CATO INSTITUTE: WHY PRESIDENT OBAMA WON’T SAVE URBAN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS: In an op-ed in today’s Washington Post, Chester E. Finn Jr. and Andy Smarick urge the President to use stimulus funds to help save urban Catholic (and other religious) schools that have been closing in recent years at an alarming rate. Andrew Coulson at the Cato@Liberty blog says that ain’t gonna happen, for three reasons:
- • The president is unfamiliar with the evidence on the superiority of private and especially urban Catholic schools
- • He thinks that his administration will succeed in dramatically improving public schools all over the country, despite the failure of all his predecessors’ efforts
- • He thinks that making it easier for poor parents to choose private schools would hurt him politically
I’m not holding my breath waiting for the federal government to help urban Catholic and religious schools anytime soon. Vouchers alone would save most of these private schools, in my opinion. But I’ve thought for a while that the last thing in America to be voucherized will be education. We’ve already got vouchers for all sorts of government-funded services, including pre-schools. But it’s a long way from here to there.