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Update: Because of technical difficulties, the event described below was postponed by the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. Notre Dame ACE Academies will issue information and plan to participate when the rescheduled discussion of early-learning expertise is announced.

The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics will feature the Notre Dame ACE Academies in a live “Google+ Hangout” discussion on Dec. 16 as part of the Academies’ honor as one of the White House’s “Bright Spots in Hispanic Education.”

The Alliance for Catholic Education’s (ACE) widely respected ACE Academies model for strengthening and sustaining existing inner-city Catholic schools is listed in the White House’s just-published “Bright Spots in Hispanic Education National Online Catalog.” The catalog identifies enterprises “helping ensure the educational attainment for the country’s Hispanic community, from cradle to career.”

“We are deeply honored by the White House’s recognition of the great work being done at our Notre Dame ACE Academies to increase access to academic excellence for Latino families,” said Rodney Pierre-Antoine, the Gary and Barbara Pasquinelli Family Director of the Notre Dame ACE Academies. “I hope that this discussion can be a valuable resource for early childhood teachers and leaders across the nation who are working tirelessly to improve education for our children.”

The two Notre Dame ACE Academies located in Tucson, Ariz.—St. John the Evangelist and Santa Cruz—are helping their largely Latino student populations boost their educational attainment through the innovative model developed by ACE. Since the partnership began in 2010, St. John and Santa Cruz have closed the achievement gap for students in the 6 ^th poorest metro-area in the country.

Representatives from the schools will be among experts from several sites sharing ideas to increase gains for students nationwide. The online discussion of innovative programs will address early-learning challenges among elementary school students, especially those from Hispanic backgrounds.

The U.S. Department of Education is hosting the one-hour conversation on Google+ Hangouts, broadcast live from Washington. Join the discussion by registering on the Initiative’s RSVP page and participating online at 12 noon MT or 2 pm ET on Wednesday. Participants may also ask questions via Facebook.

For more information:

Bill Schmitt, ACE, University of Notre Dame: / 574.631.3893

“Striving to be a good Catholic school leader is an all-consuming endeavor—it’s on my mind when I wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night,” said Stephanie Becker, who recently graduated from ACE’s Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program as part of its 12th cohort.

Becker is the academic dean at Mt. Carmel-Holy Rosary Catholic school in New York. One of six Catholic elementary schools in the innovative Partnership for Inner-City Education, MCHR’s mission is to provide a “beacon of hope” for children from the under-resourced neighborhoods of East Harlem.

To keep her own beacon of hope shining, Becker relies on her faith. She was originally formed and inspired by her own experiences in a Catholic high school.

“I always felt a sense of encouragement and support from my teachers that was clearly inspired and fostered through their personal relationship with Christ,” Becker said. “Their belief that my unique personhood was something to be cherished inspired me to be my best self each and every day.

“It was perfectly fitting to find my home as a ‘new teacher’ post-graduation in a Catholic school. For me, it was never ‘if’ I would work in a Catholic school, it was always a matter of ‘where.’”

After six years teaching in Manhattan, Becker was invited to her current position at MCHR. While Becker was no doubt a positive influence on her community, she desired to be more effective.

“Deep down,” she said, “I felt there was more I could be doing for my school and the students I serve; I had the willingness, drive and potential to be the driver of change in my school and diocese, I just needed the right program to help me get there.”

Becker was already a leader when she entered the Remick Leadership Program. What she sought was the opportunity to learn and grow from more experienced, transformational leaders—leaders whose zeal could turn around struggling schools and inspire hundreds of people to “own their talents and do the best work of their lives.”

Suzanne Kaszynski, the principal of MCHR, was the beacon of hope that drew Becker toward comprehensive, faith-based leadership, like a moth to a flame. Kaszynski, Becker explained, “with her infectious positivity and unbreakable spirit, galvanized supporters from near and far to save this East Harlem gem that was providing a first-class Catholic education for an underserved population, in a neglected corner of the city.”

What Becker wanted was not only to attain that character of leadership exemplified by Kaszynki’s successful results, but also her humility and joy.

