Putting Education to Work

Megan Sweas

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780062288035
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

The story of how The Cristo Rey Network's values-based education model and revolutionary work study program have improved urban schools and inspired education reform across the nation.

Combining the latest advancements in instruction, a focus on spiritual values and character development, and an innovative work-study program, the Cristo Rey Network has reinvented urban education and revived a broken system. Catholic school for the twenty-first century, Cristo Rey offers underprivileged students the opportunities they deserve and the structure and committed teachers they need to succeed and build a better life.

Filled with amazing stories of hardship and transformation, Putting Education to Work is a testimonial to the effectiveness of the Cristo Rey program, demonstrated through the lives of its students. Thanks to its rigorous college-prep curriculum and real-life job experience, students become "lifelong learners" who graduate with critical thinking skills and the experience needed for college and the work force. But the Cristo Rey education is not limited to the mind. Focusing on character growth, it ensures the formation of a "whole person" who understands his or her role in helping others.

Presenting the lessons learned along the way, Putting Education to Work shows how any school—religious or secular—can benefit from the Cristo Rey model and offers a hopeful outlook of what young people and determined educators can achieve together.

Part I

How Cristo Rey Schools Work

CHAPTER ONE

The Challenge of Inner-City Education

Malik Duval has already been admitted to Cristo Rey Boston High School. Tall and lanky, he looks nervous as he walks into the school’s library for a Freshman Family Visit, held in the spring of his eighth-grade year. He stands behind his taller and not-so-lanky father, Desmund, who is seeing his son’s high school for the first time.

Cristo Rey Boston is in Dorchester, a diverse neighborhood just south of Boston where there are both Irish pubs and Dominican restaurants. Cristo Rey took up residence in an old parish grammar school. It is easy to imagine nuns in wimples standing in front of a blackboard and lecturing little girls in plaid skirts at the turn of the last century in the building’s large classrooms. The library is a basketball court–size room with large, bright multistory windows and a stage at one end. Bookshelves line the walls and sit in one corner. Another corner serves as a computer lab, and the rest of the room is filled with tables where students work before and after school and during study periods.

Rosie Miola, an AmeriCorps volunteer working in admissions, leads Malik and Desmund to a central location a few tables away from a talkative group of students. Petite with short brown hair, Miola tries to command the students to keep it down, but Malik and Desmund hardly seem to notice the noise.

Miola hands father and son a four-page flyer about the school and asks Malik to read the mission statement. “Cristo Rey is a Catholic high school that educates young people of limited economic means to become men and women of faith, purpose, and service,” he reads softly without looking up. “By offering a rigorous curriculum, a unique work-study experience, and the support of an inclusive school community, we prepare our students to succeed in college and beyond with the values essential to a fulfilling life.”

Miola uses the mission statement to zero in on college. Since 2010, 100 percent of Cristo Rey Boston seniors have been accepted to four-year colleges.¹ At the same time, because the school is so focused on college, it will not be easy, Miola warns.

I like that, Desmund says. He already had read about the school online and wants a college-prep education for his son. The work-study program, he adds, will help Malik mature and see what the real world is like. But, like most people who are new to Cristo Rey, he has questions: Would Malik be able to handle a college-prep school coming from a public school? Would he have resources to help him?

Miola reassures him. “Our program is designed for students who are a little behind,” she says. Malik would not be alone. Students are often two years behind according to their test scores, but the school has programs and tutoring opportunities to help them catch up.

There are more questions. How would he balance work with studies? Would he have to miss class or would it be after school? Would he be able to miss work to get help in a class?

Miola clarifies that the work program is not just a special program for students who cannot afford tuition. All students work. On the same day of the week, Malik and his classmates will go to their various work sites, and the other four days he will be in school, but with longer days than his friends in public schools. Teachers regularly stay until 6:00 p.m., and it is popular for students to stick around too. The talkative group sitting two tables away shows no signs of leaving, even though it is 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon.

Desmund’s questions reflect the challenges that Cristo Rey schools face. Urban Catholic schools have always offered low-income students a path toward success beyond high school, but today’s economy brings new obstacles. Cristo Rey schools face a stubborn achievement gap; at two years behind, a typical student has to learn six years of material in four. And yet the schools’ funding mechanism takes academically behind students out of the classroom five days a month. It seems like an impossible task.

