Catholic Schools

Long a major force in American education, new Roman Catholic elementary and secondary schools continue to open in such geographically diverse locations as Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Orlando. At the same time, schools in such places as the Diocese of Brooklyn, the only all-urban diocese in the United States and home to some of the oldest Catholic schools in the nation, continue to close. As a result, the Catholic schools' share of the nonpublic school population has declined from 53% of all students during the 1991–1992 school year to 46.2% of the total during the 2006–2007 year. Yet, even in light of this steady decline, Catholic schools remain the largest nonpublic school “systems” in the United States. In [Page 147]reality, however, Catholic schools are not so ...