“She so perfectly articulates what a comprehensive education, rooted both in faith and the arts, can do for children,” Becker said. "Such a powerful impact is the fruit of love, not ambition or pride."

In order to improve the academic environment at MCHR, Becker said, it was necessary to “intensify our sense of faith and celebrate our Catholic identity.” Consequently, she was unsatisfied with many of the leadership programs available in New York City. Becker needed to find a group of peers and mentors who “kept spiritual formation and growth a priority.”

The Remick Leadership Program provided a structure within which Becker could broaden her vision and imagine a greater future for her school, but it also taught her new practical skills. It armed her with a strong network of dozens of leader-peers who “became something more than colleagues or friends, they became a second family.” It held up examples of schools “where Gospel values are lived, community is celebrated, and excellence – not perfection – is paramount.” Most importantly, it reaffirmed Becker’s hope in Catholic education.

Stephanie Margetts, executive director of Holy Rosary Regional School/Juan Diego Academy (HRRS/JDA) in Tacoma, Wash., says she has seen the future—and heard it, too. She is leading an educational innovation called two-way immersion, or dual-language instruction that is transforming this Catholic school with a previously shrinking enrollment.

“Now, you walk in and you feel the energy of a bicultural school that celebrates the English and Spanish languages equally,” Margetts said. Enrollment, spanning pre-K for three-year-olds through eighth grade, increased 28 percent last year to 191 currently.

The student body is roughly half English-dominant, half Spanish-dominant. Pre-schoolers, regardless of their dominant tongue, spend their whole day speaking 100% Spanish; kindergarteners follow a 90% Spanish and 10% English model; and as of 2015, grades 1-3 maintain a 50-50 schedule, rotating one day totally in Spanish with the next immersed in English. Over several years, the approach will climb age levels, up through grade 8.

“We’ve created a model that people want,” Margetts said. Reaching out to a working class region of the state where diverse families share high aspirations for their children, “the model allows us to serve, to bring cultures together. That’s an exciting part of what we’ve been doing.”

A combination of incremental changes has kept every day exciting for students. In 2010, Holy Rosary’s enrollment had declined to 101; the Fulcrum Foundation, providing financial support to students in the Seattle Archdiocese, consulted with the foundation’s diversity committee to establish the first ever two-way immersion program in the archdiocese. The school continues to seek teachers with subject-area knowledge who are bilingual.

Experienced mentors have come together to help make the investment in HRRS/JDA bear fruit. A bilingual, bicultural teacher already on their staff became the leader of this mission—building a Catholic school whose curriculum is fully aligned with the changing demographics of the Catholic Church.  An estimated 35-40% of Catholics in the U.S. today are Latino.

In 2011, HRRA/JDA joined the Two-Way Immersion Network for Catholic Schools (TWIN-CS) initiative at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education. Dr. Tim Uhl, now superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Helena, led Holy Rosary’s transition as its principal. Dr. Bridget Yaden has worked closely with the school as a board member and as chair of a local university’s Hispanic studies department.

Margetts arrived at HRRS/JDA for 2014-2015 from Sacred Heart School in Washington, D.C. Sacred Heart adopted dual-language instruction 16 years ago. Along with Escuela Guadalupe in Denver, Sacred Heart was one of the first Catholic schools in the United States to implement two-way immersion. For the past three years, TWIN-CS has supported other schools adopting this model (close to 20 in total).

Elise Heil, who leads Sacred Heart as its principal today, said the school’s enrollment has held steady around 200 students, with the two-way immersion model consistently appealing to many parents from various backgrounds, some of whom can utilize the District’s school voucher program.

This model helps schools garner interest from parents because they see it boosting academic rigor and student readiness for a diverse culture. English language-dominant families see fluency in Spanish preparing their children for a multilingual society, Heil said, adding that numerous Spanish language-dominant parents appreciate the life-skills development as well as the school’s Catholic identity. Schools have become more intentional in how to engage all families in embracing diversity.

Heill noted that immersion fosters solidarity because “everybody is a language learner.” But this two-way approach is not easily replicable among all schools, she said.

