Improving our Math Scores

Catholic elementary schools tend to produce students with much stronger scores in language arts than mathematics. This is generally true in dioceses across the United States.

I have a theory why: More so than public schools--with their detailed curricular specifications, a governing bureaucracy that supervises this curriculum and public testing that measures its progress-- Catholic schools are heavily dependent on the interests and talents of our individual teachers to create and deliver the curriculum. This independence, of course, is generally a source of strength for our schools, empowering our faculties with a sense of ownership that encourages a culture of creativity and innovation. 

But in the area of Math, this independence may be problematic. Most elementary teachers have more affinity for language arts than mathematics, and like any of us, we tend to place our energies into what we are good at doing. That doesn’t mean our teachers don’t “cover” what the curriculum requires. It does mean their passion and creativity lean more toward languages than math. And it probably means that the 9- year effect of this “lean” will result in math skills that lag in comparison. 

Short of adopting the public school model, I am pessimistic that new programs or other curricular interventions in our Catholic schools will yield substantially better math results. The issue isn’t one of technique, design, or time on task. Rather, it resides in the natural proclivities of our teachers. 

Sumner Academy, a small but highly regarded K-8 private school in Gallatin, TN (http://www.sumneracademy.org) has a simple solution: It departmentalizes disciplines all the way down to kindergarten. Each “unit” (K-2, 3-5, 6-8) has a math/science teacher, a language arts teacher and a third teacher. Kids stay in one classroom, but the teachers rotate to that classroom. 

Organizing this way allows the school to hire teachers with a genuine love and depth of understanding for math (and science) for each grade level unit, without adding any additional salary costs to the school.  The headmaster of Sumner Academy, Dr. Bill Hovenden, points out additional benefits:

• There’s better vertical alignment of the K-8 curriculum since it’s a matter of coordinating just three people in each discipline.

• Since a particular teacher teaches each kid for three years in their particular discipline, he or she begins the year knowing much more about his or her students’ strengths and weaknesses.

• When a teacher is on maternity leave or out for an extended illness, the other two teachers in each unit can guide and support the substitute as the third member of the team.

Most of the graduates from Sumner Academy attend our high school, so I see their test scores. The math scores are high. The model works. 

Because departmentalization at such a young age violates elementary school orthodoxy, I asked Dr. Hovenden if his kids seemed to have difficulty in adjusting to three teachers instead of one. He answers “no” rather emphatically. In fact, he argues that the trio of teachers can often provide more pastoral, loving support for a child than a single teacher because the teachers can talk as a team about each student, tackle issues together, and build longer term relationships with each student’s family. Students, families and teachers become very close to one another over the course of those three years. 

That's not speculation, he adds. They’ve been doing it this way for over twenty years.

Creative Scheduling to Save Significant Monies

Because we are extra sensitive to the needs of our parents, Catholic schools often operate on a razor thin margin that makes budgeting difficult. One way we can save significant monies that we often don't think about during the budgeting process is how we go about scheduling the academic day and how we schedule our teachers as part of the day. Here are a few ideas to consider:

1) In my previous school of roughly 300 students in grades 9-12, we had a 7 period day, with teachers required to teach five of those seven periods, or 71% of the school day. Classes met in roughly 50 minute blocks. There were a number of problems: First, carrying seven classes at a time was difficult for our students, especially in terms of homework loads. Second, the 50 minute classes were too short to advance the kind of curriculum we wanted, with labs in science classes, for example, or significant discussions and constructivist learning in other classes. Third, it was expensive to give teachers two free periods, but asking them to teach an additional class would take away their planning time and almost certainly guarantee an extra prep. I believed it would over-tax them. 

We looked at a variety of models, including the "block schedule" where students carry just four classes each semester, 90 minutes/class,  and cover a full year in a single semester. After much discussion and research, I became convinced the last fifteen minutes of the "block" were often wasted in too many classes, making it impossible to "cover" the yearly curriculum in a semester's time. We needed something in between the 50 and 90 minute periods. 

