MARY ALICE WILLIAMS: Thank you, Bob. The Private Fund School Choice Scholarship Foundation ran a lottery to give the poorest of public school kids a chance to attend any nonpublic school of their choice. Thirteen hundred out of 10,000 were picked, and from all the exclusive private schools in the city, archdiocesan-based schools were the choice of 75 percent of the lottery winners. Now, are the parochial schools better than the public schools? Just ask Felicia Hercules. Each morning Felicia Hercules leaves her working-class neighborhood in the Bronx, where parents keep their kids inside, away from the gunshots and the drugs. She rides the train to East Harlem to a Catholic parochial school. Felicia is one of a growing number of non-Catholics whose parents send them there because of some hard facts. Nationally, Catholic schools outdeliver public schools in lower drop-out rates, higher test scores, and a 99 percent graduation rate. In fact, the graduation rate for minorities in Catholic schools is greater than any of the graduation rates of whites. Why?Brother PAUL BEAUDIN (Principal, St. Francis Academy): Everything we do here, including computer science, has to do with faith, charity, a sense of duty, responsibility, and the pursuit of wisdom.
WILLIAMS (to Brother Beaudin): Personal responsibility?
Brother BEAUDIN: Absolutely.
WILLIAMS: What do you mean by that?
Brother BEAUDIN: That we hold children accountable for what they do every second of the day. We demand the best of them, we don't compromise that. And we try to hold parents accountable.WILLIAMS: Brother Paul Beaudin runs a tight ship at Felicia's school, St. Francis St. Lucy Academy. Pupils are expected to show up on time, well groomed, homework complete, and behavior in check, or they'll get detention.
FELICIA HERCULES (Student, St. Francis Academy): I don't want to get detention. It's boring. They don't even let you read.
WILLIAMS: Felicia knows something about that. In her transition to parochial school, she learned fast that what was tolerated in the public school wouldn't fly here.
ENA HERCULES-WOOD (Felicia's Mother): In the public schools, kids get away with a lot. I think kids have an edge over the teachers because, you know what? There's no one there to discipline a child at the time when they disrupt a class. And then when your child belongs in a public school and the teachers try to get the parents involved, the parents never show up. So that problem is still there.WILLIAMS: Felicia's mother, like most parents who make the sacrifice to put a child through parochial school, is involved. Ena Hercules-Wood immigrated from Trinidad six years ago with four daughters in tow. It was Felicia's public school teacher who felt if Felicia stayed in public school, she'd be lost. Now, Felicia's mother, in addition to working long hours in a strenuous job at a top fashion house, spends her days off cleaning other people's houses to pay Felicia's tuition.
Ms. HERCULES-WOOD: When Felicia's grades started to build up, up, she went up and went up until she got at the top. That's where she is right now. And I'm very pleased, and she's pleased with herself, too.
WILLIAMS: Inner-city Catholic schools succeed despite formidable odds. Their buildings are aging. The archdiocese funding is being reduced. They offer top teachers as much as $10,000 less per year than their public school counterparts. Dr. Catherine Hickey is school superintendent for the Archdiocese of New York.
Dr. CATHERINE HICKEY (Superintendent, Archdiocese of New York): We succeed because we know who we are, we have a mission, we have a focus, and we do not vary from that. We concentrate on basic things.
Dr. FRANK MACCHIAROLA (President, St. Francis College): Well, Catholic schools have an advantage. They sort of know where they're going. Saving souls and educating youngsters so that they can take care of themselves is pretty strong, strong anchor to any school system.WILLIAMS: Dr. Frank Macchiarola was for five years chancellor of the huge bureaucracy that is New York City's public school system.
Dr. HICKEY: The principals are able to mold their programs based on the needs of the children. The school-based autonomy is very important. It's part of the genius of our system, that these principals do have that kind of authority and responsibility.
Brother BEAUDIN: A child comes back to us and says, "You know, what you taught us here is not the way other people live." And then I say to them, "That's right, and now you choose." When they leave these walls they have to make a decision. Hopefully we've given them a solid foundation to make the right decision. And by and large they do.
Ms. HERCULES: I feel kind of better, that I can be somebody, you know. Somebody really important in life and grow up to be somebody who can do something with their life. God made you special and you can do anything in the future if you keep on doing your work.
WILLIAMS: I don't know that they can't. The simplicity of it is that children live up to other people's expectations of them. If the children are expected to show up prepared to learn, and to respect each other, they're going to do it.
