John Schoenig: Education, Inspired.

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0:00:10.8 Audrey Scott: Welcome to this Modern Education podcast that explores learning from the everyday exchange of thoughts and ideas to the theories and practices behind entire systems. Think education is cool? So do we. So, we pair two conversations, learn about our guests, then learn from our guests, share your takeaways, and come back for more. You're listening to Think-Pair-Share with me, Audrey Scott.

 

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0:00:42.2 AS: We open with a candid visit with our guest, then we'll turn our attention to the current state of Catholic schools in the midst of this pandemic. We'll talk about some challenges we're facing, but also about some bright spots we've seen over the course of the past few months and some possible next steps forward. First things first, an introduction. My guest today is a member of ACE Five and earned his JD from the Notre Dame Law School. He's the senior director of teacher formation and education policy for the Alliance for Catholic Education. In this role, he leads the Teaching Fellows Program, which is the largest provider of Catholic school teaching talent in the United States. He also leads the program for educational access and advocacy and leadership formation enterprise that helps develop and implement policy that expands financial access to faith-based schools. In addition, he serves as a faculty member and fellow of Notre Dame's Institute for Educational Initiatives. And last, but certainly not least, he's an avid fan of Liverpool Football Club whose motto sounds like it could be an unofficial ACE motto, "You'll never walk alone". Mr. John Schoenig, welcome, and thanks for being here.

 

0:01:43.9 John Schoenig: Thank you. Good to be with you.

 

0:01:46.6 AS: So, Liverpool, I get the impression it's a pretty dedicated fan base, and some of the teams are... Let's say they have a healthy rivalry.

 

0:01:56.7 JS: Yeah, yeah, Liverpool will play their regional rival, though those regional rivalries are really important in British soccer and so on.

 

0:02:05.8 AS: Yeah, that's awesome.

 

0:02:07.5 JS: It's Everton.

 

0:02:07.9 AS: Everton? Is that what you were gonna say? 

 

0:02:08.6 JS: Everton, yeah. It's a really interesting rivalry, 'cause Liverpool and Everton they're very, very... You can see the one stadium from the other. It's known as the friendly, they're called derby matches when rivals play like Manchester City and Manchester United. Evertonians and Liverpool fans don't hate one another per se.

 

0:02:30.3 AS: Okay.

 

0:02:30.9 JS: And the reason why is because Liverpool's not a big city, so it's like they kinda all have to see one another constantly, and...

 

0:02:36.2 AS: [chuckle] Yeah, too many brawls over fish and chips in a paint.

 

0:02:41.5 JS: That's right, yeah.

 

0:02:43.6 AS: Okay. So, I'm gonna just ask you a couple of questions about your experience, and then we'll get into some more education as a whole and some of the sort of more pertinent issues right now.

 

0:02:50.7 JS: Yeah.

 

0:02:51.9 AS: Okay. As young people are discerning about their next stages in life, you help inspire them to listen to their calling and join the mission of ACE, so I was wondering, when you were a child, what did you wanna be when you grow up? 

 

0:03:05.6 JS: Goodness, man. Wow. It's ridiculous that I don't have an immediate answer to that. The earliest memory I would have, some of these would be like early high school, and it was probably to be a lawyer. I just figured, I like arguing, I like making arguments, and I like to read and write, and I think lawyers do that. And I also think that I just had seen... The lawyers that I knew seemed financially secure, so I was like, "Well, what I'll do is I'll go and I'll do whatever lawyers do." Again, most people's image of lawyers is like, you're in the courtrooms, I don't know, be with like Tom Cruise and a few good men or whatever, like you just... I just make these arguments and then I'll be financially secure. So, I think that would probably be it, yeah, yeah.

 

0:04:00.6 AS: That's a good answer. Yeah, you just wow the courtroom, and then everybody would stand up and cheer and Jack Nicholson would go to jail? 

 

0:04:05.9 JS: Yeah, yeah. [chuckle] And you have to have the difficult conversation with Santiago, and I can't remember the other guy's name, yeah.

 

0:04:15.1 AS: You've actually a good memory, a good memory.

 

0:04:17.4 JS: Yeah.

 

0:04:19.8 AS: [chuckle] I would ask you to do your Jack Nicholson impression, but I might be going a step too far. [laughter]

 

0:04:22.3 JS: No, no.

 

0:04:26.5 AS: But speaking of in your down time as a youngster, do you remember the first concert you ever went to? 

