White House Report on Faith Based Schools

The growing trend of closing Christian schools in urban neighborhoods is at crisis levels, a recent White House report states. At Palm View, we have watched as fellow schools have closed around us. We remain the highest enrolled, most affordable Christian school PK-8 in the area. The attached 176 page report (some of you may enjoy it!) highlights the problem and sets forward several solutions.

From the Department of Education:

Last week, the White House released an important report on a mounting educational challenge affecting underserved students in America's cities: the rapid closure of faith-based urban schools. Preserving a Critical National Asset: America’s Disadvantaged Students and the Crisis on Faith-Based Urban Schools. The report serves as a follow up to the White House Summit on Inner-City Children and Faith-Based Schools, which occurred in April 2008. At the Summit, President Bush brought together educators, policymakers, community leaders, and others to develop strategies helping to preserve these valuable educational institutions.
In a statement made on Friday, the White House highlighted the significance of the problem. “[I]nner-city faith-based schools have helped educate generations of low-income American students. Yet, between the 1999-2000 and 2005-06 school years, the Nation lost nearly 1,200 of these faith-based schools, and those remaining had nearly 425,000 fewer students.”
Report Overview
In the statement announcing the report, the White House stated, “The [White House] report chronicles the historical role of faith-based schools in America;particularly their service of low-income, urban populations—explains the caused of their rapid disappearance, and, most importantly, offers recommendations for reversing this dangerous trend. The White House believes that State and local governments, philanthropists, higher education institutions, educational entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders that take up these recommendations can help keep the doors of inner-city faith based schools open to America's disadvantaged students.”


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