So in the mid 1990's, we implemented a "trimester" schedule. Students took five classes of 72 minutes each and earned a half-credit in of those classes per trimester. For a student to earn a full credit, then, they had to take two trimesters of a class. Teachers taught four of five classes (80% of the school day), which turned out to be a manageable load, especially since they were teaching fewer students each trimester (4 classes times 20'ish students=80 vs. five classes of 20'ish=100). Students and parents liked it because their daily load was lessened considerably, making homework more manageable. Furthermore, students could earn an extra half credit each year (3 trimesters of 5 classes =7.5 credits, vs. 7 credits in the old model). And, to the point of this article, it saved us significant monies. Why? Because teachers were teaching 9% more of the day, which translated, on a faculty of 22 teachers, to two full-time teachers--anywhere from $70-90,000 once all the benefits were added in. No small amount!

Let me anticipate an objection: We ran the trimester for ten years and tracked test scores closely. There was no drop off in academic achievement with our kids. In fact, the trimester system gave us some flexibility that added to our academic success, such as the ability to schedule a remedial second trimester class for students who did poorly in Composition I in the first trimester (a class we considered pivotal for future success), or adding a third trimester requirement for Advanced Placement classes in Physics, Chemistry or Calculus that required students to dig much deeper. 

2) Most elementary schools offer after school care programs, and increasingly, our parents expect there to be some curricular element to them, where students are offered exploratory classes in art, or music, or foreign language, for example. It's expensive to hire qualified teachers who are available in those time slots! At the same time, we invest a lot of monies into having art, music and foreign language teachers in our school programs, and when budgets get tight, we often cut those programs and move those teachers to part time. 

But there's another option:  Why not ask our art, music and foreign language teacher to begin their day around 10 a.m. and end their day at 5'ish, with the expectation they will teach in our after school programs? Yes, that cuts two hours of time from their ability to teach students in the school each day, but the reality is there are no requirements that dictate how often we must offer these enrichment classes each week. And though our "special" teachers would likely prefer an 8-3 job along with everyone else, most would opt for a full time gig, even if 10-5. 

3) I believe most Catholic schools, and especially Catholic elementary schools, are woefully understaffed at the administrative level. We expect our principals to run our day care programs in addition to our K-8 programs, often with only a beleaguered secretary and guidance counselor as part of the administrative "team." They must respond to every question, answer every appeal, serve as the "referee" for every dispute. Corporate America recommends that managers be responsible for 8-10 "direct reports," employees who directly report to them. Our principals are typically responsible for 15-30 direct reports, not counting their myriad other responsibilities. Many of our schools need, at minimum, an assistant principal, but cannot afford one. 

Some schools have responded by creating a layer of administration from within their teaching ranks, configuring their schools in K-2, 3-5 and 6-8 "units" and designating a "lead teacher" in charge of each unit. They then stipend the lead teacher a certain amount of money to recognize the work they do (the amount varies--a school I know stipends them $2,000) and if possible, gives them an extra free period as relief from their teaching load. 

The key is how the principals use these lead teachers. Smart principals will insist the lead teachers are responsible for all curricular planning. I would suggest they also ask the lead teachers to "vet" all teacher candidates for openings within their unit, making a recommendation to the principal after doing the initial interviews. I would suggest considering the lead teachers as part of the "administrative team" that leads the school and meeting with them once/week to talk about issues.  I would insist that if parents have issues with a particular grade, they first address the teacher, then the lead teacher, and only then, the principal. 

If we use lead teachers in this way, we can take a real load off principals, even while giving our best and brightest teachers the chance to advance in their careers, possibly even as an interim step toward becoming assistant principals or principals down the road. And let's compare costs: three lead teachers with stipends of 2,000 each year plus one less class each day might cost the school $10k or $12k, vs. $40k, $45k or $50k for an assistant principal once the full time benefits are included. 