Miola turns to Malik again and asks him to read the Cristo Rey vision. “Underlying the relations in our school community is the explicit belief that every student is extraordinary and capable of extraordinary things,” he reads flatly, perhaps unsure of it himself.

THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP

The vision that Malik reads out loud is rooted in the Catholic belief that all people have equal dignity as children of God. Although each Cristo Rey school is unique, a school must agree to follow ten practices in order to belong to the Cristo Rey Network. These “Mission Effectiveness Standards” were created when the Network was just forming, and school presidents continue to define and refine them. Number one, however, has remained constant: the school must be Catholic. Catholicity is at the root of all that happens within the schools, driving each of the other Mission Effectiveness Standards as well. Still, Cristo Rey Network schools have never required that students be Catholic. Like all urban Catholic schools, they have attracted a diverse set of students looking for a good faith-based education in a safe, disciplined setting. The second standard, that students must be economically disadvantaged, is rooted in a Catholic desire to serve God by serving the poor.

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CRISTO REY NETWORK MISSION EFFECTIVENESS STANDARDS

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As a member of the Cristo Rey Network, a school:

1. Is explicitly Catholic in mission and enjoys Church approval.

2. Serves only economically disadvantaged students. The school is open to students of various faiths and cultures.

3. Is family centered and plays an active role in the local community.

4. Shall prepare all of its students to enter and graduate from college.

5. Requires participation by all students in the work-study program. All students must be fourteen years old by September 1.

6. Integrates the learning present in its work program, classroom, and extracurricular experiences for the fullest benefit of its student workers.

7. Has an effective administrative and board structure as well as complies with all applicable state and federal laws.

8. Is financially sound and at full enrollment is primarily dependent on revenue from the work-study program to meet operating expenses. In addition, the school maintains a comprehensive advancement program to ensure financial stability.

9. Supports its graduates’ efforts to obtain a college degree.

10. Is an active participant in the collaboration, support, and development of the Cristo Rey Network.

These standards explain why the students at Cristo Rey Network schools across the country share a common background. Students’ families have an average household income of less than $34,000 for a family of four. At these incomes, 77 percent of the class of 2017 qualifies for a free or reduced-price lunch.²

Of all Network students, 96 percent come from minority communities. More than half are Hispanic, and a third are African-American.³ The first Cristo Rey school arose out of the Jesuits’ desire to serve the significant but often neglected Hispanic-American church. Nearly half of all Catholics in the United States under forty are Hispanic, and yet only 14.3 percent of Catholic-school students are Hispanic.⁴

In a city like Boston, though, Catholic schools are not the only option for low-income students. Charter schools are numerous, and Cristo Rey Boston finds itself competing for students. Cristo Rey Boston has to offer a top-notch academic program, and the 100 percent college acceptance rate appeals to applicants. Americans across the board—even parents who never finished high school themselves—recognize the importance of college today. In 2009, 73 percent of Americans surveyed said that a college degree was necessary to get ahead in life.⁵

Educational outcomes do not quite match these aspirations, but they have also improved, an indication that thirty years of education reform have been at least somewhat effective. Students at all levels are doing better, and the racial achievement gap has been closing. Still, Hispanic and black students’ high-school graduation rates lag behind those of white students. In 1971, only 48 percent of Hispanic and 58 percent of black students completed high school, compared to 83 percent of white students.⁶ Today, economist James Heckman, of the University of Chicago, estimates that 84 percent of white students, 72 percent of Hispanic students, and only 65 percent of black students graduate from high school.⁷ (Heckman’s numbers differ from many published high-school graduation rates because he takes out those who earn a General Education Degree, or GED. Those who take the GED test are disproportionally minorities, and with regard to life outcomes such as employment and income, this group’s fate looks more like that of high-school dropouts than that of high-school graduates.)

Even as the racial achievement gap has been slowly closing, the achievement gap between the highest- and lowest-income students is getting worse. According to Stanford University education researcher Sean Reardon, the gap in test scores between the rich and poor is 40 percent greater today than it was thirty years ago.⁸ Another study looked at graduation rates at the fifty wealthiest and the fifty poorest urban and suburban school districts. In wealthy districts, 96 percent of students graduated, while only 64 percent of students in the poorest districts earned a high-school diploma.⁹

As Cristo Rey schools know well, the problem does not start in high school. Ninety-five percent of incoming freshmen in wealthy districts were proficient in reading and math at the eighth-grade level. At high-poverty nonselective inner-city high schools, most had fifth- or sixth-grade math and reading skills, with fewer than one in five students proficient at the eighth-grade level.¹⁰

Catholic schools have typically offered scholarships, so that the best students from the inner city can avoid those nonselective public schools. Scholarship students mix with wealthy classmates who have had all the advantages of a private elementary and middle-school education. There are advantages to that model, and Cristo Rey schools often encourage students who have the opportunity to go to an elite Catholic prep school to do so. But scholarship spots are limited.

