Samuel Freedman has a lovely article in the New York Times about young Catholic teachers working together in Tucson.
They are part of a program called the Alliance for Catholic Education, which was created at Notre Dame. They spend a summer at Notre Dame preparing to teach and another summer reviewing what they have learned and sharpening their skills. Notre Dame teaching coaches are available to them during their time on the job.
When I visited Notre Dame last spring, I met Father Tim Scully, the founder of ACE, who is truly a spiritual leader. I conversed with many of the fine young people preparing to enter their ACE experience.
They pledge to teach for two years in a Catholic school in an impoverished neighborhood.
They live in community, pray together, and are paid only $1,000 a month.
Some, though not all, decide to become teachers after their ACE experience.
They are not on a fast track to power.
They don’t have a direct line to McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or JP MorganChase.
They don’t expect to be working in the office of the Mayor or the Governor after teaching for two years.
They don’t expect to become state commissioner of education by 35.
They work in a spirit of humility, commitment and caring.
They help to keep Catholic education alive, a system that has served poor and immigrant children well for almost two centuries and that is now imperiled by lack of nuns and competition with charter schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A well-regarded educational historian once suggested the best use of Bill Gates’ money would be subsidizing Catholic schools. Does that still hold?
On a related matter:
unions sometimes fall short of this promise and responsibility. Some union actions can contribute to excessive polarization and intense partisanship, can pursue positions that conflict with the common good, or can focus on just narrow self-interests. When labor institutions fall short, it does not negate Catholic teaching in support of unions and the protection of working people, but calls out for a renewed focus and candid dialogue on how to best defend workers. Indeed, economic renewal that places working people and their families at the center of economic life cannot take place without effective unions. This renewal requires business, religious, labor, and civic organizations to work together to help working people defend their dignity, claim their rights, and have a voice in the workplace and broader economy.
Is there a need for candid dialogue regarding “positions that conflict with the common good?”
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Yes. If Bill Gates and the other billionaires created an endowment for Catholic education, there would be no worry about their future.
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hoping the Catholic church does not support vouchers –which will aid their shaky financial situation. We are hearing about this in NC.
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Principles for Educational Reform in the United States (1995)
All too often, especially for the most vulnerable children, the educational experience is not filled with hope and nurturing but fear and failure. In addition, there is evidence that we are losing our young people to a variety of personal and social problems that can be traced, at least in part, to a fundamental lack of education in basic religious, moral, and civic values. …
We have a sincere concern for what happens to all children, including those enrolled in public and private schools as well. We have a deep concern that all children will be provided with a means to attain a quality education that will prepare them to be good citizens, lead productive lives, and be socially and morally responsible. …
No single model or means of education is appropriate to the needs and desires of all persons. Therefore, our nation should make available the broadest variety of quality educational opportunities for each individual to choose from, including public, private, and religious models. …
Parents have the right to choose the kind of education best suited to the needs of their children, and they should not be burdened economically for choosing a private or religious school in the exercise of this fundamental right.
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Unfortunately I think they see them as a way to prop up their shaky urban schools. In Louisiana they are included in the voucher program and there have been vouchers to send kids to Catholic schools in New Orleans for several years. Also, on the BESE (state governing board) over the schools is parochial school administrator. He is one of the appointed, not elected members, appointed by teaparty Republican governor Bobby Jindal. Now they are eroding the schools in other parts of the state with their selective admissions and requirements for things like uniforms that fit and fees that poor families are not able to meet.
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So a summer of teaching training is enough for a catholic, but atheists require an undergraduate degree in education to be qualified?
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I think this may be the first time I’ve ever agreed with you.
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I am not sure that’s the message we should take away from the article. Private schools may, so far as I know, set whatever guidelines they wish for the credentialing process of their teachers. Even if we think it’s too little, it’s still far more than TFA provides.
The message I took away is these are some very compassionate
educators who truly work to form a professional and supportive community for themselves and each other. That’s sort of the idea behind PLCs, even if they turn out to be simply staff meetings in disguise at most of our schools.
We can debate the Catholic Church’s dogma and voucher systems and everything else, but these teachers and their mentors are trying to do what we all want to do; teach kids and be the best professional possible.
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ACE teachers have two full summers of training, not five weeks.
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All ACE teachers have undergraduate degrees, most often in the field that they are teaching. This is then supplemented through the summer program, which is an intensive Master of Education degree that requires students to typically spend eight hours a day in class for two straight summers. Summer course work is followed by online classes during the school year and regular site visits by Notre Dame professors. ACE teachers take a minimum of 37 graduate credit hours and spend two years teaching full-time by graduation.
Additionally, ACE teachers must take and pass both the general Praxis exam and the Praxis II for their content area. ACErs fulfill all Indiana teacher licensing requirements between the exams and graduate study.
