about the blogger
Joe Womac
About the Catholic Education Source
Categories
Recent Comments
7.22.2011Soda Pop and Schools
What Catholic Schools Can Learn from PepsiCo
Catholic schools can learn a lot from the soft drink industry and its consumers. Stick with me as I try to explain why…
Recently, Coke scored what appeared to be a major victory against its rival Pepsi when Diet Coke passed Pepsi as the #2 selling soft drink in America, giving Coke the top two slots in soft drink sales for the first time. Certainly it was a symbolic victory for Coke and many hearing the news may have assumed that the folks at Pepsi were quite disheartened with the news.
However, digging deeper into the facts of the situation reveals that the story of Diet Coke passing Pepsi was truly not a story of Coke versus Pepsi. Instead, it is a story of diet versus sugar. Dating back to the day the first diet soda sold, the sugar drinks have been losing ground to the sugar free drinks. PepsiCo and Coke have both realized for years that many of their customers have become conscious about the number of calories in the drinks they consume, so consequently they have been creating products for those customers that contain fewer calories.
More »
4.18.2011University of Notre Dame Hosts All Star Panel on K-12 Education
Michelle Rhee, Howard Fuller, Sara Martinez Tucker, and John DiIulio Each Speak Out On What Issues Matter Most for Our Nation's Children
Do you care about education issues?
Are you concerned about what should be done to improve our nation's schools?
If so, I suggest you skip tonight's television program and instead spend 90 minutes listening to what the University of Notre Dame's panelists had to say at their recent event, The System: Opportunity, Crisis, and Obligation in K-12 Education.
3.25.2011A Nice Little Primer
Andy Smarick's History of Catholic Ed...
My friends at Seton Educational Partners, just sent me this article written by Andy Smarick, former Deputy Assistant Education Secretary for the U.S. Dept. of Ed. It could serve as a good primer for those interested in the historical rise and then decline of Catholic education in our innercities. Check it out.
3.9.2011The Economics of Dropping Out
What is each high school graduate worth? What does each dropout cost us?
Most of the research and commentary on high school dropouts focuses on the negative consequences in the life of the typical dropout. High school dropouts are mulitple times more likely to spend time in jail, struggle with unemployment, commit violent acts...The depressing list goes on. Check out the impressive interactive site set up by Boostup on dropout rates to learn a bit more in this direction. It gets pretty scary and depressing when you focus not only on the consequences of dropping out but on the fact that nearly one in three students drops out in the United States, and nearly one in two in some innercities and rural parts of the country.
What, though, of the positive impacts of preventing a dropout? In other words, instead of focusing on the negative trends that come from dropping out, what can we surmise from focusing on the positive effects of graduating high school. The Alliance for Excellent Education has set up a useful interactive tool of their own, similar to Boostup's above. However, it does something different. It quantifies the impact of dropouts in terms of the lost economic opportunity. Since graduates earn more, society loses the potential economic benefit of a higher earning graduate each time a student drops out of high school. So here in Seattle, for instance, our citizens would earn almost $100,000,000 more each year if we could just cut the dropout rate in half.
So, I'll finish with one last little point relating this issue to Catholic education: Considering the fact that studies have shown that Catholic schools dropout rates nationally are as low as 3% -- certainly not even close to the national 30% -- shouldn't the public be very concerned that Catholic schools in our inner cities are closing at extremely rapid rates (over 1,300 in just the last decade)? With over 2,000,000 students enrolled in Catholic schools in this country, it would seem that the above research points to tens of billions of added earnings caused by the increased graduation rates (lower dropout rates) of Catholic schools.
2.17.2011Back on the Blog
Archbishop Dolan's Remarks
I'm back from hiatus now that we have a new Blog site. This first post is a short one. Interested in hearing an eloquent set of remarks in support of school choice for Catholic education? Try out NYC's Archbishop Dolan and his recent Fox Interview:
Why Catholic Schools Score Better Than Public Schools [VIDEO]
9.8.2010How Come No One Told Me Talking Benches Improve Learning?
9.1.2010Going Back(ward) to School in DC
Note that although the film was produced by a conservative think tank, many of the proponents of the program featured in the film are not Republican. The film is called "Let Me Rise" and is featured on the Voices of School Choice website.
8.24.2010Empty Seats: An Opportunity or a Tragedy
Clearly, the challenges facing principals and schools are immense. Clearly, in some communities consolidation is the only solution. Clearly, we should be aggressively pursuing increased lay leadership and governance reform in many school communities where such is needed.
That said, I just hung up the phone with a principal of a Catholic school here in the Seattle area. He has been in this role for a short four years. When he began, the school had shrunk to just 140 students and, needless to say, had many empty desks and much debt to repay. Where are they today? This fall they will welcome an enrollment of 260 students and nearly full classrooms throughout the building. Their debt is largely paid down and they are about to embark on a campaign to remodel the gymnasium. This principal saw through the empty desks and debt and saw opportunity. We need more of that.
8.13.2010Being Willing to Rethink the Model
7.26.2010The Role of Catholic Colleges in Catholic K-12 Education
In a recent survey of US Pastors regarding their perceptions and attitudes toward Catholic K-12 schools ("Faith, Finances, and the Future: The Notre Dame Study of U.S. Pastors"), Ron Nuzzi, Anthony Holter, and James Frabutt learned that most US Pastors who oversee a Catholic school "did not perceive the mission of their schools to be supported by Catholic institutions of higher education." According to the same study, only 17% of those surveyed reported any active partnership with a Catholic college or university. Nuzzi, Holter, and Frabutt--who are employed by the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Educational Initiatives--suggest this is highly disappointing, especially considering that those few pastors that did sense the support of a Catholic college or university were much more likely to value their Catholic grade school.
This common impression of the pastors reinforces findings from a different study conducted in 2002 by John Watzke. This study looked at Catholic university teacher education programs and learned that less than 1/3 of the faculty of Catholic college teacher training programs "have any experience in Catholic schools (as a student, teacher, or administrator)." If less than 1/3 of the faculty have ever experienced a Catholic school at any level, how can we expect these same faculty to take a lead in training the future leaders and educators of that same system?
This is not to imply that nothing is being done by our Catholic Universities (Just check out the University Consortium for Catholic Education for some great examples). But one would hope for higher positive response rates the next time a survey is done.
Plenty more in the Archives