Ramping Up Our Message

One of the mistakes we often make in Catholic schools is we don’t speak powerfully enough or evocatively enough of our mission. 

Our problems begin with our mission statements themselves, which too frequently go through the laundry list of “mind, body, soul” in some form or another. My school at John Paul II is fairly typical: 

Inspired by faith, Pope John Paul II High School prepares students to be strong in mind, body, character, and spirit for lives of learning and service, according to the Gospel. 

We get it, right? Our mission is aimed at the whole child. But that mantra is so tired, so old, so predictable, it’s forgettable and uninspiring.  

But it’s worse than that. If our mission statements were merely forgettable, they’d be harmless. But too often, they become the parameters within which we describe ourselves to each other, to our own families, and to prospective families.  As such, they have a deadening effect on what we should be proclaiming: the magnificent work God is doing in the lives of our students.  

In contrast, watch this brief clip from St. Rose of Lima, in Denver, Colorado:

 

Who do you say that we are? “We are Christ to the world!” says an 8^th grade girl, with unblinking conviction.  “We are going to college! We are getting to heaven!” say two first graders.  Even the least sentimental among us is likely moved by the powerful simplicity of those statements.

Or how about this way of talking about our mission? 

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity). 

What is our purpose as Catholic schools? To build palaces—cathedrals, even—where God can reside in the life of our students!

Or how about this magnificent way of presenting our mission to our students, from the mouth of soon to be Saint John Paul II? 

(Young people), it is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal. (World Youth Day, Rome, 2000) 

Pope Benedict said something similar to youth recently: 

The world promises you comfort. But you were not made for comfort, you were made for greatness! 

This is the language we should be using to tell people about our schools!  When we immerse our students in a culture of optimism and high expectations, when they're supported by teachers and parents who care about them and pick them up when they stumble, when they belong to a team, activity or club that they are passionate about with peers who share that passion, and when they are invited to grow in their faith through prayer, worship and service, they truly flourish, becoming young men and women who are confident, happy and future oriented.  

Let us be bold! Our schools need to embrace the evangelical challenge of the gospel and talk about this challenge openly with our students and prospective families.  Young people are living in a dreary world of low expectations and accommodation. Deep down, beneath the veneer of apathy, they want more.  They want to become "new creations," and to be "transformed, by the renewal of (their) minds."  They want to make a difference in other people's lives--like all of us, they want their lives to matter! If we speak openly and optimistically of this gospel challenge with them, if we build a culture of high expectations, prayer and support to live this challenge out, our schools can free young people of the gravitational forces that inhibit them from becoming the magnificent persons God created them to be! Our schools change kids' lives!

Let us find stories that witness to this transformation in the lives of our individual students and retell these stories over and over.

If we start thinking and talking about ourselves in this way, parents will be beating down our doors to send their children to us.

A New Perspective on Pricing our Schools

To raise revenue, raise prices.

That may seem idiotically tautological, but it merits emphasis because we in Catholic schools often discount things that our families go right out and pay a higher price for elsewhere. To begin with, our tuition is generally is too low. Consider the following:

• In 2012, NAIS independent schools charged an average of $18,212 tuition for elementary schools and $22,700 for secondary day schools (nais.org).

• The average per pupil costs in 2012 for public education, across all grades, is $10,652 (ncea.org)

• In that same year, Catholic schools charged an average of $3,673 tuition for elementary schools and $9,622 for  secondary schools (ncea.org).

For sure, we are fortunate to receive stipends from the parish and diocese to add to these tuition amounts, but the net revenue per child in our schools is still dramatically lower than our private school competitors and still much less than what public schools receive through taxes.

I am not advocating that we try to mimic private school costs! But how can we compete if they are charging, as a national average, five times what our elementary schools are charging and twice what our secondary schools are charging?  I don't think we can compete-- not, at least, over the long haul. We must narrow the gap. 