To make sure that Cristo Rey schools are helping the people in most need, the Mission Effectiveness Standards define “economically disadvantaged.” Students’ families must earn less than 75 percent of national median income. The cap can be calculated based on total income or income per person. For the class of 2017, that is $37,877 or $14,347 per family member. (Schools in particularly expensive cities like San Francisco can use their local median income.)

After addressing Malik and Desmund’s concerns, Miola hands Desmund forms to fill out with the family’s financial information. The second standard also requires that a third party verify families’ reported finances. Desmund pulls a new smartphone out of his pocket to help him fill out the forms with the correct information, apologizing for his slowness with it. It is his first smartphone, and he is just learning how to use it, he explains. He wants to get a computer too, so that he can use it to stay in touch with the school and Malik’s teachers.

Cristo Rey Boston does not require a lot of its students’ parents. Still, being family centered is the Cristo Rey Network’s third Mission Effectiveness Standard. All schools have online systems to help parents track their children’s progress and connect with teachers.

Parents might not be involved in their children’s education for a variety of reasons—some are working multiple low-paying jobs to support their children; a few are in jail. Students are often raised by single mothers or grandparents. The schools have found that students with positive outside support—a parent, grandparent, or older sibling reminding them to do their homework—are more successful in school than those without that figure. That Malik’s dad comes with him to the Freshman Family Visit is a positive sign.

Miola points back to the brochure to show father and son the start date. As his father marks the first day of school in his calendar—August 12—Malik grimaces. Going to a college-prep school with a work program will require adjustments for the family and sacrifice from Malik, including some of his summer vacation.

WHY COLLEGE?

For past generations, computer skills and a college degree were not necessities; a high-school graduate may have been able to raise a family with a working-class job. Since the 1990s, the United States has shifted toward a “knowledge-based economy.” Today, highly skilled workers who are able to create and use new technologies are the key to economic growth. The U.S. manufacturing industry, on the other hand, has lost three million jobs in the last ten years. Most of these were lost in the recession, but the industry’s employment numbers had been declining since the peak in 1979, when nearly twenty million people were employed in manufacturing.¹¹

Postsecondary education is becoming the standard in the knowledge-based economy. Unemployment and earnings numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the importance of education. In 2013, unemployment for those with less than a high-school degree was 11 percent, and for high-school degree holders it was 7.5 percent. For those who graduate from college, however, unemployment was only 4 percent. Moreover, income more than doubles with a college degree. The national median weekly income is $472 for a high-school dropout, $651 for a high-school graduate, and $1,108 for a college graduate.¹²

The recession has intensified the gap in unemployment based on education levels. The economy has largely recovered for those with postsecondary education, but it has not for those without, according to education researcher David Conley. He estimates that 5.6 million jobs were lost in the recession for those with a high-school diploma or less, and these jobs largely have not returned.¹³

Much of the country has kept up with—and pushed along—these economic forces. Americans are going to college in increasing numbers. Today, 33 percent of those between twenty-five and twenty-nine years of age have a four-year college degree. Although such a number might seem low, it is up from just 12 percent in 1971.

The racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps in K–12 education, though, continue through college. Although 40 percent of white Americans have college degrees, only 23 percent of African- Americans and 15 percent of Hispanic-Americans do. Fifty-four percent of children from families in the highest income quartile complete college, while only 9 percent of children from families in the lowest income quartile graduate.¹⁴ “The influence of parental wealth is stronger in the United States than anywhere else in the developed world,” a Council on Foreign Relations report on education points out.¹⁵

Whether Malik goes to college concerns more than just him and his family. The Council on Foreign Relations links the equality of educational opportunities to U.S. economic success and national security.¹⁶ Some argue that not everyone needs a college degree, but even those high-school graduates who do not go to college benefit from a college-prep education; experts have found that preparing students for college also prepares them for success in the workforce.¹⁷ Aiming high makes for a sound national policy.

From the beginning of the Cristo Rey Netw...