Catholic Schools and Jewish Rye
Caroline MolloyLong before DEI became a thing, a Brooklyn-based Jewish bakery offered its own playful take on diversity in a now-iconic series of subway ads. The ads featured a variety of people—a Native American man, a robed choirboy, a white cop, a black child—all enjoying sandwiches over this now-famous tag line: “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish rye.”
That ought to be the message of Catholic Schools Week. The 4,731 Catholic grade schools and 1,174 secondary schools now celebrating do a superb job educating their students—with the National Catholic Educational Association reporting 99% of their high-school students graduating on time and 85.2% going on to four-year colleges.
Now may be their moment. Covid literally brought home to ordinary moms and dads what their kids were being taught in public schools. They also saw how resistant those schools were to any accountability—Attorney General Merrick Garland even sicced the FBI on parents who showed up for school-board meetings. But while the teachers unions cheered on the school closings, Catholic school students were in their classrooms. The contrast launched a parents revolution.
Most of the hard-won gains have been at the state level. Where five years ago not a single state offered universal school choice, today 12 states offer it, with the NCEA reporting that 13.7% of Catholic school students are there because of a choice program. For the first time in nearly a quarter-century, Catholic school enrollment in 2023 increased slightly, to 1.7 million students. And on the menu for 2025 are school-choice proposals in Texas, Idaho, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming.
