Lost Classroom, Lost Community ─ Catholic Schools' Importance in Urban America

For decades, Catholic schools served as one of the main alternatives to public schools for at-risk children in urban neighborhoods. However, increasingly of recent, Catholic schools are failing at the hand of their outdated financial models that depend upon donations from parishioners, and the diminishment of their original purpose of providing a religion-infused education to working-class ethnic Catholics. Additionally, Catholic schools face increased competition for students from charter schools, rising costs of tuition, and a decreasing loyalty from the Catholic constituency for which they were initially created.
Beyond Classroom Walls argues that the loss of Catholic schools as community institutions is detrimental to the urban areas they were created to serve and cohere.

Margaret F. Brinig is the Fritz Duda Family Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame and a fellow of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives. She is the author of several books, including, most recently, Family, Law, and Community: Supporting the Covenant, also published by the University of Chicago Press. She lives in Granger, IN. Nicole Stelle Garnett is professor of law at the University of Notre Dame and a fellow of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives. She writes extensively about both urban policy and education policy and is the author of Ordering the City: Land Use, Policing, and the Restoration of Urban America. She lives in South Bend, IN.