Urban Catholic Schools Research Articles

Immigration And Pluralism In Urban Catholic Schools

Immigration And Pluralism In Urban Catholic Schools

Immigration and Pluralism in Urban Catholic Schools

This article investigates how Catholic schools are making the transformation from National schools in the inner city to multicultural schools as they meet the needs of these new immigrants. The conceptualization of mediating institutions will be the theoretical underpinning to a study of Catholic schools in New York City. Mediating will be used to investigation urban Catholic schools willingness to experience diversity. Mediating institutions such as schools can reduce apprehension and fear to public life, help reduce the fear of cultural stereotypes, provide a common ground, deal with the question of identity, and provide a secure environment in which tradition values and patterns of life can be expressed.

The Challenge of Pluralism: Articulating a Rationale for Religiously Diverse Urban Roman Catholic Schools in the United States

This essay explores the challenge of pluralism through an examination of religiously diverse urban Roman Catholic schools in the United States. Changes in student demographics have forced members of the sponsoring religious body to ask: Why should schools with a large number of non-Catholics be sponsored, often at great cost, by a church community with limited resources and expanding needs in other domains? Based on the belief that religious institutions must be seen in their particular historical, sociological and political context, the essay begins with a discussion of these issues. In that light, the author presents three rationales for continued support that emanate from the heart of contemporary Catholic thought: ecumenism, racial justice and solidarity. Finally, he offers reflections for a multi faith, international audience about the legitimation of religiously affiliated educational institutions.

Doing Well and Being Well: Conceptions of Well-Being Among Academically Successful Adolescent Girls of Color in a Catholic School

This article reports the findings of an ethnographic study conducted in an urban Catholic high school, with a focus on girls of color. By giving voice to this regularly neglected group, this research gives us the opportunity to hear from girls of color and to learn firsthand of their successes, joys, and struggles. Academic achievement and psychological health are presented as goals for high school programs.

Integrating Liberation Theology into Restructuring: Toward a Model for Urban Catholic Schools

While the research on Catholic schools focuses on their distinctive character including the central role of faith communities within those schools, the challenges facing faith communities in urban Catholic schools have received relatively little attention. This essay argues that the integration of the principles of liberation theology, especially reflection on Gospel passages related to social justice, into the Accelerated Schools Project (ASP) may be a viable approach to restructuring in urban Catholic schools. The congruities and incongruities in the origins and purposes of liberation theology and the ASP are examined. Then a strategy is suggested for integrating liberation theology into the ASP, with the intent of building a deeper shared sense of community and commitment to social justice.

Appreciative Inquiry: Using Personal Narratives for Initiating School Reform

n January 1993, the authors of this article, all instructors at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, began an ethnographic study of school cultures in three urban Catholic high schools. The project was inspired largely by the research of Bryk, Lee, and Holland (1993) who, in Catholic Schools and the Common Good, observed that specific components of the Catholic high school curricula, community, and administration have been especially effective in educating students from minority and disadvantaged backgrounds. We selected three Catholic high schools in Philadelphia-the coeducational Cardinal Dougherty High School, Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls, and Northeast Catholic High School for Boys-that have had marked success in addressing the needs of minority and disadvantaged students. We then sought to identify aspects of each school's culture that contributed to its effectiveness, especially focusing on those elements identified as potentially important in the research by Bryk, Lee, and Holland (1993). In approaching each school culture, we used (AI)-an ethnographic method that uses interviews with various members of the school community, including staff, students, administrators, parents, and alumni. Because the appreciative inquiry process is not a research method designed specifically to compare and contrast results from different schools, we report here on the application of the process within just one school, Cardinal Dougherty High School. We focus on Cardinal Dougherty because, among the three schools studied, it best represents the typical urban high school: it has a largely unionized faculty (39 lay faculty-23 men and 16 women) in addition to 12 nonunion religious, and it has a growing, coeducational

Children and Community Service: Character Education in Action

Throughout the nation, schools are called upon to contribute to the formation of their students' character, especially in regard to civic virtue. This article reviews the literature on school-based community service programs. Then, based on the findings of an on-going national survey, it examines community service in urban Catholic elementary schools. Next, it describes the broad dimensions of community involvement and outlines community service programs in a representative school. Lastly, it concludes that a group of urban Catholic elementary schools, through their particular religious emphasis on public community, offer an important model for all elementary schools, private and public.

Community Elders: The Roles of Parents in a School of “Choice”

This paper critiques the common argument that schools will become more responsive to parents and more equitable when “chosen” by the clients they serve. Based on a qualitative study of an urban Catholic high school that is “chosen” by an increasingly diverse clientele, the paper demonstrates that, even in schools that are outwardly characterized by values cohesion, shared goals, and voluntary affiliation, interaction between a school and its environment is likely to be a process of ongoing negotiations and unarticulated struggles for voice among unequals. The study therefore draws into question two assumptions: (1) that the status and power of clients will be subordinated to pedagogical and equity concerns in shaping the distinctiveness of market-driven schools, and (2) that strong school cultures, created through voluntary affiliation, can mediate the effects of race, ethnicity, class, and gender in the socialization of students to the distinctive norms and values of a school.

Item Level Improvements for Use of the MMPI With Adolescents

The decision to develop a separate adolescent form of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (i.e., the MMPI-A) raised questions about continued use of 20 original items that seemed unnecessarily ambiguous in content when employed with younger students (Ss). The responses of 362 academically gifted boys, aged 14 to 17 years, from an urban Catholic high school were compared on the experimental 704-item Form TX of the MMPI and a form containing 20 rewritten and 9 control items. The psychometric properties of the rewritten items indicated the same or better performance than that on the original versions while improving the items' face validity and reducing item ambiguity. Responses from 321 Ss to a follow-up questionnaire suggested eliminating offensive or irrelevant items and reducing the test's length would increase acceptance of the MMPI-A.

From Inner City to Ivory Tower

The author draws on principles of critical race theory to reflect on his elementary education at a successful urban Catholic school. He contends that his education was built on the integration of two epistemological pillars: centric and conflict theories. The implementation of this matrix of theories served as the necessary ingredients to foster his movement from the inner city to the ivory tower and a career in mathematics education research. The article concludes with a discussion of the tension created by his "voice" within traditional academic discourse.

Psychosocial coping of urban children in catholic elementary school classrooms

This exploratory survey of 723 kindergarten and first grade children in eight inner‐city and five more affluent urban Catholic elementary schools presents demographic characteristics, information about assets and vulnerabilities of children's psychosocial coping in the classroom, and comparisons of these items by school grouping. Chi square and analyses of variance yielded statistically significant differences in that schools located in the lower income neighborhoods were found to have more children who were younger, African‐American, and living with one parent and fewer who were Catholic. Children in inner city schools demonstrated more classroom behavioral assets supporting learning and fewer behavioral vulnerabilities inhibiting the process. Fewer inner‐city children were identified as having many behavior problems. The implications of this study are considered for future program development in school social work service provision.

The Urban Catholic School- A Valuable Part of American Education

Affording first hand insights into the urban school environ ment, this writer provides compel ling evidence of the historic and contemporary, mission of service of the Catholic schools in American education.

Predictive validity of a screening battery for children "at risk" for reading failure.

Summary. A three‐year follow‐up of a sample of 407 white boys entering urban Catholic schools in Perth is reported. The children were given a series of eight tests previously shown to predict subsequent reading performance. Using discriminant analysis, it was shown that 75 per cent of children identified as having a high risk of reading failure showed severe or mild symptoms of such failure in terms of reading comprehension in the third year of schooling.