In the past two decades in the United States, more than 1,600 Catholic elementary and secondary schools have closed, and more than 4,500 charter schools—public schools that are often privately operated and freed from certain regulations—have opened, many in urban areas. With a particular emphasis on Catholic school closures, Lost Classroom, Lost Community examines the implications of these dramatic shifts in the urban educational landscape. More than just educational institutions, Catholic schools promote the development of social capital—the social networks and mutual trust that form the foundation of safe and cohesive communities. Drawing on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and crime reports collected at the police beat or census tract level in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, Margaret F. Brinig and Nicole Stelle Garnett demonstrate that the loss of Catholic schools triggers disorder, crime, and an overall decline in community cohesiveness, and suggest that new charter schools fail to fill the gaps left behind. This book shows that the closing of Catholic schools harms the very communities they were created to bring together and serve, and it will have vital implications for both education and policing policy debates.

"Offers the spiritual foundations that should define/suffuse Catholic education, at every level, to ensure that Catholic schools are providing the education that they promise"--

Excerpt from The Catholic School System in the United States: Its Principles, Origin, and Establishment IT has been the aim of the author in the present volume to exhibit a coherent view of the Catholic school movement in the United States from the earliest times down to the great immigration period, which began about the year 1840. The character istic feature of the movement during all this time was the steady efiort to build and equip schools, provide teachers, and overcome fundamental difli culties both from within and from without. It was the period of the establishment of the schools. There was comparatively little in the way of aca demic progress. This came later on, when the in flux of religious Orders from Europe and their rapid growth provided a greater supply of teachers, and thus made it possible to give to the teacher a better training. It is the intention to present a study of this second period, that of the development of the schools, in another volume. The educational work of Bishop Hughes obviously belongs to the first of these two periods rather than to the second, and for this reason, notwithstanding some disturb ance of the chronological order, it is dealt with in the present volume. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Walch presents the dramatic story of a social institution that has adapted itself to constant change without abandoning its goals of preserving the faith of its children and preparing them for productive roles in American society.