Furthermore, from a marketing perspective, we no longer benefit from being the lowest tuitions in town—people associate cost with quality. What would we think about our doctor's credentials if we found out he was charging one-fifth what the other doctors around town charged? If we position ourselves in the market as the "K-Mart" of educational options, we're wasting whatever money we're spending on marketing to improve our public image. I think we’re going to have to adopt more of a college model, raising our prices rather aggressively but also funding our financial aid programs equally aggressively, and take away the stigma in applying for financial aid the same way that the colleges have done. Over 80% of those in college now receive some form of financial aid.

Look at second and third child discount rates. Many of us give half-tuition and two-thirds tuition off. Too much! If a large Catholic family struggles to pay tuitions, better to encourage them to apply for financial aid than to give an automatic tuition discount to the families who can afford to pay more. In my previous K-12 Catholic school, we gave a $1,000 discount for each additional child; in my current school, $500.

Also, look at fee structures. Many Catholic schools treat their registration fees as down payments for next year’s tuition or deposits that will be refunded upon graduation. I would advocate that you lower the registration or deposit, but make it an annual fee that is added revenue. Most of our private school competitors do it this way.

Also consider raising prices for concession drinks, textbooks, gates to athletic games, cafeteria costs, the cost of school decals and spirit-wear to mirror market rates elsewhere. Our families don’t have to buy these things from us.


If all of this makes you feel a little queasy, it shouldn't. We're not raising prices to increase profits or pad our pockets! Every extra dollar we make should go to paying our woefully underpaid teachers and staff. We must, in the words of Scripture, "be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves." Or, in the words of business, "where there is no margin, there is no mission."

Get out of the book business

Nothing is more aggravating and tedious than the annual ritual of buying and selling textbooks for our students. 

What most of us have done, for years, is anticipate how many textbooks we'll need for our classes, order the textbooks, and then sell them to families during registration. 

There are a number of problems. First, it's hard to estimate need accurately. Inevitably, we'll over or under order. If we under order, we've got unhappy families whose students must begin the year without textbooks, waiting for the new order to arrive. If we over-order, we either must send back the books (and pay the postage) or inventory the books for next year, and hope that the publisher doesn't change editions (which they do at irritatingly frequent intervals).  If publishers do change editions, the school is stuck with the past editions in their inventory. We never had a bookstore that didn't have three to four thousand dollars worth of books, rotting on shelves in our bookstore.  Not only that--which of us has extra room to store all of these books?

And woe to the person who is gracious enough (unlucky enough) to be the school's book-store manager. It's almost a full time summer job, and a thankless one at that, and we in Catholic schools usually can't afford to pay this person what he truly deserves. 

The whole thing's a mess. 

Until, in 2007, we got out of the book business, by signing on with an online bookstore vendor. 

With an on line vendor, the school sends the book list to the vendor, with the ISBN #'s. The vendor sets up an on line bookstore, ala amazon.com. Parents are sent a link to the vendor's bookstore, and asked to order books at least two weeks in advance. The school has ZERO responsibilities thereafter. All orders, book returns due to schedule changes or mistakes and other problems are handled by the vendor. 

To assist parents who are bargain shoppers, we also include an excel spread sheet of all the school's textbooks, with ISBN#'s,  as an online link. (Including the ISBN #'s are a must, or parents will buy the wrong editions of texts.) If parents think our vendor's prices are too high, they can search for those same books from used book vendors at cheaper prices. Many get the books for half, one-third, or one quarter off the new book price. 

Most of these on line vendors will even give a school the option to make a few dollars by a small surcharge on the book prices.  I declined this, trying to keep book prices as low as possible for our families.  I didn't care if the school made any money--I was just grateful not to LOSE any and to be free of the aggravations. 

If you're not using an on line vendor, I promise you won't regret doing so. 

