Increasing Access to Faithful Education
CNS Fights for Access to Faithful Education
New Accrediting Program for Newman Guide Recommended Schools
To help ensure Catholic families’ access to quality, faithful Catholic education, The Cardinal Newman Society has acquired a formal accrediting program for Newman Guide Recommended schools.
Every Catholic family deserves opportunities for Catholic education. The formation of the human person to know, love, and serve God is central to a Christian life.
Cost, however, is often a barrier to Catholic education. So is the lack of supply: many families today have difficulty finding quality education that serves their particular needs and is faithful to its Catholic mission.
The Cardinal Newman Society has long helped families find faithful schools and colleges. Now CNS will provide formal accreditation, giving families assurance of a Newman Guide Recommended school’s viability and quality while opening the door to school choice funding in many states.
CNS has acquired the National Association of Private Catholic and Independent Schools (NAPCIS), which for 30 years has served the growing number of independent, lay-run schools devoted to Catholic formation. NAPCIS has been a key leader in the renewal of Catholic education, contributing to the growing diversity of options for Catholic families.
Now, as a Cardinal Newman Society subsidiary, NAPCIS continues to provide low-cost, non-intrusive accreditation that is newly integrated with our Newman Guide review process. The 87 NAPCIS member schools, serving 12,800 students, will achieve both Newman Guide Recommended status and NAPCIS accreditation. Soon, all other Newman Guide Recommended schools will also have the option of NAPCIS accreditation, and any other school seeking accreditation will be required to also achieve Newman Guide recognition.
NAPCIS accreditation assures the general public, and Catholic families in particular, of the faithful Catholic formation, academic quality, and operational health of Newman Guide Recommended schools. While Newman Guide standards emphasize what is most important about Catholic education, accreditation also considers the practical aspects of a school’s operation and academic quality.
School choice opportunities
But how will NAPCIS improve families’ access to faithful education?
With regard to cost, 36 states now have some form of school choice program, and the Trump administration has championed a federal tax credit to support student scholarships. At least 14 states require accreditation for a school to receive school choice funds, and experts predict the accreditation mandate will soon spread to most states.
NAPCIS accreditation, then, will help ensure that families choosing faithful Newman Guide education will be able to afford it.
Moreover, NAPCIS accreditation will help strengthen Newman Guide Recommended schools, ensuring that faithful schools are available to Catholic families. Our unique program will never waver from The Cardinal Newman Society’s focus on Catholic formation.
Finally, NAPCIS accreditation will be a great benefit to faithful schools and an incentive to achieve Newman Guide recognition, thus helping CNS increase the number of faithful schools recommended to families in The Newman Guide. Usually, accreditation is an expensive, intrusive, and bureaucratic process, and it has prevented some schools from applying for Newman Guide recognition. Our low-cost, streamlined accreditation will be integrated with the Newman Guide evaluation.
Dr. Dan Guernsey, senior fellow of The Cardinal Newman Society for more than a decade and director of Ave Maria University’s Master’s in Catholic Educational Leadership, is the new executive director of NAPCIS. Dr. Denise Donohue, our vice president of educator resources and evaluation and also an 11-year employee of CNS, chairs the new NAPCIS board, which also includes attorney Quentin Fairchild and expert Catholic educator Michael Van Hecke.
“Our goal is to make faithful accreditation simpler, more affordable, and more impactful—helping schools live out their Catholic mission with confidence and joy,” Guernsey said in a press release announcing the program.
Trump Scholarship Tax Credits
The Cardinal Newman Society is also fighting to ensure that Catholic families have full access to school choice programs like the federal tax credits for scholarships included in President Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).
In the final law, the Senate removed language explicitly protecting the religious freedom of schools receiving scholarship funds. So when the Internal Revenue Service invited comments to help it develop regulations implementing the program, The Cardinal Newman Society responded strongly.
Bob Laird, senior counselor to the president of CNS and editor of our Newman Guide Defender e-newsletter on religious freedom matters, studied the new federal program, consulted with attorneys at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and allied organizations, and submitted the comment to the IRS just before Christmas.
“School choice is especially important to Catholic families and Catholic education,” we reminded the Administration. “…Public policy has effectively coerced Catholic families into public schools that reject truths of God and the Catholic faith. This is not the religious freedom promised by the First Amendment.”
We urged the IRS to explicitly state in the regulations that scholarships must be available for religious education and must accommodate religious schools if any scholarship requirement conflicts with a school’s “religious beliefs, morals, practices, or heritage.” In addition, we urged the IRS to prevent States from imposing laws or regulations that interfere with the religious mission of schools receiving scholarship funds.
Moreover, we noted that the OBBBA does not define what it means by an eligible “public, private, or religious school.” This is a problem because many states refuse to include homeschooling and other options within their definition of “school.” We urged the IRS to clearly define “school” to include “any program of formal education that is legally permitted in the State in which it occurs.”
At the OBBBA signing ceremony, President Trump said, “This is about educational freedom. The money should follow the child—not be trapped in failing government schools.” CNS is fighting to ensure this principle is upheld for all Catholic families.