Challenged by charters, private and parochial school enrollments fall
Old-line independent schools scramble for new ways to fill seats, make money
NEW ORLEANS—A more or less orderly line of four-year-olds, the boys in uniform blue polo shorts and the girls in plaid-checked jumpers, line up in the corridor of St. Rita Catholic School in the neighborhood known as Uptown.
College banners hang from the ceilings, inspirational passages on the walls, and a sign on the door that says these newest, youngest St. Rita scholars will be heading to college in 2029.
Catholic schools like this one have exceptional records of success; almost all of their graduates do, in fact, go on to college. But that hasn’t been enough to keep them from hemorrhaging students.
And it’s not just in New Orleans, where the archdiocese has also had to contend with the exodus that followed Hurricane Katrina, and where 20 Catholic schools have closed in the period beginning even before Katrina hit, including three last year.Confronted with falling birth rates and demographic shifts, rising tuition, the growth of charter schools, and other challenges, parochial schools are seeing their enrollments plummet.
Catholic schools nationwide have fewer than half as many students as they did 50 years ago, and the decline has resumedin the last 10 years after leveling off briefly in the late 1990s, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Nearly 1,650 schools have closed or been consolidated in the last 10 years, 88 of Challenged by charters, private and parochial school enrollments fall - The Hechinger Report: