As the 3,919 students who participated in the first year of Indiana's new, wide-reaching school voucher program near the end of the first semester in their new schools, the program faces its next challenge: A state court hearing opened on Dec. 19 on a lawsuit arguing the program violates Indiana's constitution. The Choice Scholarship program, one…

The nation's Roman Catholic schools have labored for decades under increasingly adverse economic and demographic conditions, which have undermined their finances and sapped their enrollment. Today, researchers and supporters say those schools face one of their most complex challenges yet: the continued growth of charter schools. Since they first…

A report timed to coincide with the U.S. visit of Pope Benedict XVI highlights what it calls the "crisis" of a steadily shrinking pool of urban Catholic schools and outlines measures--some of which are already being tested on a limited scale--to arrest and possibly reverse the trend. Since 1990, more than 1,300 Roman Catholic schools in the United…

This article reports that charter schools, which the Bush administration has strongly supported, may have effectively helped undermine Catholic schools--the nation's largest provider of faith-based education. Whether the proliferation of charter schools in urban areas is fueling the demise of inner-city Roman Catholic schools is not a new…

Proposed child-labor-rule changes--the most ambitious in 30 years--would carve out a permanent exemption to U.S. Department of Labor regulations for the work-study program run by a national network of Roman Catholic high schools. The program is a requirement of the Chicago-based Cristo Rey Network, which now has 12 high schools around the country…

In this article, the author reports how religious schools are being pressed to spell out their policies regarding gay students and the children of same-sex couples. As homosexuality has become one of the fiercest battlefronts in the "culture wars," religious schools have found it harder to exclude gays or their children without lawsuits or…

Last week, in the Archdiocese of New Orleans students returned to class in 37 Roman Catholic schools that opened for the first time since Hurricane Katrina blasted the region six weeks ago. School officials were surprised to see families returning much sooner and in greater numbers than expected. With the reopening of six high schools and 30…

In this article, the author features the Gesu School, a small, inner-city, K-8 Catholic school in Philadelphia. She describes how it has transformed itself since 1993 from a school barely eking out an existence to one with a $5 million--and growing--endowment fund and a powerful, ecumenical board of business executives and other lay people. The…

When Pope John Paul II visited Immaculate Conception School in Los Angeles 18 years ago, he came with a message of support for Roman Catholic education and with rosaries for the students. This article tells the story of schools that took time to remember the legacy of the 84-year-old leader of the Catholic Church, who died April 2. Teachers and…

This article reports on the growth in evangelical Christian schools. According to new data from the U.S. Department of Education, the 1990s saw significant shifts in religious-school attendance patterns, as enrollment in schools operated by evangelical Christians rose, while enrollment at Roman Catholic schools declined. Children in Catholic…

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings called on the nation's Roman Catholic schools to become active in providing tutoring to public school students under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Under the law, public schools that fail to meet improvement goals for two consecutive years must provide transportation for students to transfer to…

The challenges of keeping Catholic schools open in working-class neighborhoods were brought home last February 2005, when the Archdiocese of Chicago announced it would close 23 elementary schools and merge or consolidate four others in June 2005. Two weeks earlier, the Diocese of Brooklyn in New York City decided to close 26 elementary schools in…

These articles highlight reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling upholding the Cleveland voucher program. "Justices Settle Case, Nettle Policy Debate" (Mark Walsh) discusses how the ruling has rejuvenated the school choice movement and reinvigorated debates over how best to improve education for all students. "Voucher…