Building New Bridges to America's Schools: Lessons From the University of Notre Dame

Abstract

This article tells the story and explores the significance of Notre Dame's efforts over the past 18 years to serve the pressing needs of underresourced elementary and secondary schools throughout the United States, with a special focus on the faith-based sector—and more particularly, Catholic schools. These schools are increasingly fragile but possess a well-documented track record of success educating low-income minority students. The closure in 1976 of Notre Dame's Department of Education left open an institutional space for entrepreneurial initiatives and new partnerships responsive to the needs of schools across the nation. Attentive to the manifold ironies inherent in the founding (in the mid-1990s) and growth of the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program and Notre Dame's Institute for Educational Initiatives in which ACE is housed, the authors discern a pattern in which seeming deficits and obstacles repeatedly spark innovative responses and powerful alliances among a diverse range of stakeholders united by common goals. Drawing upon lessons learned, both through failures and successes, these reflections suggest roles that institutions of higher learning might play to improve the quality of education in faith-based, private, and public schools.