Lastly, the instruction and supervision provided ACE teachers comes from faculty and staff who are leaders in the field. Notre Dame has placed great emphasis on the success of the ACE program, resulting in the ability to attract faculty from top-tier universities. Browse through the faculty profiles and you’ll find individuals with degrees from Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, Michigan State, Boston College, Indiana, Wisconsin, and (of course) Notre Dame.
Compare the hallmarks of a good graduate education program – course and testing requirements, field placement, and faculty – and you’ll be hard pressed to find much lacking in what Notre Dame does through ACE and what is found in her peer institutions.
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How much training is required to be a competent teacher? Is two summers enough? I had thought that Dr. Ravitch was of the opinion that a degree in education was required. I am glad to know that I was wrong.
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I grow weary of this generalized argument. I have a math degree the same as any other math degree. I also took education courses but they only took the place of general education courses. Secondary teachers typically must have degrees in the subjects they teach.
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At my institution an MA in math education almost requires almost as much coursework in mathamatics as a BA Mathamatics major, a good deal less than the BS degree in Math.
But the discussion here concerns how much specialized training in teaching is required. Dr. Ravitch’s endorsement of this program suggests that she, at least, thinks relatively little is required.
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The Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul is busy spending enormous sums to convince Minnesotans to vote for an amendment to our Constitution, limiting marriage to a man and a woman. The Archbishop has written a letter to a parishioner who questioned this, making clear he does not think a person who disagrees with him is a good Catholic.
Catholic schools in Minneapolis/St. Paul have been told they must promote what many of us see as incredible intolerance and a violation of equal protection of the law. Is this the kind of thing you’d like to see Gates and other funders promoting, Diane?
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what many of us see as incredible intolerance and a violation of equal protection of the law.
What does this tell us about priorities? How would you persuade those who NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin derided as “right wing bastards” to vote more money for public schools that perpetuate a “dangerous state of civic knowledge?”
Are the constitutional purposes of public schools being subordinated to political agendas?
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$12,000/year is not “below the federal poverty line” when you’re getting room and board provided free.
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??? The article mentions a rented house and casseroles, not free room and board.
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Just to set the record straight, “room and board” are not provided except at Notre Dame during the summers; ACE teachers pay for all our food and rent for where we live during the two school years. I’d also like to point out to “teachingeconomist” the ACE does not simply throw teachers into schools with little preparation; ACE is highly competitive, selecting individuals who excelled in their undergraduate work–and therefore have a strong foundation of actual content–and show high aptitude and passion for helping students succeed. In addition to the intensive coursework over the two summers, we take classes online during the two school years and have the constant support of mentors in our school as well as academic supervisors who are experts in education who are in touch with us at least every other week and visit us at least twice a year. After our two years of teaching and learning through ACE we have earned a master’s degree in education, so we are actually better prepared than many other teachers.
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Let us not paint the Catholic schools with too broad a brush. I suspect there is quite a bit of variance among them, as with other kinds of schools.. The one in which I work has a faculty whose members are mostly certified and many have advanced degrees. Several of us are not Catholic, Christian, or even especially religious. The climate at my school is surprisingly tolerant as well, and the freedom with which ideas (even non-Catholic ones) can be discussed is broader than I have experienced at public schools.
There are shortcomings as well, but it is not as if Catholic schools are Christian madrassas.
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I still wonder at this as it it a glorified version of TFA. One of the complaints of the old nun run schools was that not all were well educated/qualified but had a lot of experience that countered that for the younger grades. The woeful teacher salaries for the lay teachers were scandalous back in the heyday of Catholic schools. Now they are returning to the pay scale even more sharply reduced but still scandalous. The Catholic Church has tremendous assets that they choose not to invest in their local religious based schools now. This will just perpetuate the martyr complex associated with the ‘dedicated teachers’ I am afraid. Teaching is not a mission – it is a profession. No one would applaud someone taking missionary Medical Work or missionary Accountancy or missionary Legal Work or missionary Engineering. Teaching is a profession.
Irony is that the harsher the ed deform policies become and the more callously greedy the philanthrocapitalists are, the more I harken to the Catholic ethos as a proud ideal even though the internal structures of the Catholic Church are not ones I wish for my own children to be subjected to,
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I would not say it is a “glorified version of KIPP.” No one here works for power or prospects of a dramatic ascent into the halls of power and privilege.
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You have nicely summed up my own conflicted feelings about Catholic schools. Making 30% less than in a public school while doing the same job is one of the “shortcomings” I alluded to in the previous post. We do hear about teaching as a “mission” vs. “profession” quite a bit too. Also, the desperation for funds (tuition) has had the undesirable effect of innervating academic standards and grad inflation.
