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A network of inner-city Catholic schools in Memphis, dubbed “Jubilee schools” since they were established in 2000, continues to generate reasons for teachers and students to celebrate the persistent promise of an excellent education.

This year, they have doubled-down on their reputation for innovation and efforts to find data-proven solutions to the achievement gap plaguing many disadvantaged students, according to David Hill, president of Jubilee Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Memphis. A major shift to a year-round school calendar, with more class days, plus robust pay hikes for educators, begins July 27. Struggling schools elsewhere may want to emulate this rare combination of steps. These changes are only part of the agenda to sustain top-notch, values-rich educational alternatives for families from all backgrounds.      

“We set a high bar for excellence, and our intention is to support teachers and principals, as well as students, in holding ourselves accountable for results,” Hill said in explaining the new schedule, compensation plan, and other initiatives.

Memphis Bishop J. Terry Steib, S.V.D., announced the Jubilee commitment in 1999, pursuing benefactor support to reopen urban Catholic schools where enrollments and finances had sagged. Today, rising scores on standardized tests are surprising the skeptics. However, typically long summer breaks are notorious for reversing school-year gains; the downtime provides few educational enhancements for kids in at-risk neighborhoods. “That’s one reason we wanted to go to the year-round calendar,” Hill said, noting students’ accomplishments are worth preserving.

Across the network, about 85 percent of Jubilee students come from low-income households, but recent data show kindergarteners reading at levels in the 92^nd percentile nationwide. They’re poised to keep building on those early literacy gains, Hill said, helping to fulfill Steib’s original vision. The Bishop refused to abandon the city’s youth; he found benefactors willing to help—a legacy needing constant renewal.

Steib, now 75, plans to retire, but no one is abandoning the pledge of a brighter future for children in one of America’s poorest cities. Because philanthropy/donor support covers three-quarters of the cost for the Jubilee network, Hill and his team—constituting a unit distinct from other Catholic schools in Memphis—will unveil a new annual fund in honor of the Bishop. They will promote “year-round giving for year-round schools.”

The network will also promote an extension of its bold strategies up through the twelfth grade. For the school year that starts in late July (and ends June 23, 2016), the previous group of eight elementary schools will be joined by Memphis Catholic Middle and High School, extending their special approaches and rigors not only by 20 more class days every year, but by more years--up to the 12^th grade level.

High school students at Memphis Catholic follow an “education that works” curriculum—similar to the Cristo Rey nationwide network of schools—where local businesses host them as interns one day a week. Stipends from these corporate sponsors, more of whom are being recruited, are a boon for the entire network but cover a particularly large portion of the high school’s costs.

Tuition, traditionally a set price paid by parents for their children’s Catholic school education, makes up about 20 percent of Jubilee funding. The diocese assesses the network’s tuition on a sliding scale based on parents’ ability to pay.

Three-quarters of total funding comes from philanthropy, and the network’s central “support office” has added staffing to reach out to more benefactors.

Growth in that support function, yet another new step taken by Hill, is crucial to his commitment of accountability in carrying on the Jubilee legacy.

“Our mission is to provide students an academically rigorous and vibrantly Catholic education that prepares them to become all that God created them to be, both today and tomorrow,” Hill explained.

The focus on doing what it takes to bridge inner-city students’ achievement gaps has prompted Hill to expand the “support office” serving all Jubilee schools’ principals and educators. Besides the extra outreach to benefactors, Hill is adding expertise in the use of test scores and other data to improve instruction at the schools.

Also, a new “chief academic officer” and a new director of operations will advise and assist school leaders so they can address teaching and spirituality more effectively, spending less time on the administrative tasks that typically burden principals. This emulates the growing move toward schools with both principals and presidents—for pedagogy and administration, respectively—but it centralizes many of the latter roles, such as tuition collection.

Each school community within the Jubilee network retains aspects of its own Catholic identity, Hill said.  The personality may be informed by the charism of a school’s founding religious order or the character of a particular parish, but it always includes regular celebration of the Mass and daily classroom prayer time. Spirituality and values are crucial to parents, even though a large majority of students in the network are non-Catholic, according to Hill.

