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“Fighting for our Children’s Future,” the watchword emblazoned on the bus for ACE’s upcoming National Tour to celebrate Catholic schools, accentuates the call U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly issued recently to graduates at the 2013 ACE Commencement exercises.

Donnelly, a Notre Dame alumnus who represents Indiana in the U.S. Senate, addressed the 111 master’s degree recipients as their Commencement speaker, as a fellow advocate among the Fighting Irish, and as a policy-maker who has seen the high stakes in educating today’s young people.

“There’s no graduate program more important than what you have just finished,” said Donnelly at the July 13 event on campus. “This is the future of our country and our world that you’re going to be working with. You will be the face of Notre Dame, the face of our Church, the face of Jesus Christ, to people in some of the toughest areas we have in our country.”

He continued, “As principals and as teachers, part of being Fighting Irish is that you will fight for each child…. You will fight for an excellent education so that they have a chance.” Among many inner-city youths trapped in lives of turmoil and violence, a common thread is their disconnection from education.

“You provide hope, you provide [a] future, for many of these people,” Donnelly told the 85 graduates of the ACE Teaching Fellows program and the 26 graduates of ACE’s Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program. “You are the face of what they can achieve.”

The graduates and their families, convened in the Leighton Concert Hall of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, had joined ACE faculty and staff in welcoming Donnelly after ACE founder Rev. Timothy Scully, C.S.C., introduced the first-term U.S. Senator as “a tireless advocate for justice” and “a son of Notre Dame whose life and work stand as a powerful witness to the transforming power of education.”

Donnelly’s remarks invoked the graduates’ service to the Church, reflecting the “love and compassion” that Jesus taught, plus wise discernment between right and wrong. He also invoked service to the United States—“making our nation a stronger, better place.” School teachers and leaders in under-served areas are crucial in giving students a chance for success, he said, “so no pressure on any of you—but the future of our country is on your shoulders.”

Such a responsibility also brings satisfaction, especially from the students one serves, the Senator reminded his audience: There may be more glamorous jobs than teacher or principal, but nothing can beat “the reward you’ll get at the end of the day when these young people come up and say, you’ve changed my life.”

Following the ceremony, in response to questions, Senator Donnelly called himself “very fortunate” to be a product of Catholic grade school and Catholic high school. Catholic schools teach values and give a great education, he said, and they combine with the country’s public school system “to make sure every child has a chance” to be part of the range of educational opportunity.

We do have to fight together for our children’s future, Donnelly agreed. “So much of the challenges we face as a country—those challenges can be met if we’re able to get every child educated, have every child graduate from high school, have a chance for every child to gain the skills necessary to have a good job and great opportunity. So everything we aspire to as a country is directly related to how well we educate our people.”

Where does ACE fit into this effort? “One of the distinctive roles for ACE and Notre Dame is to be a backbone of the Catholic education system,” said Donnelly in response to the question. “When you look at this graduating class, they are going forth throughout not only our country but the whole world, in both teaching and administration…. As Catholic education continues on into the future, I think you will see the University of Notre Dame and the ACE program become an even more critical part of its future success.”

The “ACE Summer” of 2013 is in full swing on campus as the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) once again hosts more than 300 participants in programs preparing tomorrow’s leaders for Catholic schools.

Intensive coursework and vibrant opportunities for community life and spiritual growth are enriching many recent college graduates from around the country who have come to campus for ACE’s distinctive formation of Catholic school teachers. That initiative is now starting its 20^th year of operation.  

In a related ACE program, more experienced teachers are taking courses to become Catholic school principals and sharing experiences that embody the same values in education, community, and spirituality. Other Catholic school teachers are receiving focused preparation in “English as New Language” (ENL) or “Teaching Exceptional Children” (TEC) skills that will help make their classrooms more inclusionary for students.

These varied participants, living on campus during all or part of the June-July peak season, are invited regularly to come together for Mass and meals, as well as other forms of prayer and fellowship. The season builds toward two annual highlights—the ACE Commencement ceremonies, set this year for July 13, and the ACE Missioning ceremonies, on July 25-26 this year, when the faith-filled educators are sent forth to numerous partnership sites, often tasked to serve disadvantaged children in under-resourced schools.

This summer’s keynote speaker at the ACE Commencement exercises will be U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana, who is a Notre Dame graduate. Among the participants in the ACE Teaching Fellows formation program for Catholic school teachers, 85 graduates are expected to receive Master of Education (M. Ed.) from Notre Dame at the Commencement. The University also expects to confer 26 M.A. degrees in educational administration to graduates of the curriculum preparing Catholic school teachers, namely ACE’s Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program. Special awards will go to ACE graduates who have continued in education careers and are making big contributions through their service to Catholic schools.

The Missioning ceremonies will culminate in a Mass on July 26 in Notre Dame’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart, with Archbishop Joseph W. Tobin of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis as the invited presider. The Archbishop will join ACE founder Rev. Timothy Scully, C.S.C., in sending forth 173 participants in ACE Teaching Fellows and 48 participants in the Remick Leadership Program to spend the regular 2013-2014 school year serving in Catholic schools around the country even as they continue in their two-year curricula and other formation.

