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When the nation’s bishops gathered in Baltimore last month for their fall meeting, they received an update on Catholic K-12 schools that scanned a broad horizon—a mix of facts to celebrate and challenges to address.

Leaders of two United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) committees spotlighted at least three take-away lessons for their fellow bishops, and for all Catholics, in a joint presentation on Nov. 10:

Catholic schools are succeeding in vital missions.

They are centers for the New Evangelization, providers of quality education and character formation to students from all backgrounds, sources of religious vocations, and catalysts for quality engagement in parish and civic life.

Especially among those in the so-called Millennial generation, graduates of Catholic high schools attend Sunday Mass more frequently and are more likely to consider religious vocations, the bishops reported.

The Most Rev. George Lucas, Archbishop of Omaha and chair of the USCCB Committee on Catholic Education, said groups like Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) “are finding new ways to assist Catholic schools to accomplish their mission to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Clergy and laypeople share a responsibility to champion America’s Catholic school tradition and boost today’s successes.

 Pastors, other priests and religious, Catholic universities, and many organizations must help develop strong educational leaders for K-12 schools. They also must encourage good governance and financial sustainability, along with supporting parental choice laws and reaching out to all communities on behalf of Catholic education.

Archbishop Lucas made a pitch for stepped-up partnerships between K-12 schools and Catholic universities, a variety of benefactors, and diverse associations supporting a quality education for children from all backgrounds.

The Most Rev. Daniel Flores, Bishop of Brownsville and chair of the USCCB Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church, joined Archbishop Lucas in the presentation, and he recalled the legacy of America’s Catholic schools. For generations, they have offered a high quality education and character formation to poor immigrant families.

The Church’s outreach to Latino families and children deserves special attention because they are crucial to the future of the Church and the nation.

Catholic schools provide a path out of poverty for Latinos and help close the achievement gap for many poor and minority students. “[The schools] can change the trajectory of many young Latino lives and others, and help keep parents engaged in the Catholic Church, while increasing enrollments,” Bishop Flores told the assembled church leaders.

Efforts to increase Latino participation in Catholic schools require the bishops and others in parish and school leadership to make schools more welcoming to Latinos, Bishop Flores said. He pointed out that ACE “offers assistance to any bishop or superintendent who needs help with successfully increasing Latino enrollment.”

In a reference to the influence of trusted people like madrinas (godmothers) in Latino communities who can help convince families to consider Catholic school for their children, Bishop Flores said, “The one word that you will constantly hear is that increasing Latino enrollment in Catholic schools boils down to relationships.”

African American and Native American students experience the benefits of Catholic schools, such as 87% high school graduation rates. Latinos share in these advantages, Bishop Flores added. “We must continue this commitment for a new group of immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and to the younger generations born and raised in the United States.”

Over the past four years, the percentage of Latino children in Catholic schools has risen from 12.8% to 15% of total enrollment, and almost 20% of the Catholic children in Catholic schools are Latino, he said, urging dioceses to boost the inclusion of underserved populations still more.

The joint speech by Lucas and Flores, along with a major Nov. 9 workshop for bishops on Catholic school outreach to underserved communities, raised the USCCB conference’s focus on K-12 Catholic education to unusually high levels. Rev. Joseph Corpora, C.S.C., who leads ACE’s nationwide Catholic School Advantage campaign to increase Latino enrollments, and Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, Ph.D., senior director of the ACE RISE (Renewing Identity, Strengthening Evangelization) initiative, served as consultants for the USCCB presentations.

“I was encouraged by both the time and the energy the USCCB gave to understanding the current state of K-12 Catholic schools,” Fr. Nuzzi said. “While challenges vary in different parts of the country and in different dioceses, the research is clear that schools are one of the most effective means of evangelization the church has ever established.“

Photo: Bishops at Nov. 2014 conference. USCCB courtesy photo/Matt Palmer.

The University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Haiti initiative recently launched the “Read to Learn” project, an innovative literacy program in 52 Haitian Catholic schools.

