The next area of focus will be on Excellence, which is centered narrowly on academic rigor and excellence. The reason for this is very specific - if you ask Catholic school principals what makes their school excellent, most will reply with some form of answer that centers on Catholic identity. They will cite the tangible identity that is present, the wonderful sense of community, the shared values between family and school...all of these are wonderful characteristics and those of us committed to them appreciate how integral they are to school excellence.
But that is why we have an exclusive focus on Faith (see previous post) that addresses this directly and stresses that faith should not simply be part of the school but infused through all aspects of school life. So when we cite Excellence, we are referring to academic rigor and achievement, which are both hallmarks for Catholic schools historically.
We start from the premise that Catholic schools charge for a product that is free down the street. Because we compete with free public schools (including charter schools) we need to ensure that the academic product that results in our schools is at minimum equal to those in other academic environments. Ideally we know that the product to be superior to that found in other schools.
The bottom line with our focus on excellence is this: Catholic schools have a deserved reputation for academic excellence. When the nuns were teaching in elementary schools it was a badge of honor to be able to effectively diagram a sentence or have perfect handwriting. But we can never rest on what we have accomplished in the past. Jim Collins in his book Good to Great says it well, "No matter what you have achieved, you will only merely be good in relation to what you can become." We have to reject the status quo and continually look to new ways to improve what we do in the classroom.
This requires thinking about education for the 21st century vs continuing with how things have been done in the past. Using data to drive instruction in the classroom, exploring alternative curricular models such as immersion language instruction and utilizing technology to both access content and engage learners. I will have a separate post on technology but the key point in this area of excellence is that we must ensure we know what we want to accomplish prior to implementing any new technology. So the new technology is not the innovation, it is the tool for the student and teacher to use in order to learn.
