The National Review asked Partnership Superintendent Kathleen Porter-Magee to comment on the recent increase in Catholic school enrollment. She kicks off her response with this observation:

So much has gone wrong in American education in the past few years—school closures, rising levels of violence, watered-down curricula, politicized classrooms—that it would be easy to miss one of the biggest educational comeback stories in a generation. After a half-century of declining enrollment, America’s Catholic schools are bouncing back. While parents are leading this resurgence, it will take policy-makers to ensure that the flight to quality education lasts.

One reason we often overlook the American Catholic school “system” is that it isn’t much of a system at all. Rather than being led by a central authority, American Catholic schools are a great example of our country’s commitment to local civic institutions. From the dawn of Catholic education in the United States, schools were created by local communities — largely parishes, but also religious orders — for local communities. This agile, community-centered orientation contributed to the sector’s responsiveness and leadership through the Covid-era crisis.

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