Australian Education Review (AER) 60 takes the 2011 Gonski "Review of Funding for Schooling" as a vantage point, from which to consider the national funding of schools in Australia, past and future. Section 1 outlines the educational values and perspectives that have underpinned school funding policies and programs and describes major…

In three Canadian provinces Catholic schools receive full government funding. This funding is premised on Catholic schools providing a distinctive educational environment based on the religious beliefs and practices of, among others, the teachers who work in these schools. A variety of official documents underline this notion of teachers playing…

Ontario Roman Catholic communities have established and maintained their own schools for over 200 years. Yet, their struggle for survival has not come without many challenges, setbacks, and criticisms. With the achievement of open-access at the secondary level and equal funding across the system, many question the legitimacy and worthiness of…

For decades, Catholic schools, particularly inner-city Catholic schools, have seen declines in enrollment and an increasing need for subsidies from their dioceses. Many dioceses, however, have been unable to shoulder that burden, forcing schools to close. In response to difficult financial circumstances, the archdioceses of Indianapolis, Miami,…

Sometimes, the key to solving an old problem is a fresh perspective. This was the case for the annual fund for The Catholic University of America (CUA), which underwent a transformation that nearly doubled the fund between 2004 and 2008. In 2004-05, the annual giving program at CUA raised $454,789 in unrestricted gifts from 1,760 donors. By…

This paper seeks to explain why the policy history of school funding in regard to Australian Catholic Education looks and sounds the way it does today through the production of a genealogy of the subject. The questions addressed are, first, why has the funding of Catholic schools in Australia become an occluded historical site since the 1970s,…

This article tells the story and explores the significance of Notre Dame's efforts over the past 18 years to serve the pressing needs of underresourced elementary and secondary schools throughout the United States, with a special focus on the faith-based sector--and more particularly, Catholic schools. These schools are increasingly fragile but…

Fe y Alegría (Faith and Joy) refers to the network of schools for the poor run by the Jesuits in Latin America and the Caribbean. Founded originally in 1955 in Venezuela by Father José María Vélaz, by 2010 Fe y Alegría had spread to 17 countries in Latin America and now operates one in Chad. The Fe y Alegría schools are essentially convenant…

Independent schools are increasingly placing significant priority on community service and understand the important messages about social and personal responsibility that these programs convey to students, along with the invaluable hands-on, real-world experience that they get in community service work. And while student community service is…

The most pressing challenges facing American Catholic educational leaders today are funding, Catholic identity, and leadership. Funding is the most pressing issue and it involves recruiting and retaining teachers, balancing affordability with quality, and justifying the worth of Catholic schools. Catholic identity issues include reconciling the…

The decline of religious observance in Irish society has coincided with the strengthening of the exclusionary prerogatives of state-funded denominational schools. The implementation of a "Catholics first" policy in many schools, as underpinned by legislation, suggests that increasing religious diversity in the State has led to an…

Limited research has been conducted on Catholic school viability (James, Tichy, Collins, & Schwob, 2008; Lundy, 1999) and Catholic school systems (Goldschmidt, O'Keefe, & Walsh, 2004). But no research studies have investigated the viability of the consolidated Catholic school system (DeFiore, Convey, & Schuttloffel, 2009). This study investigates…

Since the 1960s, American Catholic social institutions have struggled with issues related to their organizational and religious identities (Dosen, 2009; Gallin, 2000; Weakland, 1994). For Catholic colleges and universities, these issues are evidenced by the difficulty some institutions have with being readily able to recognize their distinctive…

United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for a plurality of the Court in "Mitchell v. Helms" in 2000, advanced the idea that state constitutional prohibitions against public funding of religious schools were manifestations of anti-Catholic bigotry in the late 19th century. Thomas's reading of history and law led him to believe…

As most educators know, Catholic schools work and have worked for a long time. Sociologist James Coleman and colleagues Thomas Hoffer and Sally Kilgore, in 1982, were among the first to document Catholic schools' academic successes, in "High School Achievement: Public and Private Schools." A variety of studies since, by scholars at the University…