In the USA over 220 Catholic schools closed in 2006, many of which were in urban areas, leaving a number of parents, students, and teachers forced to find new schools. Financial troubles are affl icting Catholic schools around the country as parish subsidies decrease and school enrollments drop, while the costs of educating students in Catholic schools increases. But Catholic schools are still an indispensable presence in urban education. Urban education in the USA is inadequate. Catholic schools, especially urban Catholic schools, have been shown to actually increased student achievement, as measured by standardized test scores, dropout rates,1 and even college admission. The situation is complex, and the literature on urban Catholic schools refl ects this complexity and begs the question of how to sustain these Catholic schools.
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O’Keefe, J., Scheopner, A. (2007). No Margin, No Mission: Challenges for Catholic Urban Schools in the USA. In: Grace, G., O’Keefe, J. (eds) International Handbook of Catholic Education. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5776-2_2
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