Can Catholic Schools Do It Better?

By Sam Allis/Boston

America's parochial schools have often served as a reproach to the troubled public ones in their communities. Unburdened by the bureaucracy and lethargy that bedevil most big-city school systems, and with a tradition of emphasizing discipline and academic rigor, they have generally been able to turn out better graduates -- while often spending less than half the money per pupil. Now the Roman Catholic Church, worried about declining enrollments and hopeful about the emerging political sentiment to allow public school parents greater choice in where they send their kids, has launched the most extensive marketing campaign ever for its brand of education. Billboards, banners and posters will be blanketing the nation with the message: DISCOVER CATHOLIC SCHOOLS 1992.

The Archdiocese of Chicago alone plans to lease 50 billboards as part of the mammoth promotion. Nationwide, each of the church's 7,291 elementary schools and 1,296 high schools will be asked to market an array of buttons, T shirts, pins, decals, posters, videos and banners that bear the logo of a proud galleon slicing through the waves, its sail emblazoned with a giant cross. Kits will be sold that instruct local administrators on how to place ads, write press releases and choreograph a month-by-month promotional campaign. Says Sister Ann Dominic Roach, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Boston: "This is not business as usual."

The campaign, which is designed to ignite the faithful as well as sell non- Catholics and political leaders on the excellence of parochial schools, promotes them as "the best-kept secret in the U.S." This they are not -- parochial schools have been part of U.S. education since the mid-19th century, and currently serve 2.5 million children. The real secret is how these schools have been able to do more for less. In the austere '90s, their cost-controlled quality and focus on fundamentals could serve as a model for public school systems seeking to conquer the problems of drugs, violence, lax standards and low morale.

Statistical evidence of the parochial system's success is striking. James Coleman, a University of Chicago sociologist, has found that Catholic high school students outperform their public school counterparts in reading, vocabulary, mathematics and writing. The dropout rate in Catholic high schools was less than 4%, he discovered, compared with more than 14% in public schools. Black or Hispanic students are three times as likely to graduate in four years as their public school counterparts. Some 83% of the graduates go to college, in contrast to 52% of those from public school.

To some extent such comparisons are unfair. The public systems are required to service, at tremendous cost, students with severe learning disabilities, physical handicaps and discipline problems. In addition, public schools must take everyone, whereas the children in Catholic schools tend to be from families motivated to find them a good education.

Even in the inner cities, Catholic schools have been successful in attracting -- and educating -- children from poor and minority families willing to bear the cost. The sacrifice is often heavy: high school tuitions can approach $4,000. Nevertheless, minority enrollment in the Catholic system is now 23% of the total, double what it was 20 years ago. "When my son would come home from public school, all he could talk about was who was fighting whom," recalls Laura Williams, a black Baptist whose three children have attended the Academy of St. Benedict the African on Chicago's South Side.

How do the Catholic schools do it? Mostly by practicing and preaching old- fashioned stuff: values, discipline, educational rigor and parental accountability, coupled with minimal bureaucracy. "Catholic schools have had to make a virtue out of necessity," explains Archbishop Francis Schulte of New Orleans. "These institutions have had to think and act creatively for decades to stretch small budgets."

It adds up to what Coleman calls "social capital," a combination of qualities that public schools simply can't match. At a time when families and neighborhoods are being ripped apart, the Catholic Church often anchors an institutional network on which parents, teachers and children can depend. The schools provide more personal attention to students -- and to parents. Single- parent families in particular gain from the parochial approach. Children from such homes are twice as likely to drop out of public schools as those from two-parent families; in Catholic schools the rate for children from both types of families is about the same.

Catholic educators are proud that their institutions eschew the shopping- mall approach they see in public high schools, where students shop around for courses among endless electives. Their high schools routinely offer fewer electives and require a heavier load of basics than do inner-city public schools: four years of English; three years or more of math; three years of science, foreign language and social science; and at least one year of computer science. Students must show proficiency in a course before they can move up a grade. Period.

The parents of non-Catholic students, who account for about 12% of enrollment, seem less worried about the religious instruction their children may absorb than about the absence of values in the public system. This parental acceptance is largely the result of the self-selecting nature of parochial schools. Catholic administrators make it clear in advance that their institutions teach the tenets of the church. Parents comfortable with that arrangement are free to apply. "I'm not Catholic, but we're all serving the same God," says Betty Pitts, a black parent of two children in Our Lady of Lourdes elementary school in Boston's Jamaica Plain section. "When the children are grown, they'll make up their own minds."

Then why the marketing push now? For all their advantages, parochial schools badly need funds. They have lost half their students and 2,500 of their schools during the past 25 years as part of the general movement to suburbia. Inner-city schools are still vulnerable as working-class Catholics continue to migrate to the suburbs. Moreover, the cadre of women in religious orders who traditionally taught in Catholic schools continues to decline, and lay teachers, often with families, demand higher salaries.

By publicizing the advantages that parochial schools can offer, the church hopes to help a good system thrive once again. In the process, by increasing a sense of competition for students and an awareness of the value of a rigorous education, the campaign could even serve to spur the nation's public schools.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Joe Lertola

CAPTION: COMPARATIVE REPORT CARD