Discipline, Mercy and Being Creative

Before I accepted my job as headmaster of Pope John Paul II High School in 2008, I had the opportunity to interview each member of the administrative team. I remember asking our Dean of Students this deceptively simple question: "Should the punishment fit the crime or the student?" "The student, " he said without hesitation. "Why?" I asked. "Because the school's job isn't to administer justice so much as it's to help kids grow up, and that means you to have to customize discipline to what best works for that child."

Exactly right! 

This means, of course, that from time to time a principal will be criticized by his or her faculty, or by other parents, or by the community at large, for how he chooses to discipline a child. He'll be labeled, charitably, "inconsistent," or less charitably, as "playing favorites" or "playing politics." But I believe that's the cost of trying to do the right thing for each child and not allowing a template or policy to dictate what the principal knows will and won't work for a kid. 

That wasn't my view of things when I first became principal. I was determined, for the sake of fairness, that I would treat each kid exactly the same. I wrote my own "handbook" for discipline, giving point values to various infractions, with certain penalties occurring at certain point totals, stair-stepping it all the way to expulsion. I tried to live by my own code early on, before tearing up the handbook and tossing it in the trash around Thanksgiving. 

Why? I became aware of family dynamics that caused certain behaviors. I learned that some teachers handled certain kids better than others. I got to know each troubled kid personally and better understood his triggers, his insecurities, when he was responding to things out of meanness or indifference, or when he was responding emotionally, almost despite himself. My "handbook" said these things didn't matter, but I knew they did. 

Shortly thereafter, I wrote an autobiographical parable:

And it so happened that a new principal, wishing to make a good impression, said "I will treat all students the same for fairness sake. " 

A few weeks later, two boys were sent to him for the same serious disciplinary incident. The principal said, "Policy dictates a three day out of school suspension for both of you." The first young man, working closely with his parents, came back to school with resolve to do better. The second young man dropped out. 

And everyone agreed the principal was fair. 

It's not a school's job to be fair, if fairness is defined as treating everyone the same. It's the school's job to be ministers of Christ and to help that young man or woman grow into the kind of person God wants him or her to be. 

Schools should be creative in finding out what "works" for a child. One Saturday morning, I had a kid meet me at the school. We drove the school bus to my house, and he had to wash and wax the bus, parked in my front drive. He hated it, but it marked the beginning of his turnaround. I've had kids do gardening, scrape gum, mop floors, run laps, be suspended from games, do community service, write letters, teach younger children, become "janitor for the week," and clean the school and adjacent neighborhoods of litter. Whatever works.  Whatever deters the bad behavior. Whatever reaches the child.

I believe Catholic schools should be very reluctant to define consequences to disciplinary infractions too specifically in its school handbook, even for the serious stuff. Better to use words like "liable for expulsion," rather than "will be expelled." That doesn't mean a school will never expel a kid--unfortunately, I may have to do that 5-6 times a year for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, expulsion is exactly the right thing to do, for the kid's sake, so that he can learn there are serious consequences for serious actions. NOT expelling may put the school in the position of an enabler of that bad behavior. 

But a school's leader, not a school handbook, should make the final call, because he knows better than a policy which penalty best fits the child. 

Pay Scales?

Unlike my previous diocesan school, the school I work for now doesn't have a “diocesan pay scale" from which I must pay teachers. Nor does my school’s Board of Trustees dictate a pay scale for our school. Instead, the Board approves a line item in the budget for “salaries” and I have freedom within that budget to pay teachers as I see fit, depending on their value to the school and the “market forces” at work for their particular position. 

I have found this lack of a prescribed template extremely liberating, and truth be told, in the best interest of the school I serve. In my previous school, I often lost out on the battle for a fine teacher candidate, simply because the salaries I could pay that person paled in comparison to what others were offering. I didn’t go down within a fight, however! I would often “scaffold” his or her salary offer by including a laundry list of non-teaching stipends (coaching, extra-curricular clubs, etc) as a means of approximating market rates. I won some and I lost some. But the truth is, I was waging battle beginning with the self-inflicted wound of a pay scale that worked for some disciplines but not for others. 

