The following is a Catholic Action League of Massachusetts press release…
CLAIMS CATHOLIC GRADS “OVER-REPRESENTED” AT BOSTON LATIN
CHARGES GRADE INFLATION AT PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS
CALLS FOR SET ASIDES TO DISFAVOR CATHOLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS
The Boston Globe, a newspaper which opposes tuition vouchers and tax credits, and which supports the Anti-Aid “Know-Nothing” Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution, is now complaining that there are too many Catholic grammar school graduates at America’s oldest public school—Boston Latin School.
In a chilling and astonishing editorial in yesterday’s Boston Sunday Globe, the newspaper’s editorial board called for overt, institutional, and presumptively illegal discrimination against Catholic school students in admissions to Boston Latin, the most prestigious of the three elite exam schools in the city’s public school system.
Since 2016, so-called progressives have mounted a campaign to change admission standards at Boston Latin, claiming that minorities are under represented in a student body where white and Asian students have been the most competitive in admissions and academic performance. In a city school system which is 86% minority, Boston Latin is the only school where white students, at 47%, are still a plurality. At 29%, Asian students are the second largest demographic at Latin.
According to the Globe, students from private and parochial schools—all of whom are residents of the City of Boston and have families who pay taxes to fund public schools—are “over represented” at Latin School. Incredibly, and without citing hard evidence, the Globe charges that Catholic school students benefit from an unjust preference in admissions due to alleged grade inflation at Catholic schools—suggesting academic standards at parochial schools are actually lower than those in the city’s public schools.
The newspaper’s proposed remedy for this non-existent preference is affirmative action quotas in the form of “advantages” and set asides for public elementary school students. This means Catholic school students would be unlawfully discriminated against in admissions to Boston Latin.
Such discrimination is prohibited by both Title IV of the U. S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Chapter 76, Section 5 of the Massachusetts General Laws, which regulates school attendance in the Commonwealth.
The Catholic Action League characterized the editorial as “brazen, barefaced bigotry, masquerading as a quest for diversity, from a newspaper with a multi-generational history of hostility to Catholics and to Catholic schools.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “In the Boston media, the Globe was the most enthusiastic supporter of Judge Arthur Garrity’s 1974 school desegregation order, which resulted in so much white Catholic flight from both the Boston public school system and ultimately, from the city itself. Although an educational disaster, forced busing brought about revolutionary political and demographic change in Boston, with the city transformed from a socially conservative, Catholic majority municipality to a hyper progressive, minority majority metropolis.”
“Now, the Globe’s Editorial Board wants to alter the character of the last Boston public school which is user friendly to what remains of the city’s Catholic middle class, by making it less accessible to Catholic students. If that happens, one likely result will be that more Catholic families will move out of Boston. Perhaps, that is what they have in mind.”
