For low-income minority students, cheap Catholic schools are better than expensive public schools

The Pittsburgh public schools have an enrollment of 26,649 students, and an annual budget of $529.8 million. That works out to $19,880 per student per year.

By comparison, the Catholic schools in Pittsburgh charge approximately $7,500 tuition per student per year. The low-income minority children who get scholarships to Catholic schools in Pittsburgh through the privately funded Extra Mile Education Foundation have much better attendance rates, graduation rates, and academic performance, than the students at the Pittsburgh public schools.

So, these students who get these scholarships to the Catholic schools are living in poverty, and yet they do better than the students in the public schools, and the cost per student of these Catholic schools is less than half the cost of the public schools.

There goes the bogus excuse that the public schools are “underfunded.”

There goes the bogus excuse that students living in poverty is an excuse for academic failure.

Imagine that – a $7,500 Catholic school does a better job of teaching low-income minority students than a public school that costs more than twice as much.

So, while the public schools have spent the past 40 years “fixing” themselves, the Extra Mile Education Foundation has been making sure that children get a real education.