Let me be specific. Catholic schools have always had the greatest difficulty securing and retaining good science teachers, especially in the physical sciences (Chemistry and Physics). The reasons are simple: What a young graduate in the physical sciences can make in the corporate/business world dwarfs what Catholic school pay scales usually dictate for first year teachers. Depending on the source, the average beginning salary for a person with a B.S. in Physics in the corporate world is between 60K and 80K whereas most Catholic school pay scales currently begin in the high 20’s or low to mid 30’s. And that gap widens as that person gains experience as a scientist! By contrast, when we have an open position in English or History, we are overwhelmed with highly qualified candidates, some with PhD’s, most who are willing to work within the salary scales common to our schools. 

Let me guess what you may be thinking: Is it just to pay some of our teachers more than others? Are we saying that the cracker-jack English teacher is less deserving of higher wages than teachers in our science department? I’d say “No, the cracker-jack English teacher is not less deserving.” But let me quickly add: If a school has a true maestro teaching English, they’d be wise to compensate that person generously, because they are a rare and great gift to the school! And in a school unconstrained by a pay scale, such maestros can be rapidly rewarded by higher than average increases in salary in successive years of teaching. But I believe it is foolhardy to insist that the beginning teaching salaries for English and Physics teachers should be the same. Once they’re in the fold, without a pay scale to hamstring them, principals can make rational judgments about relative worth and adjust salaries accordingly down the road. 

In the world we live in, those with science degrees get paid more than those with degrees in Arts and Letters. As an Arts and Letters guy myself, I was painfully aware of that reality when I decided to major in theology, and reminded of it every time someone asked me “What are you going to do with a theology major, become a priest?” My room mate was a Chemical Engineering major. We both knew he'd be making more than me when we graduated. We were right!

Insisting on a common pay scale artificially inflates what we need to pay some incoming teachers and deflates our capacity to pay others more. They don’t help us. If we are part of a diocese or have a Board that insists upon a salary chart, create "bands" of salary ranges for teachers, which give you flexibility over what you offer a teacher. Having some flexibility will help your school get the teachers it needs. 

Increasing Salaries

So we know our teachers sacrifice to teach in our schools, and we'd like to pay them more. Are there ways we can do that creatively, without breaking our banks? Here are three ideas to play with.

1) Merit Bonuses-- The problem with raising salaries substantially across the board is that it's too expensive, and allocates scarce resources to mediocre and excellent teachers alike. Merit bonuses, if set up correctly, allow us to target our resources to the teachers we most want to hire or keep. Yet we're reluctant in Catholic schools to implement merit systems--partly because diocesan lawyers fret about potential lawsuits and partly because merit systems require us as administrators to do an exceptional job of supervising, so that we can fairly make distinctions between teachers. And who among us wants to go on record publicly as saying teacher X is better than teacher Y?

But merit systems can be set up fairly, without requiring impossibly time consuming commitments from administrators. A Catholic colleague of mine has set up a set of 7 objective criteria for her high school teachers, five of which must "checked" each year to receive an additional $5,000 bonus that year. These criteria include such things as a graduate degree, a certain number of professional development hours, a portfolio, kept according to specifications, a minimum score on a classroom evaluation (done by her), a talk or workshop at a national or regional convention in one's field, etc. Were our Board to approve of merit pay, I would probably include a certain score on the end of year evaluations of courses by students and parents as an additional criteria. 

Where does she get the money to write $5,000 checks? As she points out, the criteria are sufficiently demanding to weed out all but a few teachers, so the annual cost of the system is not as high as it might first sound! But the school did have a merit fund, developed as a subset of a much larger capital campaign, and donors to the school are now encouraged to give to this fund as an option within the school's annual fund drive. But it need not be this highly endowed. Instead of a 4% increase in salaries for next year, costing the school, let's say, $50,000, the board could decide to only give 2% raises, and let the other 25,000 be distributed according to merit criteria.

