The Catholic School Playbook
The Catholic School Playbook
by Michael Ortner and Kimberly Begg
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More than a hundred Catholic schools have closed annually for the last six decades across the United States. Enrollment is now around a quarter of what it was at its peak in 1965. Based on the data, one may conclude that the end of Catholic schools is near.
Yet hundreds of Catholic schools are thriving with increasing enrollment, delighted parents, and students who are well formed and full of wonder. Many have waitlists of students eager to attend. What is their secret? What sets great Catholic schools apart from mediocre ones?
The Catholic School Playbook by Michael Ortner and Kimberly Begg documents how these successful schools are bucking the trend by focusing on their rich Catholic heritage and cultivating strong communities of students, families, and educators. In seven concise and easy-to-read chapters exploring how these schools approach their mission, hiring, teachers, finances, and more, this book offers a practical gameplan for renewing Catholic education in America.
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Table of Contents
What People Are Saying
“In recent years there has been an explosion of growth in a renewal of authentic Catholic education. By chronicling the many success stories of schools who are leading the way, The Catholic School Playbook provides a clear and practical blueprint for the future of Catholic education. This is an extremely important book and a must-read for all Catholic educators. I am convinced that unless Catholic schools move in the direction mapped out in this book, they are doomed to fail.”
—Bishop James D. Conley, Diocese of Lincoln
“The Catholic School Playbook is required reading for Catholics who know that we are living in a time to build. Failing Catholic schools need to be reformed, and new Catholic schools need to be established. Michael Ortner and Kimberly Begg provide readers with the data, stories, and first-person accounts on building and sustaining an authentic Catholic school in the midst of our current malaise. The result is a book that is as inspirational as it is essential.”
—Ryan T. Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center
“Are you interested in being part of the renewal in Catholic education? The Catholic School Playbook tells you how to score. A clear and concise and encouraging book.”
—Dale Ahlquist, President of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton and editor of The Everlasting Man: A Guide to G.K. Chesterton’s Masterpiece
“Catholic schools that are truly Catholic make a significant contribution to the New Evangelization and to the renewal of American culture. Inner-city Catholic schools are the best anti-poverty program the Church has ever devised. So the flourishing of Catholic schools is essential to both the Church and the country. May the examples in this ‘playbook’ inspire many others to take up this great cause.”
—George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center
“This volume is exactly what Catholic dioceses need at the present time, when, after decades of decline, Catholic schools are undergoing fresh demand and wondering how best to meet it. Michael Ortner and Kimberly Begg have produced a guidebook for school leaders that ranges from the highest ideas and Christ-centered curricula to the nuts and bolts of funding, community events, and parent involvement. Teachers and administrators who are overwhelmed by the secular demands of achievement and worldly success will find in The Catholic School Playbook tools that will help them resist those dehumanizing twenty-first-century trends. Most important of all, Ortner and Begg show the way to another kind of success, a school Catholic through and through, which is what so many parents have wanted all along. Every bishop in America who has seen his enrollments dropping and teachers leaving should take this book as an itinerary of recovery and fluorishing.”
—Mark Bauerlein, senior editor at First Things and Emeritus Professor of English at Emory University
“In these pages, Michael Ortner and Kimberly Begg weave the threads of the story of the renewal of Catholic education—a grassroots response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit—into a beautiful and compelling tapestry. Through the voices and experiences of parents, teachers, leaders, and thinkers, this comprehensive account not only delivers a coherent and convincing vision of Catholic education, but also provides a roadmap of practical steps for bishops, pastors, and school leaders who seek to align their schools more closely with the Church’s distinct vision of education.”
—Mary Pat Donoghue, Executive Director, Secretariat of Catholic Education, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
“The Catholic School Playbook is the perfect guide to cut through the deafening noise of ideologies and self-perpetuating educational experimentation in order to help us recalibrate our mission as Catholic schools. It is a must-read from bishops to parents, and a plea to pastors and principals. It will resonate heartily with teachers, and, to be honest, it could also be a real help to the wider spectrum—from pope to student! Bravo to Ortner and Begg for consolidating wisdom which is ‘ever ancient, ever new.’”
—Michael Van Hecke, President of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education
“The Catholic School Playbook is the ‘common sense’ manifesto for Catholic education. It is the critical link between what has been a quiet, under-the-radar educational renewal movement in mainstream Catholic education. In a decade, every Catholic school administration will have read it.”
—Jeremy Tate, Classic Learning Test