[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 110 (Wednesday, July 24, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1353-E1354]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E1353]]


                   WHY CATHOLIC SCHOOL MODEL IS TABOO

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NEWT GINGRICH

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 24, 1996

  Mr. GINGRICH. As we consider ways in which we might improve our 
Nation's inner city schools, I hope that my colleagues take a moment to 
read the following editorial by Sol Stern from the Wall Street Journal, 
Wednesday, July 17, 1996. Now is the time for us to ask some very hard 
questions about how we have been spending taxpayer funds on education. 
I believe there is a lesson to be learned by the parochial schools who 
provide an exceptional education at an affordable price.

                 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 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 curiosity 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.

[[Page E1354]]



                          TRIBUTE TO BOB OLIVE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. MARTIN R. HOKE

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 24, 1996

  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate and recognize 
America's most outstanding public television programmer, Mr. Bob Olive 
of WVIZ-TV in Cleveland. On June 21, Mr. Olive was named ``1996 
Programmer of the Year'' by his peers in the Public Television 
Programmers Association for demonstrating excellence and expertise 
within public broadcasting.
  This recent award brings much deserved recognition of Bob Olive's 
successful effort to attract record-breaking viewership to programming 
on WVIZ-TV. In the past 2 years, overall viewership of the station has 
risen more than 50 percent with certain time slots rising 200 percent, 
an absolutely remarkable increase in today's competitive television 
environment. In 13 of the past 15 months, the station has experienced a 
rise in the number of viewers.
  Of special note is Mr Olive's ability to program effectively for 
different segments of the television viewing community. WVIZ-TV is the 
most watched private or public network in Cleveland among young 
children. Mr. Olive was instrumental in the development of ``KidTV on 
VIZ'', a daily 12-hour period of creative programming designed to 
provide the educational initiative for children to learn.
  A Cleveland native, Bob Olive graduated from Parma's Valley Forge 
High School, earned a bachelor of science degree in education at 
Bowling Green State University, and did graduate work in speech and 
communication at Case Western Reserve University. An electronics 
technician for the Navy from 1968 through 1972, Mr. Olive was destined 
to involve himself in a long and distinguished career within the field 
of the electronic media.
  In an 18-year career with WVIZ-TV, a public television station 
broadcasting across the Cleveland viewing area, Bob Olive has 
demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to quality programming. He 
served the station well, as the director of public affairs, community 
affairs, and also as an announcer.
  He began his career in broadcast communications beginning in 1959 as 
a morning announces for WSJH, the radio station for Schaaf Junior High 
School. After 9 years of dedicated service with WVIZ-TV, he served as 
news manager at WEWS-TV, an ABC affiliate in Cleveland, where he 
created the long running and very popular news program, ``Live on 
Five'', which is still aired, before returning to WVIZ.
  In addition to his service to the Cleveland area, he extends his 
talents throughout the country, serving on the National Program Policy 
Committee as an advisor to the Public Broadcasting System.
  Dr. Judy LeRoy, co-director of Trac Media Services, in presenting 
this award praised Mr. Olive for his ``achievements in creative 
scheduling, audience enhancement, local outreach and program 
acquisition.'' She also noted his ability to make ``constant, 
substantial audience gains over the past several years.''
  Mr. Speaker, I could not allow Mr. Bob Olive's exceptional service 
and achievements to go without notice. His programming achievements, 
especially in the area of children's broadcasting, have provided the 
entire WVIZ broadcast audience with a first-rate television product. He 
has been instrumental in enriching the lives of the people of northeast 
Ohio and we are grateful for his outstanding contributions and service.

                          ____________________