 

0:04:31.2 JS: So, the first concert that I went to, I'm pretty sure it was a Steve Miller Band concert, and that would've been like freshman, sophomore year of high school, something like that. It was a big concert venue, not too far away from where I grew up, right on the water called the Jones Beach. I think that's the first one I went to.

 

0:04:53.3 AS: Mine was like Rick Springfield.

 

0:04:56.3 JS: Wow.

 

0:04:56.6 AS: But my husband was Prince, and I was like, "Really?"

 

0:05:00.8 JS: The best concert I've ever seen in my entire life.

 

0:05:03.6 AS: Exactly.

 

0:05:03.7 JS: The best concert. And I saw Prince in, I don't know, 2015 or something like that. It was unbelievable. And my brother who's ten years older than me, he was an enormous Prince fan, and I had this kind of obsession with Prince, but that experience, you can sort of build something up to a point where then when you get to do it, you're like, "You know what, this is gonna be bad because I'm setting myself up for disappointment." That was one of my worries actually about going to that Liverpool game a couple of years ago. But the Prince concert I remember very specifically sitting there with my friend JJ, and sitting in the stands just as the concert was about to begin and all of a sudden I started to get like... I had this anxiety because I was like, "You know what's gonna happen? I'm gonna be here for two hours and I'm gonna get to the end of it, and I'm gonna be like, 'Hmm, he was okay, but I wish I had seen him a few years earlier or something.'" Now, no, no, that... It was absolutely amazing. So, that's cool. Yeah, I mean, I would have loved to have seen Prince when I was in high school.

 

0:06:06.8 AS: He had such a great talent.

 

0:06:08.2 JS: I remember in that concert, and I'm just trying to remember, yeah, so he had a saxophonist, he had Maceo Parker, who played saxophone for James Brown. And that was just like someone in his ensemble, it was unbelievable. I'm trying to remember who opened for him. Was it...

 

0:06:30.0 AS: It's not Janelle Monáe that you're trying to think of? 

 

0:06:31.6 JS: Yeah, Janelle Monáe, Janelle Monáe.

 

0:06:33.0 AS: Okay. Okay.

 

0:06:33.6 JS: She opened for him.

 

0:06:34.9 AS: That's ridiculous, because she's awesome, too. So, yeah. That's 'cause he could ask anyone and they would drop everything they were doing and pretty much come to his concert.

 

0:06:43.3 JS: Wasn't it an incredible concert? 

 

0:06:44.7 AS: It really was. I really did enjoy the concert.

 

0:06:46.2 JS: I remember at the end of... At the end of Purple Rain... I shouldn't say at the end, when he started the guitar solo in Purple Rain, I started to get sad because I was like, "This is gonna end soon, and I just want this song to go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. I never wanna leave here, I just wanna be here listening to him do that."

 

0:07:05.8 AS: Look how amazing that was that we all had a similar experience and he just did it so many times.

 

0:07:09.7 JS: Yeah. There's an incredible story. Most people in entertainment have a great Prince story, but you may already know it. Jimmy Fallon, he played ping pong against Prince? 

 

0:07:20.4 AS: Oh no, I don't.

 

0:07:20.8 JS: Oh, it's unbelievable, it's absolutely unbelievable, 'cause Questlove was friends with Prince and he connected them. Anyway, it's a great... You could just find it on the Internet. It's so good.

 

0:07:32.5 AS: I am doing that right after this.

 

0:07:34.7 JS: It's real... It's just... Prince he was one of those people who was never not himself, he was never pretending to be anybody other than who he was.

 

0:07:45.3 AS: I'm gonna have to look for some of these things. I feel like I've seen so many, but I haven't seen the ones that you're referring to, so I'm gonna look at the ping-pong one for sure.

 

0:07:53.2 JS: That's the... That to me, that's the best one, the best story of his. It's so good. [chuckle]

 

0:08:00.3 AS: Okay, alright. So, I shall look forward to that. Thanks for the tip. I don't even know how I missed that one. But anyway, that was enjoyable, so thank you very much for sharing that. Do you think there's something that people would be surprised to learn about you? 