Working in partnership with the Haitian Episcopal Commission for Catholic Education (CEEC) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the project began in the summer of 2014 and is supported by a $1 million grant from an anonymous foundation, as well as additional funding and staff support from CRS and ACE.

Read to Learn will bring improved teaching methods to hundreds of teachers and high quality reading materials to benefit approximately 7,000 students over the next two years.

The project includes rural and impoverished parish schools in the Haitian dioceses of Cap-Haitian and Gonaives, and includes five schools run by the Congregation of Holy Cross, Notre Dame’s founding religious congregation.

Read to Learn addresses a critical need in the Haitian population. Forty-nine percent of Haitian students have no reading capabilities when they enter the third grade, and almost 50 percent of the adult population is illiterate. Lacking the ability to read, the majority of Haitian students fail to complete elementary school. Only five percent of students advance to secondary school, and only one percent go on to college.

According to ACE Haiti Associate Director Kate Schuenke-Lucien, who coordinates the project, illiteracy impedes educational attainment, job readiness, and ultimately the health of Haiti’s economy. The roots of Haiti’s difficulty in teaching children how to read can be traced back to its poorly educated corps of teachers and the lack of an effective literacy curriculum in Creole, the language most Haitians speak.

“Literacy is the critical lever for improving the quality of education in Haiti,” Schuenke-Lucien said. “It is the foundation of all other learning. Students must ‘learn to read’ in their native language before they can ‘read to learn’ for the rest of their lives.”

The Read to Learn project will seek to replicate an earlier literacy pilot project in which Haitian Catholic educational leaders provided support and training to 300 Haitian schools. Building upon the method and lessons learned from that project, Read to Learn will focus on Creole rather than French, as Creole is the native language of 95% of Haitians and research has consistently supported the benefits of students learning to read in their mother tongue.

The literacy model uses supportive lesson plans for teachers and students, provides extensive teacher coaching, and includes a rigorous, randomized control trial evaluation conducted in partnership with Notre Dame’s Initiative for Global Development. This approach to improving literacy has proven successful in other developing countries and has produced significant gains in reading fluency and comprehension for students.

“We believe that this early grade literacy program is the single most effective, scalable intervention to improve educational quality in the Haitian context at this time,” ACE Haiti Associate Director TJ D’Agostino said. “We hope eventually to scale the program in all of Haiti’s 2,400 Catholic schools, which constitute the largest educational provider in the country. Advancing literacy will have a profound impact for generations of Haitian children."

For more information on Notre Dame’s ACE Haiti programs or the Read to Learn project please visit the ACE in Haiti website, or view a video about literacy in Haiti.

For additional information about this project, contact: Kate Schuenke-Lucien at 574.252.9652.

Notre Dame's Committed to Haiti website gives an overview of the University's ongoing engagement with that country's challenges and aspirations for the future.

It's no secret that we at ACE believe strongly in the future of Catholic schools. We've written before about the game-changing research from Nicole Stelle Garnett and Peg Brinig on the importance of Catholic schools in Lost Classroom, Lost Community, which shows that neighborhoods that close Catholic schools suffer in terms of crime and social cohesion. Others joined the two researchers recently to discuss the critical role Catholic schools play for the future of our children.

Marquette Law School gathered together academics, policy makers, and clergy to discuss how Catholic schools can both survive and thrive in today's world. Panelists praised the unique gifts of Catholic schools, and stressed that Catholic schools could improve by finding ways to adapt to the ever-changing educational landscape. Here are some highlights:

"We know intuitively that the Catholic education we received made a difference in our lives and in others’ lives. . . . At this point in our history, we cannot permit Catholic education to disappear in our social landscape." 
—Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki, Archbishop of Milwaukee

"I think Catholic education is on the verge of renaissance, especially in urban areas."
—Andy Smarick, Bellwether Education Partners

"We provide those fundamentally important components—certainly to give their kids the best possible opportunity to be safe, loved and have a chance at college."
—Kathleen Cepelka, Superintendent of Catholic Schools, Archdiocese of Milwaukee

Read more about the conference on Catholic Herald Online.