Teachers enrolled in the TEC and ENL inclusionary initiatives, which are one-year programs leading to licensure and eligibility for certification, also will end their portions of the ACE summer by going back to the schools where they customarily serve and resuming their coursework online. Enrollments in the 2013-2014 initiatives to serve children with mild to moderate disabilities (TEC) and young English-language learners (ENL) have expanded. Some 24 educators are starting their TEC studies this summer (up 85% from last year), and the ENL program is welcoming 42 participants (up about 130%), including teachers from Puerto Rico and Chile.  

ACE Summers include a variety of activities beyond the strictly academic, such as retreat opportunities for the formation program participants and a number of conferences on key topics in Catholic education, attracting to campus diverse groups of leaders who serve children and share ACE’s mission of sustaining, strengthening, and transforming Catholic schools.

The summer is reliably a busy time of ongoing programs and new initiatives for all members of the ACE community. Aspiring teachers in the “ACE 20” cohort, which comprises the 90 newest participants in the ACE Teaching Fellows program, may be especially aware that the “20” moniker foretells a 20^th anniversary celebration set to begin soon.

ACE has said it plans to mark the anniversary—of its founding in 1993 and the missioning of its first cohort of teachers in 1994—with a celebration of Catholic schools that will span the 2013-2014 academic year. Notre Dame’s Fighting for Our Children’s Future National Bus Tour will launch in October, with plans to visit Catholic schools, along with their communities of supporters and ACE partners, in more than 40 cities nationwide.  

For more information: Bill Schmitt 574.631.3893

Nationwide, students from under-served communities and schools lag behind the national average in standardized tests. This is called the achievement gap. 

One class at St. John the Evangelist Catholic School, a Notre Dame ACE Academy, proves this gap can be closed: In 2010, the class average in math for St. John’s 3rd graders was at the 17th percentile. Two years later, as 5th graders, they are at the 52nd percentile. They now outperform the national average (above).

While older students are closing the gap, the younger students don’t experience a gap at all. Students in all three Tucson partner schools are consistently posting higher achievement scores year after year (right). 

In fact, Notre Dame ACE Academies' youngest students are among the highest achieving in the nation. In 2013, kindergarteners scored in the 86th percentile in math and the 91st percentile in reading. 

Notre Dame ACE Academies teachers are changing children’s lives. As 3rd grade teacher Adela Dinwiddie said of one St. John's student: 

“Miguel started the last school year reading in the 40th percentile. By the end of the year, he was all the way to the 79th, and he’s already talking about where he wants to go to college!”

Scores reported here are from the Spring 2013 Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS). Download a print version of this data.

By Andrew Hoyt

On May 16th, Dr. David Yeager, an ACE 11 graduate, served as co-organizer and program chair for a special convening at the White House titled "Excellence in Education: The Importance of Academic Mindsets." An assistant professor of psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, Yeager is a leading researcher in the fields of adolescent development and social psychology.

The convening at the White House, sponsored by the Raikes Foundation and co-hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department of Education, gathered a diverse group of experts and stakeholders in order to identify channels for using insights from experimental behavioral science in U.S. educational settings.

Yeager and his collaborators at Stanford University—Carol Dweck, Greg Walton, Dave Paunesku and Geoffrey Cohen—have shown that there is more to academic success than raw cognitive ability or curriculum and instruction. Students' mindsets—how school looks and feels to them, from their perspective—can powerfully affect whether students rebound from difficulty and sustain motivation in the face of adversity. Importantly, Yeager and others have designed brief, web-based activities that redirect students' mindsets and unlock their motivation, in some cases resulting in dramatically reduced achievement gaps months and years later.

For instance, researchers have shown that when students believe that intelligence is a fixed trait, unable to be changed, they avoid challenges and respond to difficulty by giving up. However, Yeager and colleagues have developed brief interventions that teach neuroscience facts about the potential for the brain to grow and develop when it works on challenging tasks—called a "growth mindset." When this message has been taught via the Internet to thousands of students around the country, it has resulted in increases in GPA and reductions in course failure rates. Findings are generally strongest among low-income and racial minority students, who may have the greatest reason to question whether educators doubt their intellectual ability—something that makes this research especially relevant for efforts to promote social justice.

Yeager stresses that these interventions are not "magic." "Psychological interventions are carefully-calibrated tools. If we want to use them responsibly to produce educational change at scale, we need to think carefully about how to embed these ideas in everyday practice," says Yeager. "This meeting was designed to bring leaders together to talk about how we can achieve an R&D agenda that empowers practitioners to successfully address unproductive student mindsets and promote educational equality in their classrooms."

As a former ACE middle school teacher at Saints Peter and Paul School in Tulsa, Yeager notes that research on mindsets has much in common with the philosophy education he encountered in Catholic schools. He notes that at the heart of any kind of moral development is a belief that a person can fundamentally be developed and improved, with the right kind of support. He believes that having a "growth mindset" is essential not just for supporting learning but also for creating virtuous adults.

