The administration of Pre K – 12 Catholic schools becomes more challenging each year. Catholic school leaders not only have the daunting task of leading a successful learning organization, but also to serve as the school community’s spiritual leader and the vigilant steward who keeps the budget balanced, the building clean, and maintaining a healthy enrollment in the school. Each of these tasks can be a full time job, yet the Catholic school principal takes on these tasks day after day, year after year, so that teachers may teach as Jesus did. The goal of this book is to provide both beginning and seasoned Catholic school leaders with some insights that might help them to meet these challenges with a sense of confidence. The words in this text provide research?based approaches for dealing with issues of practice, especially those tasks that are not ordinarily taught in educational leadership programs. This text helps to make sense of the pastoral side of Catholic education, in terms of structures, mission, identity, curriculum, and relationships with the principal’s varied constituencies. It also provides some insights into enrollment management issues, finances and development, and the day in day out care of the organization and its home, the school building. As a Catholic school leader, each must remember that the Catholic school is not just another educational option. The Catholic school has a rich history and an important mission. Historically, education of the young goes back to the monastic and cathedral schools of the Middle Ages. In the United States, Catholic schools developed as a response to anti?Catholic bias that was rampant during the nineteenth century. Catholic schools developed to move their immigrant and first generation American youth from the Catholic ghetto to successful careers and lives in the American mainstream. However, most importantly, Catholic schools have brought Christ to generations of youngsters. It remains the continuing call of the Catholic school to be a center of Evangelization—a place where Gospel values live in the lives of faculty, students and parents. This text attempts to integrate the unique challenges of the instructional leader of the institution with the historical and theological underpinnings of contemporary Catholic education.

Catholic School Leadership addresses many of the challenges facing those who prepare faith leaders and education leaders for the Catholic schools of the future. The well-known editors and contributors to this volume have written about their personal experiences with Catholic schools; the educational foundations of Catholic schools; teacher preparation and development; Catholic school leadership; dealing with parents and families; and the challenges of technology for Catholic schools. The contributions emphasize the perspectives of both scholars and practitioners within Catholic education and will interest anyone who has experienced time in a Catholic school either as a student, teacher or administrator, as well as those interested in what is happening within Catholic schools today.

In the past decade, the number of students enrolled in private school choice programs has grown ten-fold. But granting students access to public financing for their private education has not led to the vibrant marketplace of school options many of its supporters envisioned. If school choice policy is to improve the American education landscape, careful thought must be put in to understand how it can expand existing high quality schools and create new high quality schools to serve more children. New and Better Schools attacks this problem from the perspective of both researchers and practitioners, documenting the hurdles entrepreneurial school leaders face and offering a way forward.

This guide helps faculty and student affairs practitioners better serve graduate and professional school students as they navigate what can be an isolating, taxing, and unfamiliar context. Providing actionable strategies, as well as a common language for practitioners to advocate for themselves and for their students, this book is a quick start manual that defines current issues around graduate and professional student development. Drawing together current resources and research around post-baccalaureate student outcomes, this book explores the diverse student needs of graduate and professional students and provides a clear understanding of their social, personal, and psychological development and how to support their success. Case studies showcase specific examples of practice including a holistic development model for graduate training; integrating academic, personal, professional, and career development needs; promising practices for engagement; a diversity, equity, and inclusion approach to access and outcomes; how graduate schools can be important partners to student affairs professionals; and examples of assessment in action. This book provides tools, resources, communication strategies, and actionable theory-to-practice connections for practitioners, professionals, and faculty at all levels who work to support post-baccalaureate student thriving. Appendix available for download online at www.routledge.com/9780367639884 on the tab that is entitled "Support Material."

Exploring a subject that is as important as it is divisive, this two-volume work offers the first current, definitive work on the intricacies and issues relative to America's faith-based schools. The Praeger Handbook of Faith-Based Schools in the United States, K–12 is an indispensable study at a time when American education is increasingly considered through the lenses of race, ethnicity, gender, and social class. With contributions from an impressive array of experts, the two-volume work provides a historical overview of faith-based schooling in the United States, as well as a comprehensive treatment of each current faith-based school tradition in the nation. The first volume examines three types of faith-based schools—Protestant schools, Jewish schools, and Evangelical Protestant homeschooling. The second volume focuses on Catholic, Muslim, and Orthodox schools, and addresses critical issues common to faith-based schools, among them state and federal regulation and school choice, as well as ethnic, cultural, confessional, and practical factors. Perhaps most importantly for those concerned with the questions and controversies that abound in U.S. education, the handbook grapples with outcomes of faith-based schooling and with the choices parents face as they consider educational options for their children.

Addresses seven competencies in leadership and nine in curriculum and instruction. Includes more than 150 sources in the bibliography.