“This is still a very new model,” although the diverse, competitive D.C. education marketplace has prompted more ventures into multiple-language immersion. The model is familiar in many public schools around the country, but it is generating insights as more schools implement it.

“The younger you start, the better,” Heil said, recommending that a school initiate the approach among three- and four-year-old preschoolers, then add grades incrementally over a period of years.

Sacred Heart is sharing its expertise with some of the newcomers. Heil said every school experiences challenges, including her own. Non-bilingual applicants cannot be accepted beyond second grade. No Catholic high schools in the area replicate the approach, so no long-term K-through-12 continuity exists. The model’s major sectors of growing student enrollment are in the pre-K classes.

Luis Ricardo Fraga, Ph.D., who helped start HRRS/JDA in Tacoma as a board member with the Fulcrum Foundation, continues to study the approach closely among his research topics as the Arthur Foundation Endowed Professor of Transformative Latino Leadership at the University of Notre Dame. As a political scientist and fellow of the Institute for Educational Initiatives, he has written about Holy Rosary’s transition.

“Two-way immersion in Catholic schools can be an effective mechanism for building intercultural communities that capture the richness of diverse communities,” he said. “As the Catholic Church in the United States becomes more and more multicultural, two-way immersion values both English and Spanish languages and cultures in ways fully consistent with recent statements of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.”

Fraga and other scholars have noted that the approach is well-suited to Catholic values—a respect for the dignity of distinct cultures, the notion of a “common good” to be pursued by all, and a special care for those on society’s margins.

Although the resources available for language education models will differ among schools, the stewardship of those resources takes place in a strong family context, as Heil pointed out.

“We’re kind of a home for many immigrant families, and the Catholic piece is something that brings us all together,” she said of Sacred Heart School. “We have a shared mission and a shared goal. Becoming a bilingual school really benefits the entire population.”

John Schoenig, ACE's Director of Teacher Formation and Education Policy, was featured on WSJ.com's Opinion Journal segment to discuss the nation's report card on education. 

When Mayra Wilson, graduate of ACE's ENL program, accepted a part-time position with the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to help improve Latino outreach and enrollment for the Archdiocese’s more than 100 Catholic schools, she knew she had her work cut out for her. The Archdiocese’s outreach up to that point had been minimal, and she would be starting nearly from scratch. But she kept one thing on her mind as she began her efforts.

“Our families want a Catholic school, our families want to be close to their faith, and they want the best for their kids.”

Wilson started with families and with individual schools in an attempt to bring together parents who wanted a Catholic education for the children but didn’t know how to access it with schools who wanted to reach out to the local community but didn’t know how to get started.

“There was clearly a need for [outreach],” she said. “Many schools in the urban settings were wanting to reach out to this community, but they didn’t know how to. In particular, the biggest challenge they saw was the language barrier.”

Born and raised in Peru, Wilson felt a connection to the Latino communities of Cincinnati and felt as though she was positioned well to be a liaison between Latino families and schools. Though she had become known in the Latino communities through her work throughout college, she felt like she needed to reposition herself in this new role.

“I would go to different masses in Spanish, I would go to different events in the community—I was trying to be really present,” she said. “Now, [I’m] the Catholic school lady, everyone knows me as that. I wasn’t afraid of going out and meeting with families after Mass, I wasn’t afraid of eating the tamales and sharing food, and just building that trust for families.”

In Wilson’s four years working with the Archdiocese, Latino enrollment is up more than 50 percent, and this year, they’ve hired another Latino Outreach Coordinator who will focus on the northern portion of the Archdiocese. Wilson spoke this summer at Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education as part of Vámanos, a workshop for recruiters of Latinos to Catholic schools hosted by the Catholic School Advantage Campaign.

Wilson said that parents and schools alike are excited and ready to start making the effort, they just need guidance on how to start.

“We wanted to make sure our parents understood all the nuances of the school, but also wanted to make sure the school staff and the principals understood where our families were,” Wilson said. “We wanted to make sure they understood how our families communicated, how our programs needed to be friendly, how some stuff needed to be bilingual. We needed to appreciate the culture, appreciate the language, and rather than see it as a barrier, see it as an opportunity and explore how to make the best of these opportunities.”