The presentations at the White House convening investigated three areas for future research: understanding how to maximize the effects of mindset interventions, expanding the array of effective practices that instill adaptive mindsets, and developing improved measures to learn from practice.

For Yeager, the work on mindsets exemplifies the fact that simple, well-designed social-psychological interventions can provide cost-effective and powerful ways to reduce achievement gaps and improve student learning. For more on mindsets, Yeager's work in adolescent development, and the White House convening, visit his website.

This year ACE welcomes its 20th cohort of teachers, many of whom are recent college graduates, to the program.  We thank God and we thank them for their commitment to Catholic schools across the country!

Savannah Hobbs in Atlanta, GA
Maximilian Napier in Atlanta, GA
Elizabeth Anton in Biloxi, MS
Jenna Brumleve in Biloxi, MS
Charlie Swanson in Biloxi, MS
Adrian Weaver in Biloxi, MS
Kaitlyn Wergrzyn in Biloxi, MS
Brett Cavanaugh in Brownsville, TX
Brian Jerger in Brownsville, TX
Chelsey Ramon in Brownsville, TX
Elizabeth Watters in Brownsville, TX
Allyn Doyle in Chicago, IL
Ryan Gallagher in Chicago, IL
Maria Rodriguez in Chicago, IL
Greg Westerhaus in Chicago, IL
Kathryn Bodie in Corpus Christi, TX
David Schuler in Corpus Christi, TX
Katherine Baglini in Dallas, TX
Dallas Bunsa in Dallas, TX
Lauren Hamilton in Dallas, TX
Selena Rangel in Dallas, TX
Michael Wixted in Dallas, TX
Liam Concannon in Denver, CO
Crystal Lee in Denver, CO
Jaime Malandra in Denver, CO
Emily Rankin in Denver, CO
Brian Schwartze in Denver, CO
Andrea Carrera in Fort Worth, TX
Anne DeMott in Fort Worth, TX
Michael Murphy in Fort Worth, TX
Geoffrey Perks in Fort Worth, TX
William Dolan in Jacksonville, FL
Jessica Jones in Jacksonville, FL
Carl David Jones in Jacksonville, FL
Timothy McEvoy in Jacksonville, FL
Connor Geraghty in Los Angeles East, CA
Michael Kennedy in Los Angeles East, CA
Leah Malm in Los Angeles East, CA
Ashley Armendariz in Los Angeles South Central, CA
Samuel Rathke in Los Angeles South Central, CA
Eric Harper in Memphis, TN
Kelly Koeth in Memphis, TN
Liz Moore in Memphis, TN
David Murray in Memphis, TN
Yesenia Guzman in Mission, TX
MarcAngel Nava in Mission, TX
Alejandro Sigala in Mission, TX
Samantha "Sammie" Pahls in Mobile, AL
Michael Shippie in Mobile, AL
Cristina Couri in New Orleans, LA
Benjamin DeMarais in New Orleans, LA
Janelle Louis in New Orleans, LA
Jason Taulman in New Orleans, LA
Rachel Boggs in Oakland, CA
John Jackson in Oakland, CA
Allison Jeter in Oakland, CA
Russell McFall in Oakland, CA
Mary Beth McLean in Oakland, CA
Anna Gorman in Oklahoma City, OK
Matthew Maloney in Oklahoma City, OK
Erin Rosario in Oklahoma City, OK
Ryan Smith in Oklahoma City, OK
Joseph Donahue in Pensacola, FL
Iain Flannery in Pensacola, FL
Sarah Miller in Pensacola, FL
Ciara O’Brien in Richmond, VA
Matthew Pendergast in Richmond, VA
Kelly O’Brien in Sacramento East, CA
Amelie St. Romain in Sacramento East, CA
Elizabeth Jen in Sacramento West, CA
Tom Jensen in Sacramento West, CA
Deandra Lieberman in Sacramento West, CA
Thomas Spring in Sacramento West, CA
Melanie Brintnall in San Antonio, TX
Maria Martinez Hernandez in San Antonio, TX
Bradley Stalder in San Antonio, TX
Bryson Wade in San Antonio, TX
Roscoe Anderson in Santa Ana, CA
Donald Green in Santa Ana, CA
Hannah Snowe in Santa Ana, CA
Bridget Thomas in Santa Ana, CA
Kevin Casey in St. Petersburg, FL
Kaleen DeFilippis in St. Petersburg, FL
Mary Pullano in St. Petersburg, FL
Michael Donnelly in Tucson, AZ
Rose Raderstorf in Tucson, AZ
Vincent Rossi in Tucson, AZ
Linda Scheiber in Tucson, AZ
Lauren Barnett in Washington, D.C.
Alexander Bavis in Washington, D.C.
Kevin Coughlin in Washington, D.C.
Anselee Trotta in Washington, D.C.