Can Research Keep Catholic Schools Open?

Two recent experiences got me thinking about the administration and leadership of Catholic schools and how research might contribute to new models to keep schools open. I hope that others more knowledgeable about this topic will contribute more than I can by way of comments to this post.

The first experience was a discussion about the Notre Dame Magnificat Schools model, which is mentioned in the report of the Notre Dame Task Force on Catholic Education. Magnificat schools receive resources to help increase enrollment and student achievement and decrease faculty turnover. It was not clear to me from the discussion - or from other resources I could find - what, specifically, would be done to achieve these objectives. From what I gather, the model is an evolving one, open to the creative solutions of individuals, parishes, and school and Notre Dame faculty. In other words, it seems like a ripe area for research about Catholic school "survival," leadership, and collaboration. What I'm less certain of, because leadership/administration is not my area of expertise, is what specific research questions within these rather broad topics might look like.

The second experience I had helped me to begin to see some potential research questions. I sat in on a budget meeting involving an administrator at a public school system and a project director at a university. The exasperation of the project director was palpable as the administrator described the many layers of bureaucracy of determining - and executing - a project budget within the system. Evidently, the administrator, who knew more than anyone in the school system about costs associated with the project, had the least to say about the budget. I got the sense that the administrator lacked the management skill to more successfully navigate the business end of the program.

These two experiences started me wondering about the nuts and bolts of running a Catholic School. For example, in small Catholic elementary schools (at least those that I have experienced), the principal typically serves the multiple functions of, among many others, "operations manager" (making day-to-day decisions about school functioning), chief disciplinarian, business manager, and academic leader (or curriculum supervisor), probably in that order. It occurred to me that to perform these functions well, a person would not only have to have the time to commit to all of them, but also specific and detailed training in each area. Some might be best learned through experience, but others - particularly expertise in organizing curriculum and managing a budget - seem much more detailed than on the job training (or even an education administration degree/certificate program?) can provide.

Perhaps research into the various outcomes of different Catholic School models might make for fertile ground for research. It seems plausible to explore the effects of the distribution of any of the leadership functions on any number of other functions or school and demographic outcomes. For example, research might explore:

• the effects of turning financial management of a group of Catholic Schools to a central office or business manager that serves all of the schools as one unit
• the impact of having a full-time assistant principal on staff to handle any of the principal's duties so that he/she can focus more fully on others. That is, does an assistant principal "pay for herself" in terms of increased enrollment because school quality improves?
  
• whether or not a Catholic School principal can be effective in any role when trying to juggle all roles.
  

As a Curriculum & Instruction guy, this timid foray into educational leadership and school governance/administration models is admittedly limited. I therefore look forward to reading others' thoughts about potential research questions and research that has already been (or is being) conducted.

ND Task Force on Catholic Education: Implications for Research?

In 2005, the President of the University of Notre Dame, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., appointed the Task Force on Catholic Education in response to an invitation from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to help revitalize America’s unique Catholic school system. In December 2006, the University published the work of the Task Force, “Making God Known, Loved, and Served: The Future of Catholic Primary and Secondary Schools in the United States,” identifying 12 areas in which the University can support Catholic schools, and five recommended steps for Church and civic leaders.

The recommendations of the Task Force are specific to actions that can be - and are being - taken by the University of Notre Dame. However, they suggest broader themes that might be explored through an agenda of research on Catholic Education. Although a case could be made for the implications of each of the recommendations, the following 3 seem like fertile ground for immediate and ongoing research:

Recommendation #1
Recruit and Form a New Generation of Effective Catholic School Teachers
In a response to last week's post, Katie Bennett suggested that many of the challenges facing Catholic schools are attributable to "financial woes caused by the critical transition in staffing from predominantly vowed-religious to lay persons that occurred during the second half of the twentieth century". If this is true, then not only will recruitment of a new generation of teachers be important, but research about who can and should be recruited, what Catholic teacher education programs currently look like and can be in the future, the role of Catholic teacher preparation in education departments at Catholic colleges and universities, and preparation and retention of Catholic school teachers - to name just a few - seem like fruitful areas for research. Among other research in this area, Katie's research, along with, for example, John Watzke's edited volume Beyond Alternative Teacher Education: Integrating Teaching, Community, Spirituality and Leadership, might provide a good start for future research.

