[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 108 (Monday, July 22, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1336-E1337]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   WHY CATHOLIC SCHOOL MODEL IS TABOO

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR.

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, July 22, 1996

  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I think that anyone who is truly interested 
in education should read the following article from the July 17, 1996, 
issue of the Wall Street Journal. I would like to call it to the 
attention of my colleagues and other readers of the Record.

                 Why the Catholic School Model Is Taboo

                             (By Sol Stern)

       New York City's Cardinal John J. O'Connor has repeatedly 
     made the city an extraordinary offer: Send me the lowest-
     performing 5% of children presently in the public schools, 
     and I will put them in Catholic schools--where they will 
     succeed. The city's response: silence.
       In a more rational world, city officials would have jumped 
     at the cardinal's invitation. It would have been a huge 
     financial plus for the city. The annual per-pupil cost of 
     Catholic elementary schools is $2,500 per year, about a third 
     of what taxpayers now spend for the city's public schools.


                             no idle boast

       More important, thousands more disadvantaged children would 
     finish school and become productive citizens. For Cardinal 
     O'Connor's claim that Catholic schools would do a better job 
     than public schools is no idle boast. In 1990 the RAND 
     Corporation compared the performance of children from New 
     York City's public and Catholic high schools. Only 25% of the 
     public-school students graduated at all, and only 16% took 
     the Scholastic Aptitude Test, vs. 95% and 75% of Catholic-
     school students, respectively. Catholic-school students 
     scored an average of 815 on the SAT. By shameful contrast, 
     the small ``elite'' of public-school students who graduated 
     and took the SAT averaged only 642 for those in neighborhood 
     schools and 715 for those in magnet schools.
       In 1993 the New York State Department of Education compared 
     city schools with the highest levels of minority enrollment. 
     Conclusion: ``Catholic schools with 81% to 100% minority 
     composition outscored New York City public schools with the 
     same percentage of minority enrollment in Grade 3 reading 
     (+17%), Grade 3 mathematics (+10%), Grade 5 writing (+6%), 
     Grade 6 reading (+10%) and Grade 6 mathematics (+11%).''
       Yet most of the elite, in New York and elsewhere, is 
     resolutely uninterested in the Catholic schools' success. In 
     part this reflects the enormous power of teachers' unions, 
     fierce opponents of anything that

[[Page E1337]]