 

0:08:16.5 JS: [chuckle] Man, this is a silly thing, but the first thing that comes to mind is that I'm a leap-year baby. But people who... I guess people who are somewhat close to me might know that. When you're a leap year baby, it is funny the ghosts from your past who come out on your birthday. This past year, I had a birthday, I turned 11, and it's actually really weird, that was the last night, February 29th, that was the last time that people were out and about. And it was a trivia night at our parish, and I remember sitting there at this... And I can't stand trivia nights. But sitting there and people from way back in the day, who I don't even know how they had my phone number, they were texting and emailing, and it was really, really incredible. So, that might be one.

 

0:09:04.6 AS: That's great.

 

0:09:05.0 JS: Yeah, that would probably be...

 

0:09:07.3 AS: And you gave me a bonus one, you don't like trivia nights.

 

0:09:10.7 JS: Yeah. [chuckle] Yeah. There's a lot... There are a lot of things about trivia nights that I don't like.

 

0:09:20.6 AS: Okay, that'll be for part two of our podcast.

 

0:09:23.3 JS: Yeah, yeah.

 

0:09:23.7 AS: When we honour Prince. Anyway, okay, so I'm gonna tie some stuff back into ACE now. I know some of these answers, but the listening audience might not. Can you tell us what cohort of ACE were you in, and where you were placed? 

 

0:09:36.8 JS: Yeah. So, I was in the fifth cohort of ACE, and I taught in Shreveport, Louisiana.

 

0:09:41.9 AS: When you first got your assignment, happy or sad? 

 

0:09:46.7 JS: Surprised. I didn't even know where Shreveport was. I am sure I had heard of it, but I had no idea where it was, and so the kind of adventurer in me, if you will, was like, "Well, I'm gonna get to go to an entirely new place." Yeah.

 

0:10:02.4 AS: It sounds like actually that was a pretty cool assignment.

 

0:10:07.5 JS: Yeah, it was good. See, if you know Louisiana, Northern Louisiana and Southern Louisiana are very, very different places, but Northern Louisiana is, it's pretty rural, it's more Baptist, whereas the South would be more Catholic. The advantage to a place like Shreveport is that it was kind of close to some other site, so it was only a couple of hours away from Dallas. So, yeah, it wasn't a bad place to be at all. I learned a ton. I wasn't a good teacher, and I struggled a great deal, but it was a neat place to be. And we also had a lot of teachers. To think... When I was... Let me think about this now. When I was in ACE, my first year, we had nine teachers in Shreveport, that's more teachers than we have in any one place right now. So yeah, there were like a lot of other ACErs there, I guess is my point.

 

0:11:03.2 AS: And did you all live in the same house? 

 

0:11:05.2 JS: No, so there were five people in my... In the house that I lived in, and then there were four people in another house, but they were like, I don't know, five minutes away, not even by car, like two minutes.

 

0:11:17.4 AS: Okay, okay, great.

 

0:11:17.8 JS: At least that's what I remember. Again, that could... You forget things.

 

0:11:24.1 AS: [chuckle] It's an approximate.

 

0:11:25.2 JS: Yeah, yeah, of course.

 

0:11:28.5 AS: Okay. So, one more sort of silly question. If you could have had a super power in that ACE house, what would you have wanted it to be, and why? 

 

0:11:38.0 JS: Probably something related to slowing down time. And if you're talking about specifically in the house, it would be true, it might be true, like slowing down or speeding up time, it would probably be true in the house and as well as in the classroom. And the reason I say that is, so the other day my oldest son said, "Are there times when you wish time would go slower or faster?" And I said, "Oh sure." And he was all excited 'cause the next day was his brother's birthday and a bunch of his friends were gonna be there, so I really want time to go slow so we can enjoy ourselves. And I think looking back, there were so many... I'm sure this is true for everybody, but I just... How immature I was back then, how many bad decisions I made, just how many people I mistreated that to this day I feel very, very bad about. But when you asked that question, what immediately popped in my mind was I... And I really don't mean this to sound silly, I didn't get enough sleep, I just didn't get enough sleep, and so I wish I could have slowed down time while I was sleeping or something, because it made me a grumpier person, it made me a weaker teacher because I wasn't... I just wasn't budgeting my time well.

 

0:12:47.9 AS: That's interesting though. That's actually... That would be amazing if we could do that actually. [laughter] I think a lot of people would make use of that superpower. And I'm sure that you're harsher on yourself than you probably should be. But I'm certain that you've done a good job, or I don't think you'd be sitting here today, so we always have things we might adjust a little bit, but I have on pretty good authority that you were good at what you were doing.

