PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
THE BRUNT of the impact of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia closing 49 of its schools will surely be felt by the teachers, students and parents of those schools closing – and most especially the high-school juniors who will be forced to find another school from which to graduate – and hopefully stay on course for college.
But the Archdiocese’s closure of 45 elementary schools and four high schools – affecting more than 22,000 students and 1,700 teachers – is a move that will affect the whole city. We’re a far cry from the era when 12 percent of schoolchildren were educated in Catholic schools, and the church and its affiliated schools dominated some communities. But despite the storm of changes that have buffeted the church in the last few generations, parochial schools are still deeply embedded in many city neighborhoods. Their absence will be felt by all.
In fact, this is another reckoning for education in the city. The disappearance of a quarter of the parochial-educational system is not insignificant, particularly with its enviable graduation rate (99.7 percent in Philadelphia) and college attainment (92.5 percent post-secondary-education enrollment).
This particular reckoning was long overdue; not just here, but across the country. A number of reports have documented the decline of Catholic education; one, from Education Next, maintains that while the general Catholic population in the United States has remained about the same since 1965, school population has plummeted, from 5.2 million to 2.3 million in 2006.
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