“The number one reason parents are choosing our schools is the religious formation they want their children to get,” he said.

That perspective, which helps to make each Jubilee school a supportive community, contributes to cooperation and collaboration that may be among the traits confounding the network’s skeptics. 

“I have not received one complaint about our new school calendar,” Hill said, noting that educators, parents, and students alike embraced the longer year. Schools in the network could decide for themselves whether to adopt the schedule, and all of them opted in. With help from an anonymous benefactor, teachers’ salaries have been raised significantly to cover the additional instruction days and make their pay competitive with public schools.

Liz Gonzalez, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Teaching Fellows, will lead one of the Jubilee schools, St. John’s, as its principal when the new school year starts soon. She said the innovations being adopted for the sake of students in the Memphis network attracted her because she shares in the commitment to bring educational excellence to disadvantaged children.

“I liked the idea that Jubilee schools are trying something new in Catholic education,” she said. The bold embrace of changes, coupled with expanding channels of interaction among stakeholders, helps principals and teachers to be accountable for continuous improvement in instruction and faith.

“I felt this network provided a level of academic support I have not seen in many more traditional schools,” she said, noting the data showing gains in test scores. “There’s a recognition that, for these students, there’s a need to up the expectations for teachers, leaders, and staff.”

A principal who’s a proven recruiter of Latino students into Catholic schools sees four lessons to learn as the Alliance for Catholic Education’s many-faceted campaign to serve more kids from all backgrounds continues to evolve.

Mary Flock, who leads St. Gertrude the Great School in Bell Gardens, CA, came to Notre Dame for the Latino Enrollment Institute (LEI) in 2011 to hear the first iteration of guidelines for more inclusive and accessible Catholic schools.

She put them into practice, and total enrollment jumped from a nadir of 42 to today’s 175 students. Flock returned to campus recently and offered her to-do list for an evolving campaign: four takeaways to inform your school’s efforts to welcome and recruit new families.

1. Fair models of tuition flexibility based on need are crucial to a school’s mission and identity, but apply these models by combining sensitivity, full information, and mutual responsibility.

Sliding tuition scales, imperative if inner-city schools are to remain open, affordable, and mission-focused, can be scary, Flock said. In the past, school and parish leaders often feared that any “negotiation” of tuition levels would spark abuses and complaints. But flexibility works if the context combines responsiveness to needs, enduring relationships, and enforced responsibilities.

Many families in financial hardship who still want a quality education for their children approach Flock with requests for assistance, and she’s ready to listen, but she requires a two-way understanding. “I interview all of my families.” She can make arrangements that adjust to temporary crises, but she tells parents, “You’ve got to check in with me every month” so she’s informed of changing conditions. If families don’t communicate, she can withdraw special tuition breaks, and improprieties—which she has found are rare—can result in a student’s expulsion.

The compassionate commitment to make a quality education available to kids from all backgrounds is inseparable from fairness and accountability, Flock said. "It all boils down to: Am I staying true to the mission?" She has seen very little manipulation, and parent complaints about cost are small compared to their appreciation for the school’s values: “It’s the integrity of the situation that I uphold, not the nitpicking of the details.”

2. Expect every path to a more culturally responsive school to take its own turns over time, generating new ideas and opportunities to learn.

Outreach strategies that might have seemed like unilateral, one-size-fits-all approaches early in this decade gain new dimensions as principals from different communities report their unique experiences, Flock said. Novices still want basic insights—tips about multi-cultural openness, sliding tuition scales, etc.—as workable first steps. But those who have made strides now have follow-up questions and new ideas, like those voiced at the LEI every June.

For example, while many LEI schools had recruited madrinas—women highly respected in local Latino communities—to promote their schools, most volunteers who stepped forward to serve in Flock’s Los Angeles-area community were men, or padrinos.

Flock suggests that recruiters routinely ask those principals enjoying enrollment turnarounds, “What are you doing, and how can we help you be a change-maker?”

3. Identify and reach out to benefactors who share a passion for Catholic schools of the future, but earn their support in real time, through authentic relationships, focusing on the students.