 

0:13:14.7 AS: [chuckle] Okay, so great, thank you so much, that's really great. I ask some of those things because I think some people who are thinking of doing ACE or whatever, sort of, it's important to kinda know if people aren't just plucked out of obscurity, etcetera, there's history to people and decisions made and things that go into who people are. And we like people to be able to sort of see themselves in these roles of these new teachers taking on these new adventures as it were. So, I think that's helpful. Okay, let's start talking about the sort of, broadly about education, which is what this podcast is gonna be sorta focused on. I think to have a conversation about the current state of Catholic schools and some of the things that are going on right now in the midst of this pandemic, it would be good to get a little bit of history, and I'm not asking you to be a complete historian, but if I asked you, what's the history of Catholic Schools in America, would you be able to kinda give us some place to begin? 

 

0:14:10.8 JS: I can try with the caveat that I'm gonna probably get more wrong than I'm gonna get right, and I'm sure plenty of people will correct and criticise what I'm about to say. So, in brief, Catholic Schools, like, if we think of them as like something close to a system. Catholic Schools really started to grow and develop in the second half of the 19th century, you know, through the work of, well, all sorts of people, like Elizabeth Ann Seton and Katherine Drexel, and John Newman, and many folks. In particular, in response to the waves of immigrants that are hitting the shores of the United States, largely the eastern shores of the United States, and cities like, you know, Philadelphia and New York and Boston, the Church, it's really pretty incredible to think about it. No faith tradition in the United States has as kind of explicit a focus on schooling as the Catholic Church does. The idea is like, we have schools, we do schools, right? 

 

0:15:20.8 JS: So, like, as these immigrants were coming to the United States, obviously faith communities are being set up, parishes are being set up, and with parishes, you have these schools. And actually in the Second Baltimore Council at the end of the 19th century, there actually was a mandate, the bishops of the United States said that every parish had to have a school within just a short number of years, and they never got to that point. But my point is that, one, we have a focus on schools, and two, from like, I mean, whenever, let's say from like 1880 to 1960, you see this explosive growth in Catholic Schools, unlike anything in American education ever, like just this incredible growth in schools, in particular, in inner cities, in particular, serving recently arrived immigrant communities, in particular, not exclusively.

 

0:16:19.2 JS: So, you see all of this growth. And then in the 1960s, we start to see a decline, and there are many, many things happening that I think the apex of or the high point of Catholic Schools enrollment was 1965, I believe were as about 5 million students. Again, I'm moving quickly here, I don't have the exact number in front of me.

 

0:16:41.8 AS: [chuckle] Yeah, it's okay.

 

0:16:42.1 JS: So anyway, so then you start to see a decline. There are a whole bunch of things going on, the Second Vatican Council, all sorts of things are happening within the United States, right? So, like this is, we're in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, we're moving into kind of, just all sorts of struggles with the Vietnam War and many, many other issues, there's kind of a retreat from the inner cities, all kinds of things happening. So, Catholic school enrollment is going down and down. Really, it's been an uninterrupted decline in the enrollment in Catholic schools from, say, 1965 to today with... Like, there have been some exceptions, like, there were, as a decade, enrollment, I believe was up in the 1990s. Now, a lot of that has to do with like new schools being built and those sorts of things, but we've seen this kind of this decline.

 

0:17:32.7 JS: American education as a whole changed a great deal beginning in 1990 with the advent of what we could call a Choice Policy, and that would be both funding for families that would elect to send their kids to a private school, like a Catholic school, so that would be like vouchers, tax credit scholarships, that's like a private school choice, and then you also have charter schooling right around the same time, around 1990, both of those things are launched, and that really changes American education. In some ways, that is a critical moment, that's a transition point, an inflection point, I should say, in American Education, would be 1990. And I think you can't really understand Catholic Schools today, especially in certain parts of the country without understanding what happened in 1990. So, I'll stop there, that was too long an answer, I apologize.

 

0:18:31.6 AS: No, no, it's not too long at all, and I think it was great. Thank you. I think nobody's expecting that I'll have a historian on for that, I suppose, but this has been... This is great to give a general feel. Tell me a little bit more about that inflection point.

