City’s Catholic schools, which are in the throes of a fiscal meltdown,” Diane writes in a smart op-ed in the NY Daily News.
The research on Catholic education is overwhelmingly positive. Children who attend Catholic schools get a superior academic education. They also get a strong foundation in social and moral values. The four-year graduation rate at Catholic high schools is 99.5%; 98% of the high school graduates enroll in college. Most of the Catholic schools serve students who are predominantly African-American and Hispanic. (And, we must remember, many of them enroll students who are not Catholic.)
Few people are better suited to ride to the rescue than Kennedy, Ravitch observes, noting Kennedy helped raise almost $240 million for the city’s public schools. “If the same amount had been raised for the city’s Catholic schools,” she notes, “not a single one of them would have to close.”
Does much ever come of these kinds of clever suggestions, besides some attention? It’s got a Michael-Pollan-for-Secretary-of-Agriculture feel to it.
And while I’m all for keeping as many Catholic schools open as possible, I’m also compelled to point out that when you adjust for student demographic characteristics, Catholic schools do not outperform, and often underperform, public schools.
I was not at all pleased with the way the media jackals contributed to the third Kennedy assassination. I believe Caroline would have made an excellent US Senator for the state of New York.
While Diane’s suggestion has great merit, I cannot imagine too many circumstances under which Kennedy would want to assume additional public responsibilities, at least for the immediate future.
Point taken, Paul, but that attention is a form of currency. Diane (and William McGurn’s piece, which I blogged on the other day) are important reminders of what’s at stake. It’s surprising how little attention it’s getting. LAst night I was in Washington at an Ed Sector discussion about Jay Mathews book on KIPP. This is no know on KIPP, but much of the discussion was about how difficult it’s been for them to scale up to 66 schools. KIPP wins justifiable kudos for its work with low-income minority kids, but Catholic schools have been doing the same thing very well, for a very long time and in — literally — a thousand times more schools. Where’s the hue and cry about the potential loss of these schools?
“When an inner-city public school does what most Catholic schools do every day, it makes the headlines,” Patrick J. McCloskey, author of “The Street Stops Here” said in the WSJ the other day. He’s right. The time to pay attention to this is now, not after we lose Catholic schools.