News

A new service offered by ACE Consulting aims to help Catholic schools capture the opportunities and confront the challenges that can arise when states pass parental choice laws.

These laws typically allow children to attend Catholic schools or other alternatives to local public schools, using vouchers or tax credit scholarships to pay for tuition. Such financial assistance can lead to quickly rising enrollments at some Catholic schools—good news that also raises significant issues about pedagogy, management, and sustainability for these schools.

ACE Consulting has expanded its suite of services to support school leadership in maximizing participation in states that have passed legislation in support of School Choice Scholarship Programs and ensuring high-quality education for all students. The program is a publicly funded scholarship program offering eligible Hoosier families the opportunity to send their children to the school of their choice.

ACE Consulting has developed a diagnostic assessment that addresses a range of impact areas. These include the school's mission and culture; governance; financial management; enrollment management and financing; and academic programming. The objective is to provide participating schools with an action plan to develop fiscal, operational, and instructional competencies to support the highest-quality education to as many children as possible.

This new diagnostic service was pilot tested in five schools during the spring semester of 2012 in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana. Less than a year before, the state government had implemented the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program. ACE Consulting assessed the impacts of this program by surveying information from various stakeholders—parents, pastors, principals, school board members, and teachers. Consultants also conducted classroom observations, focus groups, and demographic reviews.

The results from the 2011 passage of Indiana's Choice Scholarship Program show that schools' wise implementation of such a program is as important as a state's enactment of the law. Not only did Indiana parents relish the newfound autonomy over their child's education, but their decisions reflected a latent demand for Catholic education. Nearly 4,000 students statewide enrolled in the program, more than 2,550 of whom registered with Catholic schools.

At the end of the process this summer, the ACE Consulting team provided a diagnostic review of each school's current status and strategic recommendations to optimize the use of the Choice Scholarship Program going forward.

In the coming months, ACE Consulting will be available to work with the schools, all in the greater South Bend area, to help implement the strategies recommended in each case.

ACE Consulting is poised to use the diagnostic assessment in other dioceses and anticipates that this service may be desired in other states as parental choice laws are passed and Catholic schools respond to the opportunities and challenges of leveraging such legislation.

With more than 25 parental choice programs nationwide—and many more on the horizon—this initiative within ACE is a timely effort to couple two central goals: improving school quality while expanding access to educational alternatives, especially for at-risk families.

ACE Consulting will expand this initiative this fall, providing the diagnostic assessment tools to schools in the Indianapolis and Milwaukee areas, with a view toward extending this work to other locations in the future.

The Diocese of Orange in California has announced an initiative to enrich educational opportunities for students in Catholic schools, especially students of Hispanic descent, in partnership with the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE). The initiative focuses on three schools--St. Anne School, St. Joseph School, and School of Our Lady. During the first phase, ACE Consulting will conduct a range of cultural, educational, and administrative evaluations, and next year these assessments will pave the way for an implementation phase of the initiative. The diocesan superintendent of schools is quoted as saying the partnership with ACE "really will provide a beacon of hope for these schools."

Packy Lyden, associate director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI), was interviewed Monday, Sept. 10, on the national Catholic radio program, the Son Rise Morning Show. He talked about ACE's engagement with Irish partners--and with Archbishop Charles Brown, Papal Nuncio to Ireland and a Notre Dame graduate--to share an interest in Catholic identity in schools on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mark Berends, the distinguished sociologist and IEI Fellow who directs the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity and the Research Center on Educational Policy within the IEI, talked with John Merrow's website, Learning Matters, about Notre Dame's new partnership with Indiana's Department of Education to expand research possibilities that will serve students in schools around the state and beyond. Listen to the interview with Ted Bauer of Learning Matters.

Saturday, 1st September

Less than 100 years ago, Ireland was still ruled by the English. British authority in Ireland emanated from Dublin Castle, the seat of British rule until its end in 1922. Because of Britain’s Anglican state religion, a Catholic Mass was never really an option in Dublin Castle until after 1922, but even since then, the venue wouldn’t be very suitable for a Mass since its courtyard is so large (and, I suppose, because the weather in Dublin would so rarely cooperate for an entire hour). With a pre-grame Mass celebrated by the Most Reverend Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, concelebrated by many American and Irish priests, and participated in by an estimated 6,000 people who stood and filled the courtyard from wall to wall, this historical oddity has become just that – history. Archbishop Martin’s homily echoed the theme struck by Ken Jowitt at the Symposium two days ago – that the Church must find a way to engage with society where society is, and not where the Church would necessarily like it to be. Holy Communion was especially moving. Communion ministers lined both sides of the courtyard and were marked by folded umbrellas pointing skyward so that the throng of people could make their way to receive the Body of Christ.

Following Mass, everyone emptied out into neighboring Temple Bar for some tailgating that included the Notre Dame Band marching out and a legion of Dublin City buses mobilized at the end of the Temple Bar area to transport fans to the gleaming Aviva Stadium, where the Fighting Irish (of Notre Dame) took on the Midshipmen of the U.S. Naval Academy. Although this may not mean much coming from me, trust me when I say I heard it from others as well: With all of the activity of the past several days – from spectacular Masses in historic places to numerous gatherings of very good friends, to the soaring emotional high of the pep rally, to various symposia and other academic events, the football game seemed almost anti-climactic.