 

0:18:46.0 JS: Yeah. So, essentially two things happened right around the same time in 1990, not exactly at the same time, right around the same time. The first is that the State of Wisconsin passed the voucher program, which is the nation's first voucher program, where families residing within Milwaukee, depending on income level, were eligible for a voucher that they could use to send their kids to a non-public school. Now, in the beginning, this program was not available to families sending their kids to faith-based schools, ultimately it was. But that's the advent of like Private School Choice Policy, 1990, Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Voucher Program. Right around the same time, a few months later, the State of Minnesota passes a Charter School Bill, and then like soon thereafter California passed a Charter School Bill. And really what you have happening there is this idea that states can, and some would say that they should, empower families with the ability to determine where their kids should be educated. Now, there are plenty of counter-arguments to this position, I'm not making a normative claim right now.

 

0:19:54.6 JS: But the reason why that matters, in terms of this inflection point, is that if you think about it, before 1990, essentially what's going on in education is that parents are either sending their kids to the school that the state has assigned their child to. Like, you live at this address, so you send your kid to this school. Or maybe there might be a magnet school that they could try to get into, they might be able to do something within the public system, or they're sending their kids to a private school.

 

0:20:25.0 JS: Now, if they're sending their kids to, say, a private school, like a Catholic school, they're either paying tuition to send their child there, or there's some kind of a privately-funded scholarship. Beginning in 1990, now what's happening is that the state is saying, "No, no. You know what, we will provide some support for families to get access to schools other than the school they are assigned to." Vouchers are giving them access to private schools, like Catholic schools and other faith-based schools, but not exclusively faith-based schools, like non-public schools, and charters are literally opening up an entire... An entirely new sector of education. They're allowing for like a new school sector.

 

0:21:06.5 JS: So, that's important for at least two reasons, Audrey. The first is well now, families that couldn't afford to send their kids to Catholic schools maybe now they're gonna have an easier time doing that because they might be eligible for a voucher or a tax-credit scholarship. That's reason one. But the other reason why this is important is that now we have the advent of this new school sector, the charter school sector. Now, charter schools are public schools, so they are publicly funded, but typically privately operated. They're operated by like, in most cases, a non-profit group. They're publicly funded, and because they're public, they have to be free to the family, so now what you have is you have another operator in the K-12 landscape that, and I don't like this term, but just for the sake of this conversation, that is now competing with Catholic schools that is free.

 

0:22:07.7 JS: So, for those two reasons, that moment that the 1990 matters a lot. Now there's more money available for families that might wanna... That would like to send their kids to a Catholic school, but can't because of financial obstacles, but there's also now this new operator, there's this new player in the sector that could serve as competition, if you will.

 

0:22:28.4 AS: Why were the charter schools started? If it's free, why not just put that money into the public school? There had to have been something more.

 

0:22:34.9 JS: Yeah. So, there are a couple of different... Well, the origin of charter schools is absolutely, absolutely fascinating. I'm gonna highly generalize it, I think, to get at your question here. Actually, one of the people who had been arguing for something like what we would now know as charter schools is a man named Albert Shanker who was the head of one of the nation's largest teacher's unions. And the idea was essentially, is there a way to create a space within public education where teachers themselves could be essentially like... Entrepreneurs might not be the right word, but they could kind of experiment and create their own educational models that could be more customised not only to their skills, their interests, but also those of families, say in a given area. Could we allow for schools that were publicly funded, but maybe not governed within the typical structures of district governance? So far so good? 

 

0:23:39.5 AS: Yes.

 

0:23:39.7 JS: So then the other related... But the other idea would be that in many places, and there are a whole bunch of folks who are like the kind of... It's... It would be unfair to say that one person is the progenitor, the architect of the charter sector, because this idea had been discussed for many, many years. But another kind of sentiment behind this was, in education, you sort of have two things going on in public education, you have the state as regulator of schools, and, as we know, the state can regulate all schools, whether or not they're public or private, the state can regulate all schools, and the state does regulate all schools whether they're public or private.

 

0:24:28.0 JS: And then you also have the state as operator. The state operates many schools, most of the schools in the United States, the overwhelming majority. The idea behind charter schooling was, could we create a system in which the state... Could we say the state doesn't have to operate every school it regulates? So, could you have public schools that we're regulating, but we're not operating? 

 

0:25:01.5 AS: Gotcha.

 

0:25:02.5 JS: Does that make... So, they're still public schools, it's just that the state isn't operating.

 

0:25:07.5 AS: Gotcha, yep, okay. Now, these are complex complicated issues. I don't wanna... I'm not trying to over-simplify them and I know you aren't either, but to just at least get some of that information sort of situated to ask, okay, if we're looking at the landscape now, the history of where we kind of were at the beginning of the year and where we kind of are now, can you talk a little bit about the state of Catholic schools? And then also in light of this year's pandemic, which has thrown everything on its head, no doubt.

