Tragic Anniversary: 60 Years of Decline in Catholic Schools
Six decades after the peak of Catholic schooling in the United States, a new report from the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) shows that Catholic school enrollment declined again this year.
It’s a sad way of marking one of the Church’s great accomplishments: a nationwide network of parochial schools that served about 5.6 million students in the 1964-65 school year. But over the next 60 years, enrollment plummeted 70 percent to fewer than 1.7 million students today.
What organization loses 70 percent of its clients over six decades and fails to reform?
Some dioceses are working hard to strengthen their schools, by adopting The Cardinal Newman Society’s curriculum and policy standards and seeking Newman Guide recognition. Individual schools and homeschooling parents are finding new ways of providing Catholic formation. Elsewhere, however, Catholic schools are doing things much like they did for the last few decades, with weak devotion to their Catholic mission.
Catholic families won’t come back to Catholic schools, without substantial reforms and total commitment to authentic Catholic formation. Newman Guide Recommended schools, colleges, and graduate programs are the models for the future.
A crisis ignored
Last week, NCEA quietly released its report, showing a decline of 0.6 percent from the prior year. While 24 new schools opened, 63 closed or consolidated. The takeaway: after a three-year partial recovery from losses during the Covid pandemic, Catholic elementary and secondary schools have once again fallen into decline, albeit at a slow pace.
That’s disappointing to those who believed the hype in the Catholic media, which dangled hope for a long-term recovery for U.S. Catholic education. When Covid struck in 2020, 209 schools closed and the number of students suddenly dropped 6.4 percent—and only about half those students returned in 2021-22. Nevertheless, pundits touted that year’s 3.8 percent growth as the first increase in Catholic school enrollment in more than two decades and the largest increase in more than 50 years. Never mind that the circumstances of a pandemic were quite unusual, and the 2021-22 increase was only a partial recovery from a devastating loss the prior year.
Again in 2022-23, when the recovery stalled and Catholic schools grew only 0.3 percent, school leaders and the Catholic media celebrated a second year of barely staying above water. And last year, when Catholic schools grew zero percent, the celebrations continued. “Catholic schools have emerged as beacons of stability, reversing years of enrollment decline,” NCEA declared.
“Beacons of stability”? Perhaps after six decades of bad news, zero growth seems hopeful. But as we warned last year, it’s perilous to ignore larger trends.
Let’s face facts. Catholic school enrollment across the U.S. took a tumble during Covid, and it never again approached pre-pandemic numbers. Three years after Covid, Catholic schools had gained back only about 60 percent of what they lost in 2020-21. And now, Catholic school enrollment is declining once again.
The 0.6 percent loss in 2024-25 is not nearly as bad as the rates of decline in the two decades before Covid, which averaged around 2 percent each year. But observe the regression from 3.8 percent growth in 2021-22—a partial recovery following a national disaster—to just 0.3 percent growth the next year, zero growth last year, and now a 0.6 percent decline. It doesn’t justify another year of hasty predictions, good or bad.
Hope in school choice?
With nothing good to say about the numbers, the Catholic media coverage is scant relative to last year. One article focuses on the expansion of school choice programs without even acknowledging the enrollment decline.
Sister Dale McDonald, NCEA vice president of public policy, told Catholic News Agency that more than 80 percent of Catholic school students in Florida and Ohio benefit from school choice. Choice programs are also helping more than 50 percent of Catholic school students in Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, and Oklahoma. Nationally, 18 percent of students benefit from school choice dollars, a substantial increase from 13.7 percent last year.
What’s not explained is why national enrollment is declining, even as school choice programs are growing. In the states where most students received aid from school choice programs, Catholic schools saw only modest gains, ranging from 2.4 percent in Iowa and 2.3 percent in Florida to just 0.5 percent in Arizona. In Indiana, enrollment declined 0.2 percent.
It would seem that the cost of Catholic education is not the only concern preventing Catholic families from returning to Catholic schools. Not everything can be reduced to dollars.
Trouble spots
Meanwhile, other trends deserve attention:
- Declining Catholic students: A faithful Catholic school’s strongest appeal should be to Catholic families, yet it’s the Catholics who are fleeing Catholic schools. Even while total enrollment declined 70 percent since 1964, non-Catholic students tripled in number since 1970 (the earliest date we could find data) and now represent 21.8 percent of students. That’s an increase from 21 percent last year, 11.2 percent in 1980, and only 2.7 percent in 1970. The portion who are Catholics (and some others who did not report their religion) has declined 69 percent since 1970 and an estimated 76 percent since 1964.
- Preschool padding: Since 1987, when NCEA started counting pre-Kindergarten children, their number at Catholic schools has grown more than 150 percent. Preschool children now account for more than 10 percent of what NCEA calls “elementary school” enrollment. Students in grades 1-8 alone have declined 78 percent since 1964.
- Poor retention: The retention rate for diocesan superintendents of Catholic schools declined from 73.4 percent last year to 70.5 percent this year. Three years of diocesan leadership is simply not enough to turn around failing schools. Why did 30 percent of superintendents leave?
Ultimately, the hope for Catholic schools lies not in more dollars or more students—these are band-aids for symptoms that point to a lack of appeal to the core constituency of Catholic education, which is faithful Catholic families. Dollars coming from the wrong sources, including government and woke corporations, can weaken Catholic education. Increased enrollment from families who do not treasure the Catholic faith and the blessing of solid Catholic formation will also weaken schools.
Our solution is to embrace faithful standards that lead to Newman Guide recognition and participation in the Newman Guide Network of model schools, colleges, and graduate programs. There is no compromise in Newman Guide education. It is formation that families can trust.
Your support promotes and defends faithful Catholic education!
The Cardinal Newman Society relies on the generosity of our supporters to promote and defend faithful Catholic education — which is the key to seeing the Church restored and our culture renewed. Will you partner with us today to ensure this critical mission continues and grows even as the culture becomes more hostile to Catholic values?