The Institute of Notre Dame, a 170-year-old Catholic girls’ school in Baltimore whose graduates included Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senator Barbara Mikulski, announced in May that it would close.
“Sad news,” Pelosi tweeted. Mikulski called it a “treasured institution.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the number of urban Catholic and other private schools that are closing amid financial pressure and dwindling enrollment. Contrary to popular understanding, many private school students are from middle- and low-income families, and many private schools are expressly dedicated to serving them (see Figure 1). As of July 9, a Cato Institute tracker listed 97 private schools that had announced permanent closures attributed at least partially to the pandemic.
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Juliet Squire is a partner on the policy and evaluation team at Bellwether Education Partners, where she concentrates on issues related to charter schools, private-school choice, and rural education. ACE Academies, EdChoice, and Partnership Schools have been clients of Bellwether Education Partners.
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