 

0:25:39.3 JS: Yeah, yeah. So, to draw a circle around all Catholic schools nationally, it's hard because we've got 50 states and all kinds of different policies and landscapes and contexts, but I think in general, the last 20 to 25 years in Catholic education have been challenging, but I think that the last 10 or so have shown... More bright spots have emerged than at least in my limited experience, than what I had seen before, a great deal of hope for Catholic schools, the all sorts of new educational models developing, all sorts of just great teachers and leaders are coming into the sector, there's just a lot to be proud of. There's a lot of vibrancy in different pockets. Nonetheless, it's been challenging. I would say that like the... There are a lot of, if we go to last January, a lot of headwinds.

 

0:26:38.3 JS: And in particular in places, states that don't have publicly-funded private school choice, like Michigan, or Massachusetts, Texas, California, my home State of New York, any place like that, it's particularly difficult because those very low-income families do not have access to any financial support, they may want to send their kids to a Catholic school, but they just are financially unable to do so. In general, I think most people have said that we face a lot of challenges, but there are some bright spots and things are... In the future, we have some hope that things are gonna be getting even better.

 

0:27:11.4 JS: Obviously, the pandemic was just... It presented universal challenges. I think, you know, somebody once referred to the pandemic as... How did they put it? It is a Darwinist pathogen. And what they meant was that the strong are gonna get stronger and the weak are gonna get weaker, right? And that both in terms of physical infirmity, financial stability, etcetera, right? Unfortunately, that is the case. So, in many ways, what's happened with the pandemic is that it has... It's not... What it's done, essentially, is that it has accelerated or amplified a lot of the vulnerabilities that existed in schools beforehand, but it's just accelerated and amplified it to a degree that many people couldn't have anticipated, and nobody that I know of could have anticipated. So, schools that were doing quite well beforehand, and I mean in terms of like enrollment, you know, in terms of their financial management, they're probably not as well off today as they were before, but it's not perilous, right? 

 

0:28:24.8 JS: It's not, you know... And it's like really, you're at a critical point. But schools that were like right on the margins, again, it accelerated and amplified their fragility. So, I should know the number right now, but I think from like last... In the beginning of last school year, so the 2019-2020 school year to today, somewhere around 150 of the school, Catholic schools that were open at the beginning of last year's Catholic school year are not open right now, and surely more will close, right? To me, you know, again, I think that what the pandemic served to do was to accelerate or amplify conditions that were there before. You've probably heard a good bit about the, you know... There are a handful, I should say more than a handful, in dioceses across the country, suburban and like ex urban school communities, some of them find their enrollment up, especially in places where public schools have not yet gone back to in-person instruction, either because of state government mandate, or they've just elected to not do so themselves.

 

0:29:38.5 JS: So, families are saying, "Okay, well, if I can't get my kids in in-person in what had been like our local public school, I'm going to send them over to this Catholic school." I don't think that things are progressing at the same level, I'm sorry, whatever they say like, it's a bad radio bit 'cause I'm using hand signals here, and nobody can see what I'm saying, but I don't think that it's progressing at the same rate. Again, I think that the strong just have... The stronger schools have more resources, both financially and in terms of human capital, they have more at their disposal than there's more fragile communities. I think that this is an opportunity across the board, and this is not for me to like, you know, proselytise or something like that, I think of this as just like even societally outside the context of Catholic education. This is a gut check moment for us societally. How... We have to ask ourselves, what are we willing to do for the communities that are so obviously at that critical moment? 

 

0:30:40.7 JS: Are we... What are we willing to forsake with regards to our own comfort, our own privilege, for the sake of these other communities? And I mean this, I mean, this is true in every single diocese across the country, that there are schools just a few miles apart where one it's abundantly clear they're gonna be okay, but there's another one where if they don't figure out something in the next couple of months, it's gonna be hard to meet payroll long term. Now, I will say that as the year has progressed, we are seeing more and more and more bright spots from Catholic schools. I mean, this is really in some ways a lot of what I have been seeing personally. I can't remember being more proud of being affiliated with Catholic schools. It's incredible what is going on out in schools, in classrooms across this country. So, I'll stop there.

 

0:31:46.6 AS: Well, don't stop there. That's actually gonna be my next question, and I'll circle back on some of this other. But tell me more about... Tell me some of those things, share some of the bright spots, share some of the stuff you know about that's going on that's so inspiring to you.

