Full Description
This book examines how Catholic educators grappled with public educational policies and reforms like standardization and accreditation, educational measurement and testing, and federal funding for schools during the early to mid-twentieth century. These issues elicited an array of reactions including resistance, cooperation, and co-optation.
American Catholics had established one of the largest private educational organizations in the United States by the twentieth century. It rivaled only that of the public school system. At mid-century Catholic schools enrolled some 12 percent of the American school-age population and their enrollments grew in number through the 1960s.
The Catholic Church's lobbying arm, the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), used its well-earned stature to push for federal funds for students attending their schools. The NCWC succeeded in securing funds with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 for students needing special education services and students living in poverty attending Catholic schools. This signified a major shift in American education policy.
Despite this radical change, Catholic schools lost significant enrollment over the next several decades to public, private, and newly minted public charter schools. Catholic schools faced an increasingly competitive landscape in an ever-expanding school-choice environment that they helped create.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. What Is an American Public School?
2. A "Heterodoxical Spectacle": Public Recognition and Accreditation
3. "More Than Measurable Human Products": Educational Measurement and Intelligence Testing
4. "Secularization Would Never Be Worth the Price": Federal Funding, Catholic Schools, and the Great Depression
5. The Sectarian Question: The National Education Association and the National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1930-1956
6. "Did We Break an Arm Sliding Home?": The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965
7. What Is an American Catholic School in an Era of Choice?
Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
