Living the Call. Michael Novak

       CHAPTER 2

       Teach Our Children to Follow the Right Path

      The first Catholic school in the United States was founded in 1783 in Philadelphia. That the institution began at about the same time and in the same place as the Republic seems in retrospect more than a coincidence. More than two centuries later, it is hard to imagine the American educational landscape without Catholic schools. Some of our most prominent political, intellectual, and cultural figures credit their rigorous Catholic education for whatever success they have achieved in life.

      By the late 19th century, Catholic schools could be found from Boston to Cincinnati and New Orleans to San Francisco. But the burgeoning immigrant population meant that demand far outstripped supply. In 1884, the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore called for the construction of a Catholic school in every parish in the United States. Over the next 50 years, the system of Catholic education blossomed. Attended by children from large Catholic families, supported financially by the local parishes, and staffed by members of religious orders, these schools were educationally sound and charged almost nothing in tuition.

      Decade after decade, parents knew they could turn to Catholic schooling to attend to several crucial areas of development, providing students with a spiritual, social, and academic framework that would prepare them for life. With high expectations from parents and teachers at these schools, students—even in some of the poorest areas—have high graduation rates. Catholic schools provide a safe, secure community of learning in which all students are treated with dignity. It has always been common practice in Catholic schools for students receiving scholarships not to be publicly identified as recipients. And, of course, Catholic education aids the evangelizing work of the Church.

      The second half of the 20th century, though, has posed some tremendous challenges to Catholic education. First, while populations are mobile, school facilities are not. As Catholics gained more of a foothold in the middle class and began to leave the cities for the suburbs, many of their schools stayed behind. Now the Church has the particular challenge of expanding its schools in suburban areas with waiting lists while closing schools in cities where there are simply not enough paying customers.

      Today, there are 2.1 million students enrolled in Catholic schools, less than half the number enrolled 50 years ago. In 2004, Catholic schools enrolled about 12 percent of American students. Today, it’s only about 5 percent—despite an increase in the percentage of Americans who are Catholic.

      The financial stability of schools has also changed considerably. Thanks to insurance costs and a different regulatory environment, it now costs more to run a school than it did 50 years ago. And parents have other options as well. When Catholic schools began, public schools were not universally available, and some of them did not take kindly to Catholics.

      Perhaps the biggest—and certainly the most visible—change in Catholic schools has been in the staffing. In 1920, Catholic schools drew 92 percent of their staff from religious orders. Today, they draw less than 4 percent from that source, with lay teachers, administrators, and staff making up the other 96 percent. These men and women are tasked with offering the sort of rigorous education that Americans (Catholic and otherwise) have come to expect from Catholic schools. And they must pass on the values of the faith as well. In 2010, non-Catholics made up 14.5 percent of the enrollment in America’s Catholic schools, which speaks not only to the quality of education received there but also to the widespread appeal of Church values. As one principal once told us, “We don’t teach at this school because the kids are Catholic. We do it because we are Catholic.”

      But the shift to a school primarily run by laypeople has presented a unique problem for the Catholic school “business model”—that of compensation. Nuns, priests, and brothers simply did not need to be paid much of a salary by the schools. The Church provided for their basic needs. Laypeople, on the other hand, have families who rely on them for support. There is no question that in order to continue to bring laypeople into Catholic schools, the Church leadership will have to seriously consider the question of adequate compensation.

      But financial incentives are only one part of the puzzle. Laypeople must be asked to think about whether they have a calling in Catholic education.

      Laypeople have an opportunity now to be the torchbearers for the Catholic educational tradition, ensuring that it will be available for the next generation. There are any number of models for the kind of person who goes into Catholic education. The Church can use their help, whether it’s a young man like Elias Moo, a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame, who entered the two-year Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program and has been sent out to teach in an impoverished neighborhood, or someone like Mary Baier, the president of the Catholic school system in her diocese, who has spent her entire career teaching and being a principal in this setting.

      The rewards of teaching in a Catholic school include the opportunity to pass on and discuss the faith with young people. But many Catholic-school teachers say they also appreciate the lack of bureaucracy that so often encumbers the effectiveness of public schools around the country. Catholic-school administrators look at each potential teacher individually, considering his or her qualifications based on their college education, rather than imposing any number of universal (but often arbitrary) standards, such as completion of a certain number of education school credits.

      As a result of this flexibility, Catholic schools have also managed to attract a lot of mid- and late-career professionals who feel that they want to try something else. The accountants who become math teachers, the lawyers who become history teachers—these are part of the strength of Catholic schools. They are people who looked within themselves and decided it was time for a change. Here are their stories.