 

0:31:57.1 JS: Yeah, I mean, so... My best access point, like why I would have some line of sight into this would be because of our ACE teachers, and Remick leaders, and ACE alums. And, you know, I could get into a litany here, but it's... One, it's just the kind of abiding passion for serving kids, serving these schools, whatever the cost, just not counting the cost, whatever it's going to mean to be with those kids. Now, a good number of our teachers are doing hybrid, so they've got some kiddos right there in person with them, and then they're doing some virtual, and some folks are teaching all virtual. So, sometimes, you know, in a given week I might marvel at a lesson that a given teacher is doing virtually and then I'll hear a story about something else, you know, that like an after-school program that somebody else is putting on. I actually just had a conversation with a principal earlier today, and she just talked about the reopening plan that they developed in anticipation for the school year.

 

0:33:08.6 JS: This is what I come back to, that anyone that takes even a cursory look at Catholic schools across the country can't help but see these schools exist to be there for those kids. Their "why" is to be with the kids and to have the kids with one another. That's ultimately the "why." And to do so, in introducing them and bringing them into deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.

 

0:33:46.0 JS: But it's just... I keep, throughout this pandemic I've just thought about so much of this comes back to understanding risk, really understanding risk, and then kind of determining what level of risk is worth what we believe we would get out of taking the risk. And so, we talk about this a lot here on Notre Dame's campus. But again, I look at how hard some of these schools... So many of these schools have worked to understand and then manage the risk so that they can be there for those kids. Obviously, I am biased, but I don't think that this is some sort of cash grab for Catholic schools at all. I think that really it's... This is exactly why Catholic school communities were founded back in the... So many of these schools were founded back in the late 19th century.

 

0:34:44.7 AS: Actually, this... Maybe we can tie this together with that. The community aspect and element of it I think is an interesting one in that, as you were mentioning, and whether we should or shouldn't be surprised at how fragile some of these schools are, but also how very important they are to the community as a whole. Can you talk a little bit about why that is so important? And if that school or those schools were to close, about the larger impact on the neighborhood and community? 

 

0:35:17.0 JS: Yeah. So, I think the best, most well-researched, thoughtful analysis of the externalities associated with closing a Catholic school are in a book that was written by a colleague of ours here... Two colleagues of ours here at Notre Dame, Nicole Garnett and Peg Brinig. It's called, "Lost Classroom, Lost Community". And they looked at a handful of cities and just what happened to a given neighborhood or a given community in the wake of a Catholic school closure, so what happened with regards to like crime reports and all sorts of other things.

 

0:35:54.8 JS: So, first of all, just the research would show that closing a Catholic school can have very clear consequences with regards to a rise in crime and just civic engagement and all sorts of things like that. But more and more what I come back to is, in so many communities Catholic schools represent so much more than a place where parents can drop their kids off or have their kids go for a few hours during the day so they can learn, they represent so much more than that. In some, they represent a commitment on the part of a faith community that would say, "We believe that we are in the business of helping form saints, and we believe that education is part of sanctification." So, for us, it's not... People constantly quote this line, "We're not educating them because they're Catholic, but because we're Catholic." Fine. That is one of the most oft misattributed quotes I've heard.

 

0:37:07.9 JS: But I come back to something I said earlier, the idea that the church would say, "We must have schools. We must have them." Operating schools is a very complicated, challenging enterprise to take on, but the idea that we couldn't... There's no way we could not do that, we must have these schools, not just because of the learning that that's taking place there, but because we believe that that learning, we believe that that sacred dialogue that takes place between teacher and student, between the school community and the family, it's fundamentally who we are. When a place like that goes away from a community, regardless of one's color, creed, affiliation, politics, whatever else, it just has consequences to the community.

 

0:38:00.6 AS: I do think it's hard, it's intangible sometimes. Do you wanna say anything else about why school choice? 

 

0:38:07.8 JS: The way that I've come to think about this over time is I think it's helpful to... When a person considers what is school choice, and is it good? I think the first question is, is choice a means to a greater end or is choice an end unto itself, primarily? So, there are many people who would say, "Choice is a means to a greater end." So, publicly-funded private school choice is a means by which we can introduce competition into education, it's a means by which we can help kids get access to, quote-unquote, "better schools". Some people would... I don't agree with that proposition as framed. That choice is a means towards greater fiscal efficiency or something like that.