     threatens their monopoly on education. In part it reflects a 
     secular discomfort with religious institutions.
       I myself have felt this discomfort over the years, walking 
     past Catholic schools like St. Gregory the Great, near my 
     Manhattan home. Every morning, as I took my sons to public 
     school, I couldn't help noticing the well-behaved black and 
     Hispanic children in their neat uniforms entering the drab 
     parish building. But my curiousty never led me past the 
     imposing crucifix looking down from the roof, which evoked 
     childhood images of Catholic anti-Semitism and clerical 
     obscurantism.
       Finally, earlier this year, I ventured in, and I was 
     impressed. I sat in, for example, as fourth-grade teacher 
     Susan Viti conducted a review lesson on the geography of 
     the Western United States. All the children were 
     completely engaged and had obviously done their homework. 
     They were able to answer each of her questions about the 
     principal cities and capitals of the Western states--some 
     of which I couldn't name--and the topography and natural 
     resources of the region. ``Which minerals would be found 
     in the Rocky Mountains?'' Miss Viti asked. Eager hands 
     shot up. Miss Viti used the lesson to expand the students' 
     vocabulary; when the children wrote things down, she 
     insisted on proper grammar and spelling.
       I found myself wishing that my own son's fourth-grade 
     teachers at nearby Public School 87, reputedly one of the 
     best public schools in the city, were anywhere near as 
     productive and as focused on basic skills as Miss Viti. Both 
     my boys' teachers have wasted an enormous amount of time with 
     empty verbiage about the evils of racism and sexism. By 
     contrast, in Miss Viti's class and in all the other Catholic-
     school classes I visited, it was taken for granted that a 
     real education is the best antidote to prejudice.
       Miss Viti earns $21,000 a year, $8,000 less than a first-
     year public-school teacher. ``I've taught in an all-white, 
     affluent suburban school, where I made over $40,000,'' she 
     says. ``This time I wanted to do something good for society, 
     and I am lucky enough to be able to afford to do it. I am 
     trying to instill in my students that whatever their life 
     situation is now, they can succeed if they work hard and 
     study.''
       You might expect liberals, self-styled champions of 
     disadvantaged children, to applaud the commitment and 
     sacrifice of educators like Susan Viti. You might even expect 
     them to look for ways of getting government money to these 
     underfunded schools. Instead, they've done their best to make 
     sure the wall of separation between church and state remains 
     impenetrable. Liberal child-advocacy groups tout an endless 
     array of ``prevention'' programs that are supposed to stave 
     off delinquency, dropping out of school and teen pregnancy--
     yet they consistently ignore Catholic schools, which nearly 
     always succeed in preventing these pathologies.
       Read the chapter on education in Hillary Clinton's ``It 
     Takes a Village.'' Mrs. Clinton advocates an alphabet soup of 
     education programs for poor kids, but says not a word about 
     Catholic schools. Similarly, in his books on education and 
     inner-city ghettos, Jonathan Kozol offers vivid tours of 
     decrepit public schools in places like the South Bronx, but 
     he never stops at the many Catholic schools that are 
     succeeding a few blocks away.
       Why are Catholic schools taboo among those who talk loudest 
     about compassion for the downtrodden? It's hard to escape the 
     conclusion that one of the most powerful reasons is liberals' 
     alliance with the teachers' unions, which have poured 
     hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of 
     liberal candidates around the country. Two weeks ago I 
     attended the National Education Association convention in 
     Washington, a week-long pep rally for Bill Clinton punctuated 
     by ritual denunciations of privatization.
       Before the teachers' unions rise to political power, it was 
     not unusual to see urban Democrats like former New York Gov. 
     Mario Cuomo support government aid to Catholic schools. Mr. 
     Cuomo's flip-flop on this issue is especially revealing. In 
     1974, when he first ran for public office, Mr. Cuomo wrote a 
     letter to potential supporters: ``I've spent more than 15 
     years . . . arguing for aid to private schools,'' he 
     wrote. ``If you believe aid is a good thing, then you are 
     the good people. If you believe it, then it's your moral 
     obligation, as it is my own, to do something about it. . . 
     . Let's try tax-credit plans and anything else that offers 
     any help.''
       Mr. Cuomo soon learned his lesson. In his published diaries 
     he wrote: ``Teachers are perhaps the most effective of all 
     the state's unions. If they go all-out, it will mean 
     telephones and vigorous statewide support. It will also mean 
     some money.'' In his 1982 campaign for governor, Mr. Cuomo 
     gave a speech trumpeting the primacy of public education and 
     the rights of teachers. He won the union's enthusiastic 
     endorsement against Ed Koch in the Democratic primary. Over 
     the next 12 years, in private meetings with Catholic leaders, 
     Gov. Cuomo would declare that he still supported tax relief 
     for parochial school parents. Then he would take a completely 
     different position in public. For example, in 1984 he 
     acknowledged that giving tax credits for parochial-school 
     tuition was ``clearly constitutional'' under a recent Supreme 
     Court decision-but he refused to support such a plan.
       Politically controlled schools are unlikely to improve much 
     without strong pressure from outside. Thus, the case for 
     government aid to Catholic schools is now more compelling 
     than ever, if only to provide the competitive pressure to 
     force state schools to change. And the conventional wisdom 
     that government is constitutionally prohibited from aiding 
     Catholic schools has been undermined by several recent U.S. 
     Supreme Court decisions.


                             sucker's trap

       Since the powerful teachers' unions vehemently oppose any 
     form of government aid to Catholic schools, reformers are 
     often skittish about advocating vouchers or tuition tax 
     credits, fearing that will end the public-school reform 
     conversation before it begins. But to abandon aid to Catholic 
     schools in the name of public-school reform is a sucker's 
     trap. We have ended up with no aid to Catholic schools and no 
     real public-school reform either.
       Catholic schools are a valuable public resource not just 
     because they profoundly benefit the children who enroll in 
     them. They also challenge the public school monopoly, 
     constantly reminding us that the neediest kids are educable 
     and that spending extravagant sums of money isn't the answer. 
     No one who cares about reviving our failing public schools 
     can afford to ignore this inspiring laboratory of reform.

                          ____________________