Catholic schools and their students lost an extraordinary witness to the transformational power of Catholic education with the passing of Fr. TJ Martinez, S.J., into eternal life. With his tireless devotion to service, electric personality, and endless joy, Fr. Martinez exemplified the entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to the poor that lies at the heart of the Cristo Rey mission.

"Our most heartfelt prayers and condolences go out to the Martinez family and the Cristo Rey community," says Rev. Timothy R. Scully, C.S.C., founder of the Alliance for Catholic Education. "TJ embodied Saint Ignatius' exhortation to 'Go forth and set the world on fire' and he will be deeply missed."

In his ministry as the Founding President of Cristo Rey Jesuit, Fr. Martinez catalyzed the creation of a remarkable educational and life-changing opportunity for the youth of Houston, TX. Since the school's founding in 2008, Fr. Martinez and his team have grown Cristo Rey Jesuit's student population from 80 to nearly 500 students. They have partnered with more than 150 blue-ribbon corporations to support the renowned Cristo Rey Corporate Work Study program, and they have transformed a hurricane-ravished physical facility into a stunning and award-winning campus. Most importantly, in 2013 every member of the school's first graduating class was accepted to college.

Fr. Martinez's legacy will live on through his students and colleagues, and his service to Catholic education will inspire many for decades to come.

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought,” wrote the famed Catholic author G.K. Chesterton in 1917. That wisdom inspires the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) community in 2014 as we raise our thoughts and prayers of gratitude for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Providence continued to bless ACE in wonderful ways this year as we advanced beyond our 20th anniversary celebration, sharing in the kindness and gifts of people and communities around the world. Here is a sampling of this year’s memories of grace in service to children and Catholic schools. Our thanks go out to:

•    Pope Francis, who lifts our spirits and did so in a special way in remarks on Jan. 30, 2014 with these words: “I express my gratitude for the commitment which the University of Notre Dame has shown over the years to supporting and strengthening Catholic elementary and secondary school education throughout the United States.”
•    Other spiritual leaders and guides who have helped us to know, love, and serve God better, in particular Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi of Mobile, who presided at our Missioning Mass this summer, and Rev. Larry Gillick, S.J., who led our reflections at the ACE team retreat in September.
•    Our priests and religious sisters on the ACE team and all the consecrated religious at the heart of the Catholic school legacy, past, present, and future. Their invaluable contributions merit heightened attention during the Catholic Church’s Year of Consecrated Life, which starts this weekend, on the First Sunday of Advent.
•    Prof. Maureen Hallinan, whose inspiration lives on following her death on Jan. 28. This world-renowned sociologist, a faith-filled pioneer among scholars of education, was the founding director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives.
•    All those in the ACE community, as well as Catholic school champions around the country who contributed their zeal to Notre Dame’s Fighting for Our Children’s Future National Bus Tour, marking the 20^th anniversary of ACE’s founding. The tour concluded safely and successfully in June after logging 30,000 miles to visit 65 Catholic K-12 schools in 35 states.
•    ACE’s generous supporters, such as Mary Ann and Jack Remick, of Rochester, Minnesota, whose latest benefaction—a $10 million leadership gift in 2014—more than doubled the endowment of the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program. The Institute for Educational Initiatives celebrated the gift’s transformative benefits by naming Visitation Hall as part of ACE’s home on campus.
•    Numerous leaders from many fields who visited ACE and brought new insights to Notre Dame audiences throughout the year. They included José Miguel Insulza, Secretary-General of the Organization of American States, and noted political scientist John DiIulio, who delivered the inaugural Fr. Tim Scully, C.S.C., Lecture on Education in the Service of Citizenship.
•    Archbishop George Lucas and Bishop Daniel Flores, whose joint presentation to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops meeting in November increased nationwide awareness of Catholic school issues. They honored ACE with a mention of our service, and Fr. Joseph Corpora and Fr. Ronald Nuzzi were honored to serve on the planning committee for their presentation.

As a Eucharistic community, ACE recognizes that “Eucharist” means “thanksgiving,” so this holiday prompts our prayers for continued blessings upon countless people involved in our mission. Our expressions of gratitude, in the words of an ACE maxim, are "just getting started.”