Growing awareness of Catholic schools’ legacy as a lifeline for generations of immigrants has stirred support among benefactors and philanthropic organizations, Flock said. More principals and pastors now need to understand the dynamics of these valued partnerships.

Flock’s experience reflects the need for personal trust, honest encounters, and proven leadership. Generous donors she has worked with want to see quality people comfortable in the school, with reasonable growth prospects already in the offing, not a setting of decline and desperation.

She said benefactors ask, “Does your school have the capacity to grow, and if so, what is your vision for growing it? What enrollment numbers are you looking for? A lot of the focus is capacity-building and leadership and transparency.” Flock said supporters resonate with her intention: “I do it for the kids.”

4. Expect to be surprised by the “side-effects” from a school’s commitment to serve the disadvantaged, boost enrollment, and share its own Catholic character.

No one outline of Latino enrollment strategies can anticipate or encapsulate all the different impacts that arise in individual schools. Each principal will implement the strategies according to his or her personality, and it’s important for principals to be themselves—“not trying to please everybody,” Flock said. Indeed, schools have their own personalities, and it helps if a core charism adds consistency and joy to encounters with different cultures. Flock draws strength from her own school’s Salesian values.

“Every one of my teachers knows every kid’s name,” and the students visit her with suggestions and dreams because they know “they’re kids whom we love.”

Commitments and initiatives like those shared by principals nationwide through ACE’s annual Latino Enrollment Institute can have impacts far beyond a school’s visual appeal or financial and strategic changes. Flock said she left her first Institute meeting with a new confidence that a turnaround was possible for St. Gertrude. “It was the idea of hope,” and it proved contagious to staff members, parents, and students. ACE’s work has indeed prompted personal transformations. When Flock arrived in 2011, “the kids felt squashed,” she said. “It was a poor school with a poor man’s mentality. Now, in the last two years, our students have blossomed.”

College football coaching legend Lou Holtz, along with his wife, Beth Holtz, will receive this year's Notre Dame Prize for Catholic Education, and will serve as the principal speaker at the 2015 Commencement Ceremony of the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) on Saturday, July 11.

“We are blessed that Coach Holtz has accepted our invitation to celebrate and give thanks for the years of service to the ministry of Catholic education of our ACE graduates,” said Rev. Timothy R. Scully, C.S.C., founder of ACE and Hackett Family Director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives.

“Throughout his career, Coach Holtz has shown a powerful commitment to form leaders of strong character and evangelical virtues, and his dedication and love for Our Lady’s University are unmatched,” Father Scully said. “His witness will resonate deeply with all members of the ACE community.”

At the annual Commencement exercises, scheduled for 3:30 pm in the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, the University will bestow 108 graduate degrees upon a next generation of Catholic school teachers and leaders who completed their periods of formation with ACE.  

A total of 83 ACE Teaching Fellows graduates, who pursued their two years of studies—while teaching in Catholic K-12 schools in underserved areas around the country—will receive the Master of Education (M. Ed.) degree. Twenty-five graduates from ACE’s Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program, whose 26 months of formation prepared them to be principals and other leaders in Catholic education, will receive an master of arts in educational leadership.

Dr. Christine Maziar, University Vice President and Senior Associate Provost, will confer the degrees.

Holtz said he is excited to address the ACE graduates, most of whom will continue their careers as educators and leaders serving children from all backgrounds, many of them in Catholic schools.

“I think it is marvelous the difference the ACE program has made in the lives of so many young people,” Holtz said. "The sacrifice these educators have made to help younger people has been invaluable."

Holtz coached the Fighting Irish football team from 1986 to 1996, and he led them to a national championship in 1988. He also received an honorary degree from the university in 2011. Other highly successful coaching jobs preceded and followed his Notre Dame tenure. He later became a wildly popular football analyst for ESPN and remains a much sought after motivational speaker.

More information: Bill Schmitt 574.631.3893 /

As part of an annual tradition to recognize the outstanding work of its graduates, the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) will honor five former ACE Teachers who have set themselves apart with their commitment to their fields of expertise.

