Archdiocese moving to strengthen schools

Nowhere else in America have Catholic schools had a better chance to thrive in the last 18 years than in the city of Milwaukee.

In significant ways, that has happened. Catholic school enrollment has been more stable than in many other urban centers, and there are Catholic schools here that have done reasonably to more-than-reasonably well.

But, frankly, the Catholic roster of schools has problems and the system as a whole hasn’t shown the success anyone would want. Catholic leaders, to their credit, have been increasingly willing to say that.

Now they are moving to act. The Milwaukee Archdiocese is launching what leaders envision will be a four-year effort to establish more control over 26 generally smaller Catholic schools in the city and make changes aimed at improving quality.

Most of the changes are similar to improvement strategies for other schools and school systems: a big emphasis on high-quality principals, increased training and mentoring of teachers, good use of data in shaping teaching, and effective oversight by boards at the parish and archdiocese levels.

Much of the work will be behind-the-scenes: more centralized purchasing, better financial management and more professional personnel management.

But both archdiocese officials and lay leaders involved in a task force shaping the effort are optimistic it will turn a loose system of schools, some of them poorly led, into a network that is more ambitious and more effective both in academics and in building religious identity.

Nationwide, Catholic schools have had a tough few decades, due to many factors.

Enrollment in all Catholic schools fell from 5.2 million in 1960 to 2 million in 2014, a drop of more than 60%. Hundreds of parish schools have closed. Put it this way: Total Catholic enrollment in 2014 was slightly higher than in 1920.

Milwaukee has seen much less change. Overall, enrollment, both in the city and across the 10-county archdiocese, has been comparatively stable in recent years. Enrollment in Catholic elementary schools in the archdiocese decreased 2.7% from 2005-’06 to 2014’15, while enrollment in 15 high schools in the archdiocese went up 2.6%.

The voucher effect

The reason Catholic schools in the city of Milwaukee have done much better than elsewhere can be summed up in one word: vouchers. The green light given in 1998 to religious schools receiving public money to pay for educating thousands of students gave a lot of schools leases on life. Until recently, no other U.S. city could compare to Milwaukee in either the number of students or the amount of money involved in vouchers.

But if enrollment hasn’t changed that much, the landscape for Catholic schools in the city has changed greatly. The middle class is largely gone. Many parishes that had strong ethnic identities — Irish, Polish, German — have shrunk or have transitioned to new identities.

In broad terms, students in many Catholic elementaries on the north side are predominantly AfricanAmerican, and fewer than 10% in some schools are Catholic.

On the south side, many elementaries now are heavily Hispanic, with most of the students from Catholic families. The most powerful example: St. Anthony’s School had dwindled to under 300 students in 1998; it had almost 2,000 last fall, almost all of them Hispanic. It was the largest beneficiary of voucher support of any school in America.

The urban education challenges facing public schools in the city are also facing Catholic schools. Some of the Catholic schools have had overall results on state standardized tests that are similar to Milwaukee Public Schools, which is to say, percentages of students who are rated proficient in reading or math in single digits or the teens.

Archdiocese efforts

But until now, if you want to see innovation and highoctane education, Catholic schools were not promising places to look.

The era of strict nuns at the heart of school life was gone, but many parish schools had stuck with established ways. (The Lutheran LUMIN and HOPE schools and St. Marcus Lutheran elementary school were better places to look for ambitious change.)

The archdiocese brought in consultants from Notre Dame University to assess the urban Catholic schools. Their reports criticized the leadership, educational practices and faith-building work of many of the schools.

Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for Archbishop Jerome Listecki, said, “A great drumbeat for fundamental change in our program” arose.

The new effort — officially titled Seton Catholic Schools — is a result.

The effort will focus on generally smaller schools, leaving out, at least for now, the two biggest Catholic operations in the city, St. Anthony and the Messmer schools, which are pursuing their own improvement efforts.

And the agenda will not include Catholic high schools, which are generally in better shape. The high school roster includes some of the most highly regarded schools in the Milwaukee area and one high-profile newcomer this fall, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School.

Don Drees, project manager for the Seton effort, said the focus will be on three areas: educational improvements, including consistent curriculum among schools; improved religious education; and improved governance.

Kathleen Cepelka, superintendent of archdiocese schools, said each school will keep its own identity, but there will be a strong centralized push for quality, with principals as a key focus. “Leadership is everything,” she said.

Archdiocese officials hope one result will be increased enrollment — “This is a growth model,” Topczewski said. Partly through fundraising and partly through more efficient operations, leaders also expect to see improved staffing of classrooms.

The logo of the new initiative includes the line, “Transforming Urban Education.” That is an appealing goal that the voucher opportunity has not brought Milwaukee Catholic schools so far.

Cepelka said: “We’re pursuing the ideal here. But why pursue anything else?” Agreed. And, as a biblical saying puts it, if not now, when?