Academics

It’s About Navigating Life: The Importance of Philosophy & Theology

Here is one of the clearest criteria for choosing or judging a college: you can be almost certain that any college that has dropped philosophy and theology from its core curriculum is not serious about a liberal arts education. And in my experience I find that this is true of […]

Common Core Assessments May Be Cost-Prohibitive for Catholic Schools

This is part of a series of reports on the Common Core State Standards Initiative and its potential impact on Catholic education. Of key importance to parochial, private, and public school administrators and superintendents is the question of how to address the costs associated with the technological requirements for assessing students […]

Catholic Identity Should Be at Heart of Common Core Decisions

This is part of a series of reports on the Common Core State Standards Initative and its potential impact on Catholic education. As a former Catholic school administrator, of interest to me are the countless articles detailing the controversy surrounding the Common Core which are dominating educational news stories throughout the […]

Catholic Education in America: Accountable to the Church or the Feds?

This is part of a series of reports on the Common Core State Standards Initative and its potential impact on Catholic education. Catholic schools in America have flourished in large part because of their relative independence from outside influences. But the recent adoption by many Catholic schools of the Common […]

The Common Core vs. the Classical Roots of Catholic Education

In 1977, National Review reprinted a 30-year-old speech given by English mystery author, Dorothy Sayers, on the topic of education. In it, she pointed out evident deficiencies in public discourse that revealed fundamental flaws in British education at the time.  She whimsically proposed as a remedy a return to the Trivium-based education […]

The Common Core and the Private School: The Overreaching Effects of a National Standard

As parents, educators, and legislators learn more about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and doubts continue to rise, the fact that the CCSS have become a national standard presents real challenges to a group that is already providing excellent education—private, faith-based schools.

Do Catholic Schools Need the Common Core?

The following considerations related to the Common Core were provided to Catholic bishops on November 13, 2013, in Baltimore, Maryland. The Cardinal Newman Society partnered with the National Association of Private Catholic and Independent Schools and the Catholic Education Foundation to present a seminar on the Common Core during the […]

10 Critically Important Adaptations to the Common Core for Catholic Schools*

This publication is part of a series of reports on the Common Core State Standards Initiative and how those standards potentially impact Catholic education.  As of yet, there has been no serious effort to analyze the impact of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)  on Catholic education—one that engages Catholic school educators at […]

General Education at Catholic Colleges and Universities

Executive Summary Across the universe of American higher education, increasing attention is being given to the weakening of general education standards.  This study examines the general education requirements at Catholic colleges and universities.  It compares the general education programs at 184 Catholic colleges and universities to all other American colleges […]

A Mandate for Fidelity: Pope Benedict Urges Compliance with Theologian’s Mandatum

Introduction On May 5, 2012, in his address to several American bishops during their required ad limina visit to Rome, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI spoke on “religious education and the faith formation of the next generation of Catholics” in the United States.  He said: On the level of higher education, many of you […]

Bioethics Studies in Catholic Higher Education

Executive Summary This paper examines contemporary Catholic higher education and its unique role in preparing graduates, grounded in natural moral law, to respond to the increasing bioethical questions of the day. The importance of both administrators and faculty articulat­ing and embracing the mission of Catholic higher education, as they prepare […]

Catholic Social Teaching at the Catholic University

An insistence on spreading the Church’s social doctrine among all Catholics, especially by educational programs for the laity, runs throughout the modern papal Magisterium, beginning with Leo XIII’s exhortations to the laity of the late 19th century.  At that time, it was indeed somewhat unusual for a pope to appeal directly […]

Enhancing a Catholic Intellectual Culture

Executive Summary Rejecting secular and Protestant norms and ideals, Catholic universities today must assert a distinctive Catholic intellectual culture featuring the unity of faith and reason, the acceptance of magisterial teaching and an active critique of culture. Such a Catholic intellectual culture will foster Catholic intellectuals and dispose students to […]

A Rekindling of the Light: The Past, Present and Future of a Catholic Core Curriculum

Executive Summary In his Washington address to Catholic educators, Pope Benedict XVI argued that three “goods”—those of the Church, political society and education itself—require the Church’s institutions of higher education have a strong Catholic identity. Although the Holy Father only touched on curricular matters incidentally, his argument entails important consequences […]