The Michael Pressley Award for Excellence in Catholic Education is awarded to ACE graduates who have distinguished themselves in making significant contributions to the ministry of Catholic Education. The Michael Pressley Award for Promising Scholar in the Education Field honors an ACE graduate whose work in academia echoes Dr. Pressley’s commitment to strengthening education through research and scholarship. Both awards will be presented as part of ACE’s Commencement ceremonies on July 11, 2015.

The Scott C. Malpass Founders Prize, to be presented on July 22, 2015, as part of ACE’s Missioning events, recognizes individuals’ embodiment of ACE’s three pillars—forming professional educators, building community, and growing spiritually—leading to entrepreneurial, high-impact contributions in their communities.

The Michael Pressley Award for Excellence in Catholic Education.

• Steve Tortorello served as a middle school language arts teacher at Our Lady of Lourdes School in East Los Angeles with ACE 15. After ACE, he returned home to Chicago and to his alma mater, Marian Catholic High School. At Marian, Steve served as a freshmen English teacher, an Advanced Placement history teacher, and a moderator for the Kairos program, and quickly earned the praise of his students as an outstanding educator and a faith-filled member of the community. Concurrently, Steve pursued a degree in the Remick Leadership Program, and in 2014, at the age of 28, Steve was named principal of Marian Catholic. He is the first layperson to hold the principal position at Marian.
  
  
• After serving in Jackson, Mississippi at St. Therese in ACE 10, Kate Linden Sampson went on to teach Theology and serve as Campus Minister at Duchesne Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school in Omaha, NE. Subsequently, she served as Assistant Director for Academic Initiatives at Creighton University before becoming the Director of Development at NorthStar Foundation, an all-boys after-school program in North Omaha. Two years ago, she assumed the leadership role of Director of Magis Catholic Teacher Corps, the University Consortium of Catholic Education partner program at Creighton University in Omaha. Sampson has already infused the program with her commitment and energy, and her experience has brought enthusiasm and new ideas to the UCCE.

The Michael Pressley Award for a Promising Scholar in the Education Field

• Anna Jacob Egalite, Ph.D., taught fourth grade at Sacred Heart Interparochial School in St. Petersburg, Florida, with ACE 14. After her time there, she spent a year teaching in her native home of Ireland before returning to the United States to begin graduate studies at the University of Arkansas. Egalite earned her doctorate in Education Policy from Arkansas in 2014, earning the Outstanding Graduate Student Award and a host of other accolades. She has served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Education Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government for this past year. Her cutting-edge research, which focuses on the effects of teachers of color on the educational performance of students of color, has been featured in peer-reviewed journals and profiled in the New York Times. This fall, Anna will begin her position as a tenure-track assistant professor of education at North Carolina State University.

The Scott C. Malpass Founders’ Prize

• Jennifer Ehren, Ph.D., taught chemistry and biology at St. John High School in Biloxi, Mississippi with ACE 6, and then went on to begin her career as a pharmaceutical chemist and engineer. She earned her doctorate in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 2008 and, since that time, has served as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where she works in the cellular neurobiology laboratory and helps to develop potential therapeutics for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Ehren’s work has been nationally recognized, and she has spoken eloquently about her own successful fight with cancer, which, she said, has made her an even better, more determined, and more compassionate researcher.
  
  
• Greg Gomez began his highly accomplished educational career as a member of ACE 11, teaching middle school science and religion in South Central Los Angeles at St. Malachy School. After graduating from ACE, he remained in Los Angeles as a Catholic school assistant principal and then continued his graduate studies at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Since that time, Gomez has served children in Catholic schools in Houston, Texas, through a variety of roles. He was a founding faculty member at Cristo Rey Jesuit College Prep in Houston, where he also directed professional development for teachers. In 2013, he was appointed Cardinal DiNardo’s Special Liaison to the Inner-City Schools of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, and worked with pastors, principals, and archdiocesan leaders to develop a strategy for the inner-city Catholic schools of Houston to remain vibrant and sustainable. This past year, Gomez accepted the offer to serve as principal of one of the inner-city Catholic schools of Houston, St. Francis of Assisi.

