Powell: Church schools might save some city kids. Would that be so bad?

By CHRIS POWELL

Correlation is not necessarily causation, but it can give some hints, and the decline of education in Connecticut and particularly in its cities has correlated with the decline in Catholic schools and the decline in Catholicism and religion generally. Of course the church has had grave faults but it has excelled with its schools, stressing the responsibility of children to God and humanity and upholding academic and behavioral standards that public schools in Connecticut have largely abandoned.

So it’s wonderful that the Hartford archdiocese’s new archbishop, Christopher Coyne, aims to return Catholic elementary education to the city, nine years after the city's last Catholic school closed. The new school will start slow next year with pre-kindergarten through second grade in a building adjacent to the Cathedral of St. Joseph, and then add a new grade each year up to Grade 8. Tuition will be geared to family income, so the church likely will be doing a lot of subsidizing. With luck it will get financial help from friends of the poor and better education.

Students in church schools generally do far better than students in public schools. Critics claim that this is because church schools can choose their students, taking the well-parented and motivated while the public schools have to take everyone, particularly the neglected, indifferent, and demoralized.

This indeed explains some of the difference in performance but not all. The key distinction is that public schools in Connecticut are far more accepting of poor performance. That’s what their social promotion is about, and they persist in it even as Mississippi -- once the heart of darkness -- lately has gotten spectacular results from its poor minority elementary school students, results better than those Connecticut gets, by ending social promotion at third grade. Now no Mississippi student now gets beyond third grade without being a competent reader.

Meanwhile Hartford awards high school diplomas to illiterates.

In any case, why should church schools be resented for helping children escape the underclass? Escaping the underclass is what society in Connecticut and much of the country long has been about, the more so as the welfare system expanded and began destroying the family, the cities, and their schools by depriving millions of households of fathers.

Suburbs embody the escape from the underclass. That escape is largely the middle class' pursuit of school choice.

Would it be better if no children in the city were saved than if church schools and independent public "charter schools" saved a few?

Many on the political left in Connecticut seem to think so. Teacher unions hate charter schools and have more influence with the General Assembly than any other special interest, and the legislature keeps refusing to appropriate funds for charter schools proposed in Danbury and Middletown, cities with low-performing schools and many poor children who might benefit from choice and higher standards.

The knock against those charter school proposals is that they might draw students and teachers away from those low-performing schools. Yes, that’s competition. But how is it better to lock the poor into bad schools?

Of course the real solution to the education problem and most social problems would be to elevate the underclass. That might begin by seeking the cause of Connecticut's and the country's worsening poverty and social disintegration.

Last month in New Haven there was another horrible example of that social disintegration: a 13-year-old shot and killed a 15-year-old. An arrest was made last week.

Mayor Justin Elicker called the incident "deeply troubling," though many similar incidents in his city also have left him deeply troubled. "This is why," the mayor said, "we have so many youth programs, jobs programs, and outreach workers that engage with our young people."

Oh, yes -- programs, programs, and more programs -- more, it seems, than there are fathers in New Haven watching out for their children and their "baby mommas." But the programs are at best mere remediation. The solutions lie where government in Connecticut does not yet dare go.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. His other columns are here. (CPowell@cox.net)