Recommendation #2
Recruit and Form Effective Catholic School Leaders
Parallel to Recommendation #1, developing leaders of Catholic Schools for the new millennium seems of paramount importance to creating new, innovative ideas and models for Catholic Schools and Catholic Education. Through its ACE Leadership Program, the University of Notre Dame has begun to develop the next generation of leaders. This initiative addresses the need for well-trained leaders, and it could provide a foundation upon which to research leadership in the Catholic school context, specific characteristics of effective Catholic school leaders, and models of development appropriate for the Catholic School context.

Closely related is Recommendation #11: Develop a National Program to Develop Effective Parish School Leadership Programs. The implementation of such a recommendation should be founded upon research on - or at least best practice in - what makes parish leadership teams unique in education and how they can be developed productively.

Recommendation #4
Build a National Initiative for the Academic Improvement of Catholic Schools
Although a "Catholic School effect" - greater achievement for Catholic School students as compared to their public school counterparts - has been noted, in particular for low income and ethnic minority students, the effect is not observed in all Catholic schools. This effect seems to interact with the needs of new immigrant populations served by Catholic schools, as described in Christian Dallavis's comment to last week's post, the effects of low teacher salaries on teacher quality and retention, and the particular kinds of environments, curricula, and instruction that make Catholic Schools unique (see David Yeager's comment to last week's post). Research is needed to tease out these effects and explore their interactions.

Some subjects, such as science, present opportunities to explore the interaction between Catholic belief systems and traditional school curricula. Catholic Schools also seem to be ideal contexts in which to study service learning and character education, and among the only places where Catholic identity formation and instruction can be studied. These topics are important not only for the education of our children, but also for the future of the Church.

There are no doubt more specific applications of these Task Force recommendations to research, as well as areas in which research can inform progress toward fulfilling the other recommendations, but I offer these as a beginning point, open to comment, elaboration, or disagreement. Ideally, the collective comments of interested and skilled readers of this blog will result in the beginnings of an agenda for research on Catholic Education.

Researching the Future of Catholic Education

Research in, on, for, and about Catholic schools at the dawn of the 21st Century seems to be a fragmented endeavor. Although topics ranging from the values of Catholic school administrators to comparisons of Catholic School students to public school students on standardized tests have been explored as doctoral dissertations, there are currently few published academic journals that specifically encourage research in, on, for, and about Catholic schools. One reason for the dearth of outlets for research on Catholic education might be that it is not clear just what the research questions that face Catholic education are, or, probably more appropriately, could be.

Hence, the Catholic Education Research blog. The goal of this blog is to encourage thoughtful and lively debate about what research on Catholic education can do, should do, and must do to help Catholic schools in the United States and elsewhere survive now and in the future. What topics should be explored? What are the priorities? Who should the participants be? What kinds of methods are appropriate? Who is the audience for Catholic education research? What makes research on the issues, processes, priorities, and outcomes of Catholic schools different from those of other schools?

In short, why bother?

One reason comes immediately to mind.

The Catholic community has an obligation and an interest in supporting the spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and social development of Catholic youth. However, demographic trends, including an increasing number of Hispanic families seeking Catholic education, along with financial realities - the rising costs of Catholic education - combine in unusual ways to create both challenges and opportunities. Catholic schools have an important opportunity to serve Catholic immigrants and the mainstream population alike, but they are challenged to provide equal opportunities for members of different populations to gain access to Catholic schools. Research on the needs of students and their families and strategies for meeting those needs seems appropriate at this critical juncture in the history of Catholic schools in the United States.

Research into these topics, and not just discussion, is important because Catholic schools, like all schools, serve parents increasingly interested in the "value add" of the educational experiences their children have. Those parents are also increasingly holding educational institutions - Catholic or not - accountable for meeting the standards they promise. Families might be committed to Catholic education in principal and on the basis of their values, but if faced with the enticing alternatives of private and public schools that often offer more and different resources, the decision to send children to Catholic school becomes more complicated.

What the added value of Catholic education "looks like" might be a good place to start a research agenda. Such research might take many different forms. Possible broad starting points for research questions could include:

• What are the priorities of Catholic and non-Catholic families who send their students to Catholic schools?
• How is service learning enacted in Catholic schools, and what benefits does service learning have for students?
• Does the Catholic identity of a school contribute to students' moral development?

Of course, these topics have been explored in dissertations and in Catholic Education: A Journal of Research and Practice. But a structured dialogue about the research questions of interest to Catholic schools is still in its infancy.

In the posts in this blog, scheduled once a week, current research and possible research questions in the future will be explored in the hopes that the dialogue here can help the young field begin to toddle along to its next stage.