Catholic schools in the United States constitute the largest number of non-public, Christian schools in the country. They are accredited by independent and/or state agencies, and teachers are generally certified. Catholic schools are supported primarily through tuition payments and fundraising, and typically enroll students irrespective of their religious background. [1]
By the middle of the 19th century, Catholics in larger cities started building their own parochial school system. [2] The main impetus was fear that indoctrination by Protestant teachers in the public schools would lead to a loss of faith. Protestants reacted by strong opposition to any public funding of parochial schools. [3] Catholics nevertheless built their elementary schools, parish by parish, using very low paid sisters without college educations as teachers. [4] This was not unlike the public school system, where college-educated teachers became the norm only in the 20th century.
By the 2010s, there had been a significant decline in the number of Catholic schools in the United States: From 2000 to 2012, 1,755 Catholic schools closed across the country. [5]
Most Catholic elementary schools are operated by a local parish community, while secondary schools are usually operated by a diocese or archdiocese, or a religious institute, and often those in major cities are also attached to a Catholic university. [6]
In the United States, the term parochial school is commonly used to refer to Catholic schools, to distinguish it from private school (which can refer to either a nonsectarian school or a church-based school). [7]
Most elementary schools are owned by a particular parish, while high schools are often owned by a group of parishes (more common in the South), a religious institute (more common in the Northeast), or a diocese. In the West, a mixture of schools operated by dioceses and religious institutes is common, with the older schools generally run by such institutes. Except in the case of independent schools, local priests are invariably members of the school board, and often at secondary schools are found among the teaching staff as well. In some dioceses the bishop holds the title of superintendent, while others have delegated this responsibility to the head of the Office of Catholic Schools. In terms of practicality, it is often the local priests who fulfill this function.
Most Catholic elementary schools tend to be smaller than their public counterparts, and it is not unusual for such schools to have only one teacher and classroom per grade level. Additionally, grade levels often separated between grammar and middle schools (in the public schools) are generally not separated in Catholic schools; thus a student may attend the same school from kindergarten or first grade through eighth grade. One other major difference is that in most parts of the country, public schools provide bus service to their students, while Catholic schools rarely do.
Most Catholic schools in the United States accept students of all religions, ethnic backgrounds, and ability, with a minority expecting students to actually be Catholic. Some Catholic schools are more relaxed in their expectation of a largely Catholic student body, due to the demographic proportion of Catholics being especially low in some areas. More competitive Catholic secondary schools tend to have tighter academic requirements and/or an entrance exam. It is a common expectation that non-Catholic students take religion classes and participate as fully as possible in the spiritual exercises of the school. Many schools have a policy (sometimes written) banning proselytizing in any form. [8]
The United States had 7,498 Catholic schools in 2006–07, including 6,288 elementary schools and 1,210 secondary schools. In total there were 2,320,651 students, including 1,682,412 students in the elementary/middle schools and 638,239 in high schools. [9] Enrollment in the nation's Catholic schools has steadily dropped to less than half of its peak at five million students 40 years ago, The New York Times reported in early 2009. At its peak in 1965, the number of U.S. parochial schools was more than 12,000, and roughly half of all Catholic children in America attended Catholic elementary schools, according to the National Catholic Educational Association. The same share in 2009 is about 15 percent. Among Latinos, the fastest-growing church group — soon to comprise a majority of Catholics in the United States — it is three percent. The article also reported on "dozens of local efforts" to turn the tide, including by the Archdiocese of Chicago and Washington, and dioceses in Memphis and Wichita, Kansas, as well as in the New York metro area. [10]
Heavily Protestant in the 19th century, most states passed a state constitutional amendment, referred to as the Blaine Amendment, forbidding tax money be used to fund parochial schools, a possible outcome of heavy immigration from Catholic Ireland after the 1840s. In 2002, the United States Supreme Court partially vitiated these amendments, in theory, when they ruled that vouchers were constitutional if tax dollars followed a child to a school, even if it were religious. However, no state had, by 2009, changed its laws to allow this. [11]
Since 2000, 1,942 Catholic schools around the country have shut their doors, and enrollment has dropped by 621,583 students, to just over 2 million in 2012, according to the National Catholic Educational Association. Many Catholic schools are being squeezed out of the education market by financial issues and publicly funded charter schools. [12]
Since 1974, National Catholic Schools Week within the United States begins the last Sunday of January. [13] Schools celebrate their Catholic identity and mission in service.
With 23 percent of the United States' population as of 2018, the Catholic Church is the country's second largest religious grouping, after Protestantism, and the country's largest single church or Christian denomination where Protestantism is divided into separate denominations. In a 2020 Gallup poll, 25% of Americans said they were Catholic. The United States has the fourth largest Catholic population in the world, after Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines.
