Media Reviews
Recent academic research, like the 2014 book Lost Classroom, Lost Community by two professors at the University of Notre Dame, has confirmed that Catholic schools help stabilize their communities. When President Bush asked me to help organize the 2008 White House summit on inner-city faith-based schooling, he characterized the situation as a 'crisis.' Less than a decade later, Catholic schools are budding for a renaissance. --Karl Zinsmeister Wall Street Journal
It is rare that one encounters a book that is seminal, well written and important, all at the same time. But, Lost Classroom, Lost Community . . . is such a book. It sets forth a new argument for keeping our Catholic schools vibrant, and instantly makes itself a 'must read' for every bishop, every school superintendent, event director of a state Catholic conference, every lobbyist for Catholic conferences, as well as anyone, Catholic or not, who cares about bringing relief to the often miserable conditions that confront urban America. --Michael Sean Winters National Catholic Reporter
By all accounts, the loss of an inner-city Catholic school is a blow to its disadvantaged students. But is there more to this story? What happens to the neighborhood--the urban fabric--when the bells stop ringing once and for all? That question is probed in a groundbreaking new book, Lost Classroom, Lost Community. --William Bole OSV Newsweekly
An insightful new analysis. . . . Lost Classroom, Lost Community's sobering last chapter asks readers to imagine the implications of cities without Catholic schools; the loss of quality social capital-building education in traditional neighborhoods, leaving families unable to afford alternatives to poor quality public schools struggling in the wake of others seeking refuge away from their declining neighborhoods. --Will Seath Fare Forward
Aims to demonstrate a relationship between urban Catholic schools and the community context. Interestingly, in order to highlight the relationship between Catholic schools and social capital, the authors focus their attention on what occurs outside the urban Catholic school after the school closes rather than what occurs inside the Catholic school to raise levels of social trust or capital in a neighborhood. In this manner, the book focuses less on Catholic education as a context, but more on the data used to measure social capital in the neighborhoods Catholic schools leave behind when they close. --Ursula S. Aldana, University of San Francisco Journal of Catholic Education
This is a sad and important story for an array of reasons. If the Catholic school closure trend does not look like it will abate anytime soon, perhaps policy makers can learn from Lost Classroom and devise policies that will help to better preserve effective classrooms and urban neighborhoods. That is, perhaps Catholic schools' legacy can at least partially offset the consequences from Catholic school closures in American cities. --Michael Heise, Cornell Law School Texas Law Review
As the important book Lost Classroom, Lost Community argues, urban Catholic schools have been in the social-capital business for a century, to great effect. We must do everything we can to stem their demise. --Michael J. Petrilli National Review
For generations, Catholic schools have created social capital in dense, urban environments, protecting communities from crime, decay, and decline--even while giving families an educational alternative. Quietly but surely, Brinig and Garnett's study of the impact of Catholic schools in Chicago makes a strong case for preserving religious-based education in our urban areas. If school vouchers became generally available, they would provide these valuable religious schools with the financial backing necessary to place them on an even playing field with the new, secular charter schools that are regularly occupying vacated Catholic school buildings. Lost Classroom, Lost Community is a solid, scholarly contribution to the school choice conversation. --Paul E. Peterson, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government author of Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning
It has been argued for decades that Catholic schools are somewhat unique in their ability to create community and social capital. What is new in Lost Classroom, Lost Community is a clear link between theoretical arguments about this relationship and a policy program intended to preserve Catholic schools that is put into terms a more general audience may understand. While school choice is usually advocated from a markets perspective, Brinig and Garnett argue that school choice should be less geared toward competition (which Catholic schools are, after all, losing) and more geared toward creating social capital. To me, this is the most interesting aspect of their book. --Christopher Witko University of South Carolina
Lost Classroom, Lost Community provides a context for better understanding the consequences and implications of urban Catholic school closures. . . . Brinig and Garnett have conducted an original and compelling study that is a must read for scholars in the disciplines of urban education, Catholic education, educational policies, urban policies, and sociology. --Karen A. Johnson, University of Utah Teachers College Record
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