 This school year, nine urban Catholic schools in the archdiocese will benefit from two different sources: a Legacy Grant and the Minnesota Department of Education.
Grants are important to all Catholic schools, but urban schools have a
particular need for them, said Laurie Acker, director of urban education
for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
“These grants not only help with making the education more affordable,
[they are] also at the same time strengthening our programs so that we
get the word out that this is really quality education that these kids
are getting,” Acker said.
Urban schools have more families who live in poverty than suburban or
rural schools, and many cannot afford tuition costs, Acker said.
“We don’t want Catholic education to be available only to those who can
afford it. We want Catholic education to be available to everyone.”
Awarding high potential
This year, the Legacy Grant awarded 31 students scholarships, totaling
$46,500, for demonstrating high potential. Acker administers the Legacy
Grant to schools identified as urban. These schools are also affiliated
with Friends of Catholic Urban Schools, or Focus.
Each High Potential Scholarship recipient received $1,500, which may
cover half or more of the student’s tuition costs, depending on the
school he or she attends.
“We know that there are children in our schools that are gifted,
high-potential, and some of those kids, their families struggle
financially, and we don’t want them to feel like they can’t afford a
Catholic education,” Acker said. “We wanted to allow these children to
stay in our schools and give them the financial support to do so.”
This measure is largely proactive, Acker said; the schools have not lost
large numbers of high-potential students because of tuition costs. This
is the first time the archdiocese has offered this grant.
What is the Legacy Grant?
The Legacy Grant benefits 12 urban schools and their students in the
archdiocese. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis received a $10
million grant in 2008 from an anonymous donor to be dispersed in $1
million payments over the following 10 years: $500,000 per year goes to
scholarships for children who are living in poverty, and the other
$500,000 provides funding for special initiatives for urban schools,
including the high-potential initiative, literacy initiative and math
initiative and related scholarships. The goal is to transform Catholic
urban schools over the course of 10 years and ensure their
sustainability, Acker said, so that Catholic education is available for
everyone, including urban students.
The Legacy Grant also helps schools meet the needs of high-potential
students. Each year, the archdiocese offers a class for teachers and
principals at urban Catholic schools to teach them to help
high-potential students.
“The biggest thing . . . is differentiating instruction,” Acker said.
“If teachers know how to differentiate instruction, they’ll be meeting
the needs of kids who are above grade level and below grade level.”
The archdiocese worked with professors at the University of St. Thomas to define “high potential,” Acker said.
“There are so many different ways to define ‘giftedness,’” Acker said.
She wanted to ensure the grant’s parameters did not exclude students who
were English-language learners or immigrants.
The grants were awarded based on four criteria: a teacher
recommendation, student essay, test scores and a student work sample.
Applicants also had to qualify for free or reduced lunch, the mark
schools use to identify students who live in poverty.
One anonymous applicant wrote: “Learning means more than just writing
things down on paper. It means something no one can take from your
brain. When I look, I see respect kids give my teacher.”
Other applicants wrote about the importance of Catholic education in
their lives. “They teach proper behavior, right from wrong, language,
responsibility and how to become a better Christian,” a student wrote.
“If we forget, then the teachers pull the list of Christian behavior
expectations off the wall . . . to remind us about them.”
Students receiving this year’s grants attend St. Matthew, St. Paul; Pope
John Paul II, Minneapolis; Blessed Trinity, Richfield; Risen Christ,
Minneapolis; St. Michael, West St. Paul; and St. Francis/St. James, St.
Paul.
“We really want to reward these students who are working hard,” Acker said.
Bolstering math
The Minnesota Department of Education awarded grants to seven urban
Catholic schools to help them improve their math instruction through the
Algebra Connected to Number program during the 2010-2011 school year.
These schools are St. Matthew, St. Paul; St. Michael, West St. Paul;
St. Peter Claver, St. Paul; St. Francis/St. James, St. Paul; St. Helena,
Minneapolis; Sacred Heart, Robbinsdale; and Blessed Trinity, Richfield.
Seventeen school staff members from the participating schools will
attend five days of training and take part in Professional Learning
Communities, which will help the teachers apply what they’ve learned to
middle school math education. Two Catholic school teachers will receive
training to facilitate the PLC groups. The grants’ worth exceeds
$35,000.
Math at St. Matthew
St. Michael’s middle school math teacher plans to attend the Algebra
Connected to Number training, said principal Doug Lieser. Because the
school is small and has one math teacher for grades six to eight, this
grant allows a rare opportunity for the teacher to meet with peer math
instructors, he said.
“There’s going to be some good collaboration between schools that’s not
only going to benefit our math teacher and our students, it’s also going
to be good sharing across the board and benefit other schools as well,”
he said.
Lieser expects the knowledge gained by the teacher to trickle down to the school’s elementary teachers as well, he said.
The Legacy Grant provides funding for a math initiative, which already
benefits six Catholic schools. The Minnesota Department of Education
grant leverages these Legacy Grant funds in order to reach more schools,
Acker said. (One school — St. Michael in West St. Paul — will benefit
from both the Legacy Grant math initiative and the Algebra Connected to
Number grant this year.)
Minnesota has a special interest in math education, Acker said.
“We need to make sure that our kids have really good math and algebraic sense and know how to think algebraically,” she said.
Beginning this academic year, the State of Minnesota requires students
to be taught algebra in eighth grade, and the preparation for the
subject can begin as early as kindergarten, Acker added.
“It forces teachers to look at math a little differently, and to really look at math conceptually,” she said.
What is FOCUS?
Friends of Catholic Urban Schools, or FOCUS, is an independent
organization that formed in 2006 to work to save struggling urban
Catholic schools.
Twelve Catholic schools are identified as FOCUS schools, or recipients
of their efforts: Blessed Trinity, Richfield; Risen Christ, Minneapolis;
San Miguel Middle School, Minneapolis; Ascension School, Minneapolis;
Sacred Heart School, Robbinsdale; St. Raphael, Crystal; Pope John Paul
II School, Minneapolis; St. Peter Claver, St. Paul; St. Agnes, St. Paul;
St. Francis/St. James, St. Paul; St. Matthew, St. Paul; St. Michael,
West St. Paul.
Closing achievement gap
All urban schools in the archdiocese scored higher than demographically
expected on an achievement test administered by all schools in the
archdiocese.
Compared to other area Catholic schools, urban Catholic school students’
results look average, but they’re not, Acker said. The achievement test
was normed evenly between urban, suburban and rural areas, and between
low, medium and high socio-economic status.
“Our [urban] kids performed at the mid- to above-average range,” Acker
said. “Our students are scoring much higher than you would expect for
students in an area that is urban, low-socioeconomic.”
Academics at Ascension
Among these well-scoring urban schools is Ascension School in
Minneapolis. This year, the school’s eighth-grade students scored higher
than the Minnesota average for math and reading proficiency: 76.1
percent compared to the 66.1 percent state average in math, and 85.7
percent compared to the state average of 72.5 percent in reading.
“Our students are successful because we are dedicated to meeting the
needs of every individual student no matter what,” said Dorwatha Woods,
principal of Ascension in Minneapolis, in a statement.
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