Milwaukee’s Catholic schools believe they have discovered an efficient way to enroll, and meet the needs of, more students with cognitive learning challenges. This push for inclusiveness has focused on energizing educators’ own interactions—prompting them to collaborate locally and across the Archdiocese. Participants see an emerging cadre of teacher-leaders ready to benefit all the students in their schools.

“If we are more mindful about organizing ourselves, we can do better at the Catholic mission to serve all kids,” said Brenda White, associate superintendent of schools for the Milwaukee Archdiocese. Her initiative to establish “learning support teams” in every school—and to spread their insights among more than a hundred elementary and secondary schools—helps accomplish the mission, she said. “It arose out of that desire to do a better job meeting the needs of all God’s learners.”

Over the past few years, principals have been identifying and engaging teachers at their school who have demonstrated special skills for serving children with special needs. These teacher-leaders team with a few colleagues—plus specialists in areas such as counseling and wellness that some Catholic schools may be able to afford. These teams attend system-wide gatherings a few times each year where they share experiences and help shape strategies, and experts “train the trainers” who then go back to their schools to impart skills among their fellow educators.

Schools in the Archdiocese have been able to enroll more students with cognitive learning challenges, and they have also empowered and challenged some of their best educators, according to those guiding the process. In a field where much great pedagogy goes unnoticed behind classroom doors, identifying and learning from teacher-leaders has performed the essential function of “de-privatizing our best practices,” to use a phrase from Martin Scanlan, associate professor at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education.

Scanlan, previously at Marquette University, worked with the Milwaukee Archdiocese in establishing the “learning support team” concept before he moved to Boston. He said other (arch)dioceses, including Chicago, Kansas City-St. Joseph, and St. Louis, are adopting variations on the theme of greater collaboration, lifelong learning, and the dissemination of best practices; they are “changing the narrative” which once assumed Catholic schools simply turned away children with exceptionalities.

While the learning support teams may not be as ambitious as some other diocesan strategies, such as hiring numerous certified experts or securing special donors to meet special-education costs, Milwaukee's pursuit of inclusion is distinguished by an extra layer of extraordinary collaboration, according to White and Scanlan.

The associate superintendent, principals, and teachers have received the guidance of professors from five local Catholic colleges and universities that have schools or departments of education, White said. Marquette, Cardinal Stritch University, Marian University, Mount Mary University, and Alverno College formed the Greater Milwaukee Catholic Education Consortium, whose website says it works with the archdiocese to build “a new Catholic school model of inclusion and excellence.”

Marquette’s Office for Mission and Ministry has adopted the consortium as a natural fit.

This duo of collaborative structures—the network of teams transcending school boundaries to encourage teacher-leaders, along with academia’s array of champions for Catholic education uniting their several campuses with interest in the endeavor—makes the Milwaukee Archdiocese a uniquely promising setting, said Jennifer Maney of Marquette’s Office of Mission and Ministry.

Maney, who holds a Ph.D. in educational leadership, serves as institutional coordinator for the consortium. She joined White in a presentation about these synergies at the National Catholic Educational Association’s annual convention in April. She said the evolution of insights among educators and school leaders will continue, empowering students and teachers.

“What started out as an initiative directed at special needs … has shifted to a focus on good teaching that impacts all students’ learning regardless of their level of learning,” Maney said. The archdiocese will collect data and continue to gain experience with learning support teams—including how to select team members and how to optimize their effectiveness. She added that the institutions of higher education can both supplement the learning and disseminate the success stories.

Chris Gordon, formerly at Cardinal Stritch University and now an advocate among those who led the development of schools’ learning support teams, reports one top school’s data showing robust achievement gains among students in general, not only those in special-education settings.

Milwaukee’s collaborative efficiencies could expand their impact from language arts to math instruction and also could help inner-city Catholic schools serve disadvantaged students from all backgrounds, Gordon predicted. “We’re all called to serve God and his children,” she said. “Now we just have to put the models in place so we can be most effective in doing so.”

One immediate lesson of collaboration for all to learn from Milwaukee’s teacher-leaders is the need for every teacher to let his or her unique gifts shine forth among colleagues, White pointed out.

“You can’t just teach behind closed doors anymore,” she said. “It blocks the ability you have within your building and within your school system to learn best practices from each other.”