Catholic Schools vs. Public Schools: A Look at Chicagoland's Educational System

RFFM.org ^ | Feb. 9, 2009 | Arlene Sawicjki

[Daniel T. Zanoza]

Editor's Note: The following column details a comparison between Catholic and public education in Chicago and its collar counties. Sawicki's piece can be seen as a measure of comparison for other big cities in the United States. It is an excellent, but succinct review of American public education and its waste of tax dollars compared to the private sector.

Arlene Sawicki of South Barrington, Illinois is a long-time Catholic lay advocate on pro-life, pro-family issues. Mrs. Sawicki is vice-president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer; a co-founder of Vote Life America; a member of Citizens for Community Values, Illinois Federation Right to Life and the Illinois Choose Life License Plate Committee and, most recently, a member of the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee which put up an historic display in the Illinois state capitol Rotunda depicting the birth of Jesus.

Celebrating Catholic Schools Week & "Catholics at the Capitol" by Arlene Sawicki

The Chicago Archdiocesan Office of Catholic Schools (OCS) has distributed its “Year in Review” Report 2009 detailing its accomplishments, data and progress in three focus areas: Catholic Identity, Academic Excellence and School Vitality.

93,286 elementary and secondary students attend Catholic Schools in Cook, Suburban Cook and Lake counties, consisting of 78,471 Catholic and 14,815 Non-Catholic children, with racial backgrounds including White, African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Multi-Racial and Native American...

[2banana]

In Philly, the average yearly tuition for a K-12 Catholic School student is $3,500. For the public school system K-12 it is over $10,000 per student/year.

[ga medic]

Philly schools are probably subsidized by the parish. Regional Catholic schools, that are not subsidized by the parish have much higher tuitions.

[jilliane]

Will it surprise anyone that Chicago public schools are part of the fraud/corruption machine?

Then they have the audacity to come to the collar suburbs where taxes are high and the lions share goes to the schools (public)...where exceptional public schools operate less than a mile from horrific Chicago schools...and despite shameful story after story about their corruption, they lobbied to take the tax dollars from the suburban families to fund Chicago schools.