Let's be true to our schools: parish-based, urban education is a mission our church should accept. (margin notes).

EDUCATION IS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION AMERICANS from all political persuasions claim to value. A superior education transcends its inherent worth to the individual to become a social good shared by all, a guarantor of a fair start in American life, better citizenship and economic productivity, and a bulwark against social inequity and discrimination. As a result, education typically tops the list of social issues of most concern to African American parents.

Unfortunately, despite several decades of various reform efforts that have been all over the ideological map, urban public schools remain in distress. Many high schools still report drop-out rates of 50 percent or more. Folks in America's rural and urban counties don't have to be told something's amiss with the education system. They struggle with it every school day. Those who can afford to have been voting with their feet in an expensive--for the families--exodus to Catholic schools.

For these refugees from public education, Catholic schools offer an opportunity to break generational cycles of poverty by giving kids from even the poorest inner-city communities a shot at a decent education. For decades Catholic schools have been running the most understated antipoverty program in U.S. history in urban parishes once European ethnic and Catholic and now Hispanic, African American, and increasingly non-Catholic.

That last bit poses a problem for folks who would otherwise be strong supporters of Catholic schools. Many wonder why Catholic dioceses--threatened as many are by budget shortfalls and now new worries about the long-term cost of settling clergy sexual abuse cases--should commit pinched resources to schools that are sometimes dominated by non-Catholics. Indeed, many dioceses are balancing budgets by abandoning the church's historic commitment to education, and large-scale school closings have become an urban commonplace.

The spectacle of such closings is sad for many reasons, not least of which its symbolic depiction of a church in retreat from its one-time cultural core, but also for what it says about the hierarchy's priorities. Attending a parish school was a presumption for Catholic kids of previous generations. It should at least be a realistic option for kids of the future.

Yes, in poor communities that will mean keeping schools open with large diocesan subsidies, and it will mean finding new money to keep tuition affordable or provide more scholarships to hard-pressed parents. Owing to the profound nearsightedness of the Democratic Party and teachers' unions, Catholic dioceses cannot count on federal vouchers or tuition reimbursement mechanisms to keep running. Keeping urban-based parochial schools open may simply be another communal responsibility that needs to be shouldered by the church outright.

Study after study reports that African American kids do better in Catholic schools. The church's expertise and history in education is a gift it brings to American life. Is it not sinful to squander such a gift now to respond to short-term budget constraints?

What's required is a revolution of vision such that the schools are recognized as a gospel mission of service to the broader community. They can't be viewed as a threat to diocesan fiscal stability but as a core commitment of the complete Catholic mission in America, not unlike our commitment to Catholic health care and other social services that already cost the church a good bit of cash but are offered to all comers without scanning religious affiliation cards.

The role Catholic schools have played for generations of Catholic immigrant children, that is as the keystone for economic success and political power in American life, they can and should play for new generations of African American, Hispanic, and new immigrant children--Catholic and non-Catholic alike. That is a small offering in faith to a nation that has rewarded this immigrant Catholic community so profoundly and a worthy and reasonable investment in the future that all Americans share together.

By KEVIN CLARKE, managing editor of online products at Claretian Publications in Chicago.