2) Signing Bonuses--We read about million dollar signing bonuses for athletes, but most of us don't think about using signing bonuses in our schools. Such bonuses could work for us, especially if we're trying to land a highly competitive teacher candidate (like an A.P. Physics teacher!). The advantage of a signing bonus is three-fold: it's only a one time outlay for the school, it gives them money at exactly the time a teacher likely needs it most (especially if he or she must move into the area) and it can be targeted according to certain criteria or positions. $3,000 or so, paid up front, makes our schools more attractive.

3) Joint housing agreements--Likelier than not, there is empty rectory or convent space in your area. It sits there, empty, all year, even though the parish or religious order must pay to maintain it. Packaging a job offer with a low cost housing rental agreement could make your school a financially viable place to work, especially for a young, single person. It's a "win-win-win" for all those involved: the school pays nothing but offers a genuine "benefit", the parish/order gets some income whereas before they got none, and the young faculty member is able to save more each month from what is, alas, too puny a salary! 

All of us understand that the quality of teachers is the most important factor in how well we educate our children. In the "old days", we could rely on the heroic commitment of the nuns to carry this load. No more. We've got to be willing to explore new paradigms and act creatively.

Economics of Financial Aid

Many of us in Catholic school miss an opportunity to raise revenue because we don’t give enough financial aid to their families. That's especially true of our elementary schools. 

At first glance, that appears oxymoronic: How can giving MORE aid INCREASE revenue? Simple, really. If there are empty seats available in a classroom, it’s better to fill them with families paying ½ tuition (or ¼, etc) than to leave them empty. It’s the same principle airlines use to discount prices: if a plane can carry 200 passengers but currently only has 150 booked for a flight, it’s in the airline’s interest to create financial incentives to fill those remaining 50 seats, since the plane is flying to its destination regardless.

Financial aid programs for Catholic schools can work the same way, provided two things are in place:

1) First, there are empty seats available in the school.

2) Second, there should be a truly objective third party to help determine the level of financial need. A few years back, before I required this third party assessment, I would award need based entirely on a family’s own estimate of how much they needed. Some families, I observed, would really sacrifice, whereas others on significant aid would buy their 16-year old sons brand new cars! That convinced me we needed an objective process. At minimum, this process should involve scrutiny of income tax forms from the prior year to confirm income and analysis of current debts. In my previous school we adopted a two step process, requiring the family to send off forms for analysis by a third party vendor, and at the same time, to send us a separate application for financial aid. On the application sent directly to us, we ask “In your own estimate, how much aid will you need next year?” I then compare their own estimate with the estimate from the third party vendor to determine how “far apart” the two are. Surprisingly, a family’s own assessment of their need is often less than the 3rd party judges it to be.

Other Benefits:

I believe that with these two pieces in place, a healthy financial aid program can really be an asset to the school. It helps fill empty seats. It can be used as an incentive to attract highly desirable families to the school (colleges clearly understand this by offering generous “need-based” scholarships to these families). It allows the school to raise tuitions more substantially because it provides the means for its poorer families to pay. And ironically, by charging higher tuition rates, the school creates the perception of “value” in the community. Being the “lowest cost school in town” is not necessarily good for the school—-people wonder, WHY is it so cheap? I liken this to going to a doctor who charges FAR less than the other doctors in town. Does this make the patient feel better about the quality of his care?

A Concluding Comment:

We in Catholic education often become uneasy about such coldly calculating measures to raise revenues. But at the same time, our programs are becoming less competitive with area private schools because we don’t have the revenue they have. Our teachers and staff are typically underpaid, not just in terms of salaries, but also often in terms of retirement and health insurance benefits. We must be shrewd stewards of our limited resources if Catholic schools are to remain a place where God’s grace continues to touch our students and families.

Paradigms

Let's be direct: The K-8, 9-12 paradigm for Catholic schools has served us well for over a century. But it's not serving us well now, nor do I think it will sustain us for the next hundred years. 