A state school or public school is a primary or secondary school that educates all students without charge. Such schools are funded in whole or in part by taxation.
A parochial school is a private primary or secondary school affiliated with a religious organization, and whose curriculum includes general religious education in addition to secular subjects, such as science, mathematics and language arts. The word parochial comes from the same root as "parish", and parochial schools were originally the educational wing of the local parish church. Christian parochial schools are called "church schools" or "Christian schools."
A Christian school is a school run on Christian principles or by a Christian organization.
The Archdiocese of Cincinnati is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or archdiocese, of the Roman Catholic Church that covers southwest Ohio in the United States. It includes the cities of Cincinnati and Dayton.
Catholic schools are pre-primary, primary and secondary educational institutions administered in association with the Catholic Church. As of 2011, the Catholic Church operates the world's largest religious, non-governmental school system. In 2016, the church supported 43,800 secondary schools and 95,200 primary schools. The schools include religious education alongside secular subjects in their curriculum.
Academic institution is an educational institution dedicated to education and research, which grants academic degrees. See also academy and university.
The Diocese of Scranton is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in northeastern Pennsylvania in the United States. It is a suffragan see of Archdiocese of Philadelphia, established on March 3, 1868.
Benedictine Academy was a Catholic parochial, college preparatory high school that served young women in ninth through twelfth grades in Elizabeth, in Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The school was opened in 1915 by the Benedictine Sisters of Elizabeth, Saint Walburga Monastery, and operates under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark.
The National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) is a private, professional educational membership association of over 150,000 educators in Catholic schools, universities, and religious education programs. It is the largest such organization in the world.
Joseph Francis Rummel was a German-born American Catholic prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Omaha in Nebraska from 1928 to 1935 and as archbishop of the Archdiocese of New Orleans from 1935 to 1964.
The history of education in the United States covers the trends in formal educational in America from the 17th century to the early 21st century.
St. John's Academy Inc., formerly known as Saint John Academy, is a private Roman Catholic secondary school in Dinalupihan, Bataan, Philippines. It provides a deeply-rooted Christian formation to the young and supply the volunteers for the Parochial catechetical program at the public schools within the parish. The school is a member of the Diocesan Schools of Bataan (DSOB) and the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP).
In 1800 the Catholics were a small minority everywhere except Maryland. Immigration from Ireland and Germay gave them millions of adherents from the 1840s to the 1880s. Then came millions more from Italy, Poland and Eastern Europe, as well as French Canada. Large numbers of priests and nuns came from Ireland and France. The Irish soon dominated the clergy church, with a great majority of bishops by 1900. As the immigrants arrived new parishes and diocese were created. Rebuffed in efforts to obtain government funds for schools, the Catholics set up a parochial school system largely staffed with nuns. It reached about a third of the children. They also set up colleges. There were few Catholics in the South, apart from Louisiana. However they were well represented in the nation's cities, mill towns and mining centers. Anti-Catholic politics flared briefly in the 1850s, but the Catholic voters surged into the Democratic Party and Irish Catholic politicians played increasingly doiminant roles in Democratic machines in Boston, New York, and other major cities. Devotional practices included daily rosary prayers, regular attendance at Sunday Mass, and special roles for devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and favorite saints.
The 20th-century history of the Catholic Church in the United States was characterized by a period of continuous growth for the Church in the United States, with Catholics progressively evolving from a small minority to a large minority.
The Poughkeepsie plan or Faribault–Stillwater plan was an arrangement contrived in 1873 in Poughkeepsie, New York, to satisfy both the desire of American Catholics to educate their children in a Catholic environment and their preference to have schooling paid for with public funds.
The Church of Our Lady of Mercy is a Roman Catholic parish church under the authority of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at 2496 Marion Avenue, Fordham, Bronx, New York City, New York.
The Church of St. Martin of Tours is a Roman Catholic parish church under the authority of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at 664 Grote Street, South Belmont, Bronx, New York City.
The Church of St. Nicholas of Tolentine is a Roman Catholic parish church under the authority of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, located at Fordham Road at University Avenue, in the Bronx borough of New York City, in the U.S. state of New York. The substantial stone twin-towered is deemed "The Cathedral of the Bronx."
The History of Catholic Education in the United States extends from the early colonial era in Louisiana and Maryland to the parochial school system set up in most parishes in the 19th century, to hundreds of colleges, all down to the present.
Many of these students are not Catholic (the saying goes, we serve this population not because they are Catholic but because we are).