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I was an ACE mentor for two years in Louisiana. Two recent college graduates were ACE teachers through Notre Dame. They were sent to our school because at the time, teachers were paid $12,000 a year. This was in 1994-1996. Certified teachers could not afford to teach in parochial schools, so there was a constant teacher shortage. Both of them went on to pursue graduate degrees in a different field. They did not stay in education. They were not “replacement” teachers as many TFAs have become.
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This is the problem with TFAs and other non-teacher teachers. If you don’t see the classroom as a career, if you are not called to teach, you are not likely to stay. I am proud that one of the TFAs who goes to my church has completed her 2 years and is now working on her Masters in Special Education. We have a potential family member and she likes autistic kids. The way she talks about her kids shows deep love and understanding. Her friend, however, a 2nd year TFA is undecided and has been talking about law school. Her school has been losing teachers almost weekly. They up and quit. They are in a rural area that includes the school where the high school girl hung herself from the bleachers because she was being bullied and the administration refused to do anything. So anyway, this little TFA has been moved around so much I don’t know how she is tolerating it. She is just being USED. Last year she had 3rd grade and an administrator who was involved in the Atlanta cheating scandal tried to get rid of her for teaching while white (a common problem in Atlanta). This year she started out in Resource, but the regular ed. 3rd grade teacher quit so now she is in third grade and has students with IEPS as well as regulars. So they don’t seem to know how to create and keep a teacher, apparently. But TFA is talking about making her a mentor next year for new TFAs. I would call that the blind leading the blind. She can’t even settle down long enough to find out what she is best at and if she really wants to teach.
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I’ve supervised two ACE teachers in the past two summers with mixed results. I’m a 25-year veteran public school teacher. The first was an outstanding student and was able to engage the students in very creative ways. I kept contact with him through Facebook and followed up with him this summer. He has pretty much decided after his first year that teaching is not for him, which is unfortunate, since he did pretty well. He was originally a mechanical engineering student.
The second ACE teacher was another story. He had no way to relate to students in an urban setting. He was a child of privilege and his attitude was one that you might expect from that background. I actually had to stop him several times in class from just plain giving wrong information to students that would be difficult to undo after the fact. His field was biology, not math, and it definitely showed. I respect what these kids are doing, but what’s curious about the program is that after the two years they receive a master’s in education from a university that has no college of education.
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A couple years ago in Ed Week the current head of ACE was quoted as calling urban Catholic schools “the greatest tool for evangelism the world has ever known”. That is their purpose, create little Catholics. This is ok if parents want their children raised in that tradition, but with vouchers I am sure there are quite a few Baptist, Presbyterian, and even Holiness children being taught another religion in the name of education. I knew a family who was Presbyterian who was sending their boys to a Catholic high school because they had not been able to get them into the few really good public schools. Every evening at dinner they undid the Catholic teachings the kids were being taught at school. Except in Louisiana, Catholics are a distinct minority in the Deep South, probably not much more common than Muslims. In fact a few years ago in Atlanta, they had to combine three urban Catholic elementary schools into one because they could not get enough kids.
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I would counter this evangelism as not being the tradition of the Catholic Church that I or anyone of my generation and above even remember. it was subtle but it was not evangelical.
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Not sure why you assume that ACErs won’t end up working for McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, JP MorganChase, the Mayor or the Governor after teaching for two years. That’s a pretty big and unsubstantiated leap to make. In my ACE house, of the 6 of us, we ended up with one lawyer, one doctor, one teacher, one asst principals (at a Catholic school) one seminarian and one ed policy person – working on reforming K-12 education. Because we’re taught that a deep belief in social justice, stewardship and an imperative for educational systems and institutions to treat students and teachers with the dignity stemming from being created in the image of God, we’re called to to all sorts of career paths and I for one do hope that an ACEr becomes the commissioner of education in some state. The sooner the better!
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Of course, ACE teachers end up as doctors, lawyers, financial advisors. But you didn’t join ACE for the sake of your résumé, did you?
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of the offers I had to consider after completing by bachelors degree – of which included both ACE and TFA – I would have been a fool to NOT consider how my choice would look on my resume two, five, ten years down the road. Resume-building was obviously not the first or only reason for picking ACE, but certainly it may have been for others. Its just not fair to generalize that all ACErs are completely altruistic and all TFA teachers are power-grabbing, money-hungry, ladder climbers. I have no doubt that many TFA teachers joined the corps because they truly want to make a difference and truly want to teach and that is exactly why they stay doing it. Similarly I’m confident that some ACE teacher do dream of an ascent into the “halls of power and privelige.”
Let’s celebrate ACE for being a great program doing wonderful things for Catholic schools without tearing down TFA.
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