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Monday, May 21, 2012

Charter Schools Vs. Catholic Schools « Diane Ravitch's blog

Charter Schools Vs. Catholic Schools « Diane Ravitch's blog:


Charter Schools Vs. Catholic Schools

Charter schools contribute directly to the collapse of Catholic schools in the inner city, according to new research by Abraham Lackman, a scholar in residence at the Albany Law School in New York. I have a pdf file for his findings, but don’t know how to turn it into an URL, so the best I can offer here is a summary of his findings in the New York Daily News: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-02-22/news/31088718_1_charter-schools-catholic-schools-new-charter
Lackman was chief of staff for the New York State Senate Finance Committee between 1995 and 2002, which included the year (1998) when the legislature authorized 200 charter schools. In a paper called “The Collapse of Catholic School Enrollment: Dissecting the Causes,” Lackman demonstrates that Catholic schools close as charters open.
Catholic school enrollments dropped precipitously in the nation and in New York state over the past decade.  In New York state, K-8 enrollments in Catholic schools fell by a staggering 43%, from 202,000 to 115,000 from 2000 to 2010. Charter schools were not the only cause of the decline—demographics and the cost of keeping