Catholic Closures Linked to Growth of City Charters

Planned White House ‘summit’ raises enrollment-trend issues.

Whether the proliferation of charter schools in urban areas is fueling the demise of inner-city Roman Catholic schools is not a new question. But it came into sharp focus following last month’s State of the Union address , in which President Bush said faith-based schools “are disappearing at an alarming rate in many of America’s inner cities.”

In his speech to Congress, the president called for a White House “summit” meeting on inner-city children and religious schools. Ironically, some analysts say, charter schools, which the Bush administration has strongly supported, may have effectively helped undermine Catholic schools—the nation’s largest provider of faith-based education.

Among those listening to the speech from the House galleries was the Rev. Ronald J. Nuzzi, the director of the Alliance for Catholic Education leadership program at the University of Notre Dame, who has called charters “one of the biggest threats to Catholic schools in the...