A report timed to coincide with the U.S. visit of Pope Benedict XVI highlights what it calls the "crisis" of a steadily shrinking pool of urban Catholic schools and outlines measures--some of which are already being tested on a limited scale--to arrest and possibly reverse the trend. Since 1990, more than 1,300 Roman Catholic schools in the United…

Since 2000, New Leaders for New Schools has recruited and trained more than 300 principals and placed them at the helms of troubled schools in cities across the nation. But the nonprofit organization, cofounded by Jonathan Schnur, an education policy adviser in President Bill Clinton's administration, and sustained by his political savvy and…