- If Pennsylvania Avenue’s barricaded sidewalks didn’t make it obvious, the whooshing pantaloons of the Swiss Guard certainly will—Pope Francis is officially touring the capital! And while his three-day visit will be punctuated by extensive coverage of the Church’s role in American life and politics, Kavitha Cardoza’s piece on the fate of urban Catholic education is our recommended read (or listen) for anyone intrigued by the issue of school choice. Initially established as alternatives for the children of European immigrant families (who objected to compulsory Protestant indoctrination in nineteenth-century classrooms), Catholic schools grew to serve five million students by their 1960s peak. Since then, tuition increases and fraying religious communities in inner cities have sliced that number by more than half, but optimistic signs exist. As one of Cardoza’s sources remarks, last year’s drop in national Catholic school enrollment was the lowest since 2000, and the decline has substantially slowed over the past few years. That’s a dramatic turnaround from 2008, the year that the pope last visited and Fordham issued its gloomy dispatch on Catholic education, amid freefalling enrollment and tumult in the Church. For families seeking the combination of educational rigor and moral direction that has been the hallmark of these schools, news like this helps revive that wonderful New Testament virtue: hope.
- The Department of Education’s newly released College Scorecard is an online tool that allows consumers to compare colleges and universities on different metrics of student debt and future earnings. A useful instrument, the scorecard unfortunately shrinks from pitting different schools against one another in a kind of Academic Affordability Deathmatch for the entertainment of frenzied, riotous wonks. But where government fails, private enterprise rushes in to fill the void! Both the New York Times and NPR now feature their own access and affordability indices, complete with rankings of schools that make the best financial sense for families struggling with the burden of paying for college. The big takeaway is that both lists are filled with competitive, selective institutions. This is a point that Fordham has been flogging for some time on the K–12 end, but it’s equally valid in the realm of higher education: While upward mobility has to be a holistic priority, lifting up every poor child to the prospect of college and career success, smart students from low-income families can benefit tremendously from the elite instruction that only selective schools can provide. Whether applying for seats at Berkeley or test-based academies like Stuyvesant High School, these kids are graduating from America’s best schools with great prospects and low (if any) debt. That’s great for them, and great for the country.
- Teacher evaluations and student test scores make for a combustible mix. Ideally, you’d like to incorporate measures of student progress into assessments of teachers’ performance; in practice, parsing the data can be a fraught process. The Obama administration’s insistence on linking the two as a condition for state NCLB waivers has been one of its biggest whiffs in education, and one that will very likely be rescinded if and when Congress reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Perhaps sensing its own misstep, Arne Duncan’s education department has helpfully begun to tap the brakes on the policy, allowing some fourteen states extra time and flexibility to craft their evaluation systems. Arkansas and Massachusetts have been given until 2018 to complete their work, long after a new president is sworn in and Duncan signs on to anchor the U.S. over-fifty men’s basketball team. It’s good to see the administration’s willingness to change course here. Teaching is already a famously difficult profession to assess, and the implementation of new testing regimes in most states has made this federal mandate a burden too heavy to bear.
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