First, let's acknowledge the fact we no longer have K-8 schools. We have preK4-8 schools, and even preK3-8 schools. Why does that matter? Because by the time our kids have finished sixth grade, they've been in our schools as long as our 8th graders of yesteryear, making them itchier to leave us in the middle school grades. And it means we've saddled elementary school principals with an even more demanding job, now having to minister to an eleven year span of students (and their parents) instead of the nine-year span. Parents in our preK-8 schools grow less fond of us as their children age, partly a result of their children's crankiness. The universal complaint of 8th graders in our preK-8 schools? "They treat us like children."

Worse, the competition for our students has grown exponentially. It isn't just us, public schools and elite privates any more. There are magnet schools, charter schools and a whole host of K-12 evangelical schools that are attractive to our families. Most private schools are 7-12 or even K-12, which highlights the disadvantage of our divided K-8/9-12 model: they're able to leverage their high school athletic facilities, coaching staffs, science labs and libraries to their younger families. They recruit them using beautiful brochures and clever outreach programs typical of the high school market. They leverage their high school leadership teams for planning and execution of their campus programs. Our stand alone K-8's are hard-pressed to compete with all that. 

Yes, a lot has happened to us which we can't control. The sisters, in large measure, are no longer with us. Many of our schools were built in once thriving areas of town, but demographics have changed. Many families today care less about Catholic formation for their children. The results? We're educating about 60% less Catholic school children today than we did in 1960. We've closed about 7,000 Catholic schools. 

We can't cry over spilled milk, and it's fruitless to wish or hope that demographics will improve. But what we can control and improve, we should! I believe we should re-think our paradigm. I propose two possibilities, but encourage us to develop an entrepreneurial spirit for other ideas:

Possibility #1: Create regional middle schools in our diocese. Depending on where the public schools transition to junior highs or middle schools in your area, these could be 7-8, 6-8 or 5-8 schools. Let the parish elementary schools become preK3-5 or prek3-6 accordingly. The middle school, ideally, would be located on the high school campus so as to leverage facilities and outreach programs, but the middle school program should be a separated from the high school  and distinctive from it, catering to the needs of young adolescents. 

Possibility #2: Start building K-12 campuses, with three distinctive "levels" (elementary, middle school and high school), for all the reasons discussed above. 

We built a middle school in my previous school in Montgomery, AL. Before doing so, there were two schools, a stand-alone K-8 school of about 400 students, and about six miles away, a 9-12 high school of about 250 students. In 2004, we opened a middle school with a capacity of 200 students for grades 7-8, placed it on the high school campus,  and re-configured the elementary school into a prek-6 school of 300. We combined boards and financial offices, so that the elementary school wasn't simply "out" the 100 students and expected to take the hit for that financially. We hired a middle school principal and directed her to set up a unique program. We established a middle school athletic program under the leadership of the high school. I was named president of this "new" K-12 school with two campuses.

Here's what happened:  Kids and their parents were thrilled with the middle school, and it filled to its capacity of 100/grade quickly, thus adding 50 new students into our program compared with our 6th grade totals,  as public school families looked for alternatives to the public junior highs. Because 100 students were now coming out the middle school each year, the high school went from 250 to nearly 400 students. But here's the really exciting part: Parents at our preK-6 elementary school were much happier: there was less shrapnel coming from disgruntled older children, parents of younger kids felt better served, and the elementary school grew quickly in size. Also, the only guaranteed way into the middle school was to be enrolled in 6th grade at the elementary, so we ended up with waiting lists in fifth and sixth grade. In my last act as president before I left in June of 2008, despite the fact the middle school had emptied the elementary school of four classrooms when it opened,  I had to order a trailer to meet elementary classroom demands! We went from K-12 total enrollment of 650 to an enrollment of 880 in just four years, growth of just over 35%. 

I believe this can be replicated in other dioceses, but we have to have the courage to move beyond the paradigm we're in now.