 

0:39:04.7 JS: Now, all of those things can be true, none of them can be true. The research on this, it's not worth getting into right now. I think the better way to think about this is that choice is an end unto itself. And what I mean by that is that choice is fundamentally a matter of human dignity, it's a matter of human dignity. So, if you think about the ways in which those on the margins of society are script of choices, just every day of their life, they just... They have... So that I have so many more choices in a given day than someone living on the margins here say in Southern, I have so many more choices about how I'm gonna get to work, and what I'm gonna wear when I go to work, and what I'm gonna eat, and all of these sorts of things, right? When you think about it, like if there was just one area of life that the state might be able to say, "You know what, we're not gonna make the number and quality of choices be a direct consequence of socio-economic status", one of them, I think education would probably be... It would be in the top three of those choices that we would offer.

 

0:40:23.6 JS: So, to me, fundamentally, I think it's helpful to think about choice as a question of human dignity, of giving those on the margins the same kinds of choices that the more privileged enjoy. Now, that is not to say that the policy should be unregulated, to the contrary, I think there's all sorts of things that need to be done once you start offering that kind of incentive, absolutely, it needs to be well regulated. But my point is, I think it's best to start with this question of like, do we believe it is a good, it is a good to offer those on the margins more options? The ways in which those options are regulated, the ways in which the families get information about those options, all of those are important nuanced conversations that we need to be doing much, much better on, but just as a principle, I think it is helpful to start with that proposition.

 

0:41:24.3 AS: I like that very, very much. Actually, that's extremely helpful. I really would love an action... Let me just say this sentence, we want to empower people to work toward positive change where they are able, are there steps individuals can take to help? 

 

0:41:36.8 JS: Yeah. Again, I think it's so case-specific, but people who say that, "I'm looking for something to do," there are at least three things you can do. The first is that you can find a school, a school community that's doing really, really good work, that has probably had its fragility accelerated, that's probably... That is imperilled, and you can help that school, you can support that school. Now more than ever, I think the philanthropic sector needs to not be thinking about like return on investment and needs to just be as an active charity supporting schools, so anything that we can do to financially support these schools goals, I think we should be doing. That's point one.

 

0:42:26.4 JS: Point two is, I don't think that we say thank you enough to the people that are elected to support our communities, especially people who may be doing something for our Catholic school communities. Now, it doesn't matter if it's the mayor, a state rep, a state senator, the governor, or someone on city council, and it doesn't have to be something where they're trying to get a voucher program, it can be, "Thank you for putting a new stoplight in," whatever the case may be, whatever, I think that thanking people in elected office goes a long way, and I don't mean... My grandmother used to say like, "Gratitude commanded is no gratitude at all," so I guess I'm not commanding it but requesting, but I think that that matters a lot, just to thank people who are doing their best for... Especially the people we've elected to office, to thank them. And the third is kinda related to the second and the first, and that is to find ways to validate, to celebrate Catholic school teachers and principals. This is an exhausting ministry any year, but in particular, this year is exhausting, so what even... The most basic sign of gratitude will go a long way, I suspect.

 

0:43:44.3 AS: Thank you. Can you repeat what your grandmother said 'cause you went a little bit technically out, so tell me what your grandmother said about gratitude.

 

0:43:50.2 JS: Yeah, she would say something like, "Gratitude commanded is no gratitude at all." So, it's the same thing as like, if you tell somebody to clap for somebody else, what's actually going on there, right? Or it'd be like going to a comedy show and after every joke, "Now you all need to laugh", that's not so... To say to someone, "Say, thank... " that's what I do to my kids, "Say, thank you to so and so."

 

0:44:13.5 AS: That is the beginning of a good practice. How about that? 

 

0:44:16.7 JS: Yeah, yeah.

 

0:44:17.0 AS: Okay, good. Alright, well, thank you so so much. It's been a pleasure, and we'll talk to you again real soon, but thanks for joining us.

 

0:44:23.0 JS: Okay, thank you. Bye-bye.

 

0:44:25.4 AS: Thank you so much. Take care.

 

0:44:25.5 JS: Yeah. Bye-bye.

0:44:26.0 AS: Again, a special thank you to John Schoenig for being our very first guest. And thank you all for joining us for our inaugural episode of Think-Pair-Share. Check out the show notes, and subscribe to the podcast at iei.nd.edumedia, and listen to us next month. For now, off we go.

 

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