When middle-class families moved from cities and church-going declined, Catholic schools closed. Abuse scandals depleted church funds and drove parents away. More schools closed. Then charter schools, which charge no tuition, began competing for students in the 1990's. Catholic schools closed.
The boom in Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) could be the salvation of Catholic schools, writes Kevin Mahnken on The 74. Parents decide where to spend the money, and have the freedom to choose a religious school.
In the 2023–24 school year, 20 new Catholic schools opened, and while others closed or merged, enrollment held steady. "Just stopping the bleeding is considered a good omen in a sector that has lost more than 3.5 million pupils, or two-thirds of its headcount, since the 1960s."
When charter schools open, nearby Catholic schools lose enrollment, concludes a study by Boston College’s Catholic Education Research Initiative. Parish schools operate on thin margins, says Shaun Dougherty, the paper’s lead author. For many, "the loss of income is catastrophic."
It may be too late to rebuild the Catholic school system, says Nicole Stelle Garnett, a Notre Dame law professor. “If we’d gotten this much of private school choice in 1999, instead of 25 years later, we might have a lot more kids in Catholic schools today.”
Bates College economist Kyle Coombs found a strong link between abuse scandals and Catholic school closings between 1980 and 2010. As Catholic schools lost an average of 75 students during that period, "charter schools — but not traditional public or non-Catholic private schools — gained an average of 50 students," writes Mahnken. Some Catholic schools were reopened as charters with a stress on character education.
Families are less likely to switch from Catholic to charter schools in areas where there's some form of voucher or tuition reimbursement plan, Dougherty's research found. “The potential savings to a family of switching from an urban Catholic school to an urban charter could be substantial, even if they were only paying a few thousand dollars per year in tuition,” he said.
Catholic schools tend to charge lower tuition than other private schools, so parents' ESA money would go farther to cover the costs.
Seventy percent of parents with children in religious schools are satisfied with their children's schooling, compared to 39 percent of those with children in traditional public schools, according to a recent survey. I think Catholic schools -- if they rebuild capacity -- could draw a lot more students if cost was not a barrier.
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