For American Catholic schools, an encouraging trend in Florida

You don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate how Catholic schools offer high quality at low cost; how they lifted generations of working-class families into the American mainstream; and how entire communities can be set adrift, when the Catholic schools that anchor them fade away. Margaret F. Brinig and Nicole Stelle Garnett documented this in their book, “Lost Classroom, Lost Community.”

For this reason, the closing of 7,000 Catholic schools over the last 60 years has been a national tragedy in slow motion. But there are good reasons to be hopeful those trend lines will change.

One is the accelerating expansion of school choice. Another is Florida.

Millions of families who stopped enrolling their children in Catholic schools did not do so because they no longer valued them. Rather, they stopped because they could no longer afford them.

Even the modest tuition typical of Catholic schools became too much for many middle-class and working-class households, as underscored by the findings of this 2018 national parents survey, commissioned by the National Catholic Education Association and Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities.

Most respondents did not think Catholic schools were affordable, the survey found. But about two-thirds said they would be more likely to consider them if tuition subsidies were available.

That’s where school choice comes in. Eleven states have created expansive, state-funded education choice programs in the past three years alone. Growing numbers of families will again be able to access Catholic schools for their children, if that’s what they think is best.

In Florida, that’s exactly what more and more families are doing.

Over the last 10 years, Catholic school enrollment is down more than 20 percent in Pennsylvania and Illinois, and more than 30 percent in New York and New Jersey. Nationally, it’s down 14 percent.

In Florida, it’s up 9 percent. Florida, in fact, is the only state in the top 10 for Catholic school enrollment to see gains over the last decade. School choice is a big reason why.

Florida’s private school choice programs are especially robust, not only in terms of eligibility but with scholarship value and available funding.

Under HB 1, the historic bill that the Florida Legislature passed last year and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law, every student is now eligible for a choice scholarship. This year, nearly 400,000 students are using them. On average, each scholarship is worth about $8,000, and total state support this year is roughly $3 billion.

Since 2014, the percentage of students using choice scholarships in Florida Catholic schools has grown from 18 percent to 75 percent. Last summer, we documented the trend lines in a widely circulated white paper, and last week, we issued an update brief, given fresh data from the National Catholic Educational Association and Florida Catholic Conference that further amplifies how much Florida is an outlier.

And there’s more to this story than just school choice. Among other important subplots: Florida Catholic schools have become increasingly, multi-dimensionally diverse.

With students of color as a whole, Florida Catholic schools are now as diverse as Florida’s public schools. The number of students using special needs scholarships rose by 37 percent this past year alone (to 8,296 total). And over the last decade, the percentage of non-Catholic students climbed from 13 percent to 19 percent. The numbers suggest a wide array of families want what Catholic schools offer — and Florida’s Catholic schools are embracing them.

This growth is happening in the most competitive educational environment in America. Over the last 10 years, the number of private schools in Florida has grown by more than 30 percent. Ditto for charter schools. The options offered by school districts — magnet schools, career academies, open enrollment, and so on — has also exploded. Yet Catholic schools are flourishing.

Some Catholic schools that were holding save-our-school fundraisers 10 or 15 years ago are now full. In the Diocese of Venice, all 16 schools now have wait-lists. Several new schools across the state have opened, and one — St. Malachy near Fort Lauderdale — re-opened last fall after being shut down in 2009.

This is no accident. Catholic schools have adjusted without compromising the core Catholic education they’ve always delivered. They have embraced innovative academic programming — whether it’s International Baccalaureate programs, dual language immersion or a classical curriculum — to give even more families even more reason to choose them. They’re also deploying cutting-edge communications strategies to ensure families know choice scholarships are available.

In coming years, the expansion of school choice across the country will bring unprecedented opportunities to Catholic education supporters. We hope the Florida story can inspire and instruct.

The Sunshine State is leading an incredibly broad-based movement that’s benefiting all families, no matter what options they prefer. But when it comes to growing Catholic schools, there’s no reason it should continue to be an outlier.

Lauren May is director of advocacy at Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers Florida’s education choice scholarship programs, and a former Catholic school teacher and principal. Ron Matus is Step Up’s director of research and special projects.