Parochial-School Lessons (review on book about education in Catholic-based schools)

The efficacy of Catholic schools in urban neighborhoods has been
documented time and again, beginning with James S. Coleman's landmark
studies in the 1980s. His findings were so devastating at
the time that the public-school establishment panicked.
School officials heatedly claimed that Mr. Coleman's results were
flawed because public schools had to take everyone while Catholic
schools could select more talented students -- or at least those
who came from more stable homes.
But the economist Derek Neal exploded that myth in the 1990s,
showing definitively that Catholic-school methods are both
class- and color-blind.
The stereotypical product of a poor, single-parent home generally
does better in a Catholic school than a public one......

Just posting this book review from the Opinion-Journal (Wall Street
Journal) website; it appears in the print WSJ journal today
on page A19.

I'm not Catholic, but I'll be passing along the article to
my brother as he surveys the options for his daughter (my
niece, of course!) in picking a private school setting.
Especially seeing how the public schools in the area are
a mish-mash of average-to-substandard educational settings.
The local public system is in such a mess that a school-bond
issue was resoundingly turned down this year.
And this is in a major state university town!
That tells you what a mess the public school administration and
teachers union have made of the situation.
When you can't get a liberal university town to vote for new
taxes!!!
Especially when "It's for the children!".

The parishes ought to sell bonds to buy up failed public schools. The states are broke anyway, so just privitize the schools and make money.

I have seen first hand the amazing things that happen in Catholic schools serving inner city minorities. There are wonderful charities like The Children’s Scholarship Fund which finance these schools. I don’t know if I can post a link here but google the name if you wish to donate.

Much better results for a fraction of the cost of the bloated public schools.

"I have seen first hand the amazing things that happen in Catholic schools serving inner city minorities."

Ditto that. I'm from Louisiana, and have seen the products of both Catholic and public predominately black schools (both secondary education and university). The public schools produced "gen-yoo-wine" affirmative action students (good grades on paper but didn't know squat), while the Catholic school graduates could hold their own with anybody.

One poor boy I worked with had managed to get a masters in chemistry in the black "affirmative action" university system---and he had to have been borderline retarded. He was simply incapable of handling any sort of chemical work that involved actually knowing something. Other blacks who came out of New Orleans majority black universities could handle anything thrown at them.

Of course, we know that won't happen, because they would rather bankrupt
the state and have starving populations walking barefoot in
the snow before they would give up ideological control of the students

Amen to that.

My first real clue that the recent school bond issue would fail
was in the office I worked in during the spring.
A couple were in for a consultation; the husband had retired after
a full career in the public school system and the wife is also
still in the educational system.

When the retired husband said "The corrupt folks in the public schools
I retired from...they DESERVE to have the bond-issue FAIL!!!".

I barely restrained myself from responding visibly...
especially because my more-liberal co-worker was obviously taken
aback by that sort of comment.

But the retired teacher got his wish.
The bond issue totally tanked when the vote went down about a
month later.

The superintendant that had pimped slavishly for the increased
taxes suddenly realized she had enough years to retire.
(And somehow, it finally came to light that she'd been running
away from a cock-up at her previous school district when our
school district hired her. "Dance of the Lemons" as they say
about the rotation of incompetent principals in the Los Angeles
Unified School District...except this was in Mid-Missouri.)

It doesn't have to be a big urban, Democratic-single-party rule
to get sucky schools.
It can even happen in smaller-town flyover America.

Black ministers are now demanding scholarships for minority students attending crummy NJ inner city schools. Black ministers want the state to make sure inner city students take the same graduation test as more affluent students. Of course, that would damage NJ’s reputation as the state with the highest high school graduation rate in the country, putting it smack dab in the middle at 24th, because these students don’t have the ability to take the harder graduation test.

http://www.northjersey.com/education/Group_leaders_Grad_rate_a_sham.html

A court ruling recently struck down vouchers, saying that the state would take care of the problem of failing schools. Of course, that’s patently ridiculous, since it would have been done by now.

The NJEA doesn’t want companies to offer students scholarships. It would “take money from the public schools.”

Who cares! Failing inner city public schools don’t deserve an existence.

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