Giving Compass' Take:

· Greg Dolan at Education Next discusses the history of Catholic schools and the role they play now with the school choice movement.

· What type of students do Catholic schools cater to? 

· According to new data, Catholic school attendance in dwindling, changing the way people approach school choice. 

Since their founding in the 19th Century, Catholic schools have been noted for serving economically disadvantaged and ethnic minority communities. Education choice programs, due to their income-based and geographic eligibility requirements, tend to serve these same populations. Many therefore assume that choice programs send a disproportionate share of participating students to Catholic schools. On the positive side, well-meaning Catholic school leaders may claim this as a badge of honor. However, the perception that financially strapped Catholic schools are “propped up” by public funding could be harmful to the education choice movement.

Catholic Education Partners tested this assumption by retrieving state government, diocesan, Catholic conference, and scholarship organization data for 28 programs across 20 states. These 16 scholarship tax credit and 12 voucher programs accounted for $1.8 billion of the $2.2 billion (81%) allocated for private school choice nationwide and 358,000 of the 466,000 (77%) participating students.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Catholic schools do not dominate choice programs, but rather enroll students in line with their share of the overall private school market.

Read the full article about Catholic schools in education choice by Greg Dolan at Education Next.