An Update on Vernon C. Polite's: The Future Viability of Catholic High Schools that Serve Predominately Black Student Populations

Across the country, more Catholic schools are closing, as support for parochial schools in impoverished communities dwindles. Dr. Vernon C. Polite, Dean of the School of Education at the time he was selected to present at AERA (Dr. Polite joined the School of Education at Eastern Michigan University as its Dean during the summer of 2005.) published extensively on predominantly African American Catholic high schools. He invited the writer, who was serving as a Special Assistant to the Dean of the School of Education at Bowie State University, to develop and write a paper updating the status since his published work. The author accepted and expanded the paper to include its relative importance to her prior knowledge of the Washington Scholarship Program and the Archdiocese of Washington through her work with the Office of Non Public Education (ONPE) in the Office of Innovation & Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education and formal and informal conversations with third world clergy from Catholic University, one of whom taught as an Adjunct Professor at Bowie State University during the Spring of 2005. The update uses Detroit, New York and Boston as examples of large urban areas that traditionally supported Catholic high schools in predominantly African American communities but were forced to close them. While closings occurred across the cities, the African American communities were particularly hard hit, despite the high achievement of students enrolled in these high schools relative to the high schools' counterparts. These losses will be particularly felt because the cultural identities of these schools will be lost. The closings are directly linked to budget deficits in all cases. In most case, the parishes in which these high schools are located do not have the resources to sustain them without help from the archdioceses in these cities. The writer relates the current closings to Vernon Clayton Polite's study of 31 schools, 26 of which are in cities or areas that emphasize the cultures of the schools and their importance in Catholicism, as seen through data from surveys, the eyes of the principals and controlled observations. (Contains 1 table.)