Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
October 30, 2002
NCEA president tells school executives, 'Be proactive'
Don't look elsewhere for solutions to problems, delegates told
The president of the National Catholic Education Association told school executives in Denver last week their leadership is needed to shape the response of Catholic education to two major influences on its future.
NCEA president Michael Guerra, addressing delegates to the annual national meeting of the Chief Administrators of Catholic Education at the Adam's Mark Hotel Oct. 24, commended the delegates for their unity in recognizing the challenges they face, but suggested they shouldn't hesitate to be more "proactive" in meeting them.
"Two powerful, multi-faceted forces" are driving influences in their fields, Guerra said.
First, he said, "is the rapidly diminishing capacity to provide Catholic education for families of modest means." The second he defined as the nationwide push for "educational reform" and its particular impact on Catholic schools on two fronts, education standards and parental choice.
Guerra said he worded the first issue as precisely as possible to make sure "to capture all the elements" involved in the problem. He pointed out that although the number of Catholic schools continues to decline, with 2.6 million students they still constitute a system with more than twice the enrollment of any other network of private schools in the country.
He said that five more years of the trend toward Catholic school education as an opportunity only for the affluent would be "a mark of failure" of its leadership.
The demands for imposition of standards on education is the consequence of a general conclusion by political decision-makers that "education is too important to be left to the educators," Guerra said, and that the issue of school choice also is increasing in importance as a result.
Catholic educators need to determine "how to hold ourselves accountable," he said. "How (do) we take our unique identity and make it intelligible and acceptable to our larger community?" is the question to be answered to capitalize on the opportunity presented by the standards-choice debates, Guerra said.
Guerra said he had spent his time at the five-day CACE meeting listening at the numerous sessions, taking "copious notes." He reported on "what I heard and what I did not hear."
He said the "good news" was that he heard "an emphasis on leadership … a commitment to formation … and a focus on authenticity and openness to growth."
Guerra listed as "bad news" adoptions of lists of challenges that were "much too long" and too much passive response to the problems: "This needs to be done" rather than "What do we do?"
"We should certainly identify our allies," he said, "but we need to focus on what we do," avoiding a too-prevalent "tendency to look outside of ourselves for answers."
More good news, he said, was that he didn't hear "a lot of tension" or pulling in "contradictory directions."
Guerra noted that Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., addressing the CACE members at Mass Oct. 23, said leadership should combine "humility, boldness and joy."
Guerra said he would like to have heard more joy in the planning sessions at the meeting, and suggested there was "an excess of humility."
He linked the work on response to the challenges to Catholic education to proper preparation for observance of the NCEA's 100th anniversary in 2004 by not only acknowledging its achievements but also by putting forth clearly defined, soundly based and readily understandable objectives.
"We still have a lot of room for shaping the next steps," he said.
Haven Moses, director of Community Outreach for Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Denver, addressed the executives Oct. 22. Recalling his experience as one of six children of a working couple in the Watts area of Los Angeles, he credited their parents' determination to make sure they had a Catholic education and the schools they attended for their success.
"Some of our outstanding leaders have had this experience, and a very fortunate one it is," Moses said. "We (educators) have a very important role to play … to give our kids the best we can."
The mission exemplified by his parents, he said, is to teach the young "how important love is, how important our fellow man is."
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