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The Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) is marking National School Choice Week, which spans January 22-28, 2012.

Rooted in Catholic Social Teaching, ACE supports school choice policies, also called parental choice policies, that give all children effective options for obtaining a high-quality education.

Official Church teaching has repeatedly and consistently reaffirmed the vital importance of Catholic schools and school choice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "Parents have the right to choose a school for them which corresponds to their own personal convictions." The Catechism adds that "public authorities have the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and ensuring concrete conditions for its exercise" (CCC #2229).

As part of our support for principles of school choice, ACE's Program for K-12 Educational Access (PEA) is dedicated to empowering low-income families with access to a quality education, with a particular focus on parochial schools. PEA advances educational access through teaching, research, and outreach, and it seeks to cultivate data-driven, parent-centered education reform.

The Notre Dame ACE Academy initiative, currently operating innovative, in-depth partnerships with three Catholic schools in the Diocese of Tucson, strives to remove the cost barrier for families whenever possible. As a result of Arizona's parental choice policies, allowing scholarships funded by tax credits, Notre Dame ACE Academies can provide tuition assistance to families facing financial hardship.

During the past year, the state of Indiana—where ACE is headquartered as an initiative of the University of Notre Dame—has been a center of action on school choice through a new voucher program.

The Indiana Choice Scholarship Program experienced unprecedented success in 2011. National experts indicate this is the most successful first year implementation in the history of the parental choice movement. More than 3,900 students across the state have received Choice Scholarships, and more than 2,500 of those are now attending Catholic schools. The new program's benefits were most deeply felt by the families facing economic struggles, as 85% of voucher recipients qualify for free or reduced-cost school lunch.

Support for the principles of school choice, or parental choice, finds affirmation in Catholic thought.
In 1965, the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Christian Education stated: "The public power, which has the obligation to protect and defend the rights of citizens, must see to it, in its concern for distributive justice, that public subsidies are paid out in such a way that parents are truly free to choose according to their conscience that schools they want for their children."

In 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith expressly communicated that "whenever the State lays claim to an educational monopoly, it oversteps its rights and offends justice.... The State cannot dwithout injustice merely tolerate so-called private school. Such schools render a public service to civil society and therefore have a right to financial assistance."

The 2004 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church focused attention on the lack of public funding for non-public schools: "The refusal to provide public economic support to non-public schools that need assistance and that render a service to civil society is to be considered an injustice."

Pope Benedict XVI, in a 2008 Address to Catholic Educators, declared: "Everything possible must be done, in cooperation with the wider community, to ensure that [Catholic schools] are accessible to people of all social and economic strata. No child should be denied his or her right to an education in faith, which in turn nurtures the soul of a nation."

You can find out more about the official events and messages accompanying National School Choice Week at http://schoolchoiceweek.com.

A major new study of teachers' long-term impacts on their students affirms ACE's commitment to form and support excellent teachers as a key part of its mission to sustain, strengthen, and transform Catholic K-12 schools.

The New York Times summarized the results of the study in a January 6, 2012, story: "Elementary and middle-school teachers who help raise their students' standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students' lives beyond academics." The effect includes higher college enrollment rates, higher earnings, and lower teenage-pregnancy rates.

The study, conducted by three Ivy League economists who monitored 2.5 million students over a period of 20 years, asserts that high-quality teachers can make a large, measurable difference for their students over time. The scholars have been disseminating their results in a report, The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood, not yet peer-reviewed but available online. Value-added is measured here by students' improvements in standardized-test scores.

The report "underscores that by focusing on teacher quality, ACE has been investing in all the right things," comments Dr. Christian Dallavis, director of the Notre Dame ACE Academy initiative in the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) at the University of Notre Dame. "And the study highlights the urgency of our mission to help teachers focus on student growth."

ACE's formation programs have been educating teachers for service In Catholic schools since it was founded in 1993. Participants in the ACE Teaching Fellows program are selected in a competitive process from among talented college graduates across the country who are passionate about serving young people through Catholic education. Three "pillars" in ACE's approach to formation of educators emphasize professional service, community life, and spiritual growth.

Other ACE programs also support the teaching function in a range of ways. One program, the Notre Dame ACE Academies initiative, currently supports three under-resourced elementary schools in partnership with the Diocese of Tucson. The commitment to provide an excellent education to the at-risk children in these schools emphasizes resources for high-quality teaching and measurement of student performance.

"This research informs our Notre Dame ACE Academies efforts by helping us deploy our resources more effectively," says Dallavis. "We use value-added test scores to identify both the teachers who need the most support as well as the teachers whose skills qualify them to mentor their colleagues."

The study—by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman, both of Harvard University, and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia University—can be accessed at the harvard.edu website. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof highlighted the importance of the findings in a Jan. 11 op-ed piece.