All in all, the University produced an awesome couple of days’ celebration of our shared heritage, emotional tie, and continued partnership with Ireland. More impressive than the events, though, was the warm welcome that the people of Ireland extended to us. I can’t count the number of cabbies, cashiers, waiters, bartenders, my colleagues who helped execute events from the Irish side of things, and even government officials (from the Taoiseach – the Prime Minister – on down) who expressed their sincere welcome, excitement, and hopes for a quick return of the huge influx of Americans who flooded Ireland for the game. Their hope is one that I share!

From Drew Clary, Assistant Director, Institute for Educational Initiatives

Friday, 31st August
As I was walking through St. Stephen's Green in Dublin this afternoon, I saw a stage and other equipment being set up. Given the beautiful setting and the even more gorgeous weather (maybe it seemed so gorgeous because it was so unexpected!), I had a little pang of jealousy when I heard that it was where Navy was going to have its pep rally prior to Saturday's Navy v. ND football game. Little did I know what the rest of the evening would entail ...

If you have not had a chance to see Notre Dame's Pep Rally, I would highly recommend that you watch it!!, I have not attended a Notre Dame pep rally (or any other kind, for that matter) since the first few home games of my freshman year (seven football seasons ago). I was fully expecting to grab my seat for the pep rally, sit in it for all of five or ten minutes, and then sneak out in the midst of the thousands gathered in the sold-out O2 Arena to do something else. Two hours and several standing ovations later, I could hardly believe the performance was over, much less that it had been two hours. It felt like 30 minutes. My favorite act was the Irish step dancer who faced off against the Irish drumline (41:16-46:50 in the above link).

From Drew Clary, Assistant Director, Institute for Educational Initiatives

Thursday, 30th August

As almost any church-going Catholic in the United States can attest, Ireland was, at one time, a manufactory of priests. The vast majority of those priests would have been formed and ordained at St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, just outside of Dublin. This morning, members of the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) faculty and staff, ACE Advisory Board, other partners from the United States, and many stakeholders in Irish Catholic education were joined by Steve Warner, a part-time ACE faculty member, and the Notre Dame Folk Choir that he founded and directs, to celebrate Mass in the historic chapel on the campus of St. Patrick’s, a Pontifical University founded in 1795. As Father Timothy Scully, C.S.C., the Hackett Family Director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives at Notre Dame and ACE Co-founder, said in his greeting, St. Patrick’s College was instrumental in taking what had until that point been largely a Romance-language religion and bringing it into the Anglophone world.

Following Mass, the Notre Dame, American, and Irish partners in Catholic education gathered for a lunch hosted by the College President, Msgr. Hugh Connolly, Ph.D., and a Symposium on Catholic Education. Two Irish leaders and two American academics addressed the group. Father Michael Drumm, the Chair of Ireland's recently-created Catholic Schools Partnership, began things by laying out the challenges facing Irish Catholic education. His engaging presentation outlined challenges and opportunities moving forward. Dr. Eilis Humphreys, Education Officer of Ireland's Le Chéile Schools Trust, followed him by giving a practitioner’s perspective on the state of Irish Catholic education. As a leader of a network of Catholic schools (similar in some ways to a charter organization since all Irish schools are state-funded), Humphreys’ presentation gave a very broad and comprehensive look at Catholic education. One key observation she made is that we should be talking about both Catholic schools, which face challenges as privately owned, publicly funded institutions that therefore serve two masters, and Catholic education, which often suffers as a result of today’s teachers not having the theological backgrounds of their religious (priests, brothers, sisters) predecessors.

David Campbell, Ph.D., Notre Dame Professor of Political Science and Director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, who studies how religious identity plays out in social cohesion and participation, then gave a presentation that compared the belonging, belief, and behavior of the American, British, and Irish populations vis-à-vis religion. It teased out many trends, the most persistent of which was that young people are less likely to identify with, believe in, and practice a religion than their parents and grandparents. Following the overview, a leading political scientist who recently retired from the University of California-Berkeley and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, Ken Jowitt, Ph.D., rose to give an analytical response to Campbell’s talk. Jowitt’s response was equal parts deeply reflective and hysterically funny, and he effectively portrayed the central challenge, as he sees it: The Church must find a way to balance between, on the one hand, retreating into itself and refusing to engage with an increasingly secular society and, on the other hand, over-extending itself into that secular society to the point where it becomes irrelevant to a society that holds very different values as a matter of course.

All in all, the day was informative, sobering, and, above all, hopeful. The Irish Church and its schools face large challenges, as does the American Church, but on both sides of the Atlantic, an abiding hope for the future was voiced, as was the desire to continue, and continually deepen, the partnership that has developed over the past several years between ACE and various Irish leaders in Catholic schools and stakeholders in Catholic education.

From Drew Clary, Assistant Director, Institute for Educational Initaitives

Photo: Members of the ACE family in the chapel of St. Patrick's College in Maynooth during their recent Ireland visit.