Overview of Programs & Services

The following is an overview of ACE's academic programs, professional services and outreach.

Academic Programs

Service through Teaching
The foundational program of the Alliance for Catholic Education, ACE Service through Teaching combines an intensive schedule of academic classes, held during the summer at Notre Dame, with two years of applied learning through teaching in classrooms in under-resourced Catholic schools, especially in the South. Excellent academic preparation combined with community-building and spiritual growth form the foundation that supports approximately 180 teachers in more than 100 elementary and secondary Catholic schools in over 30 cities each year. Those selected through the highly competitive application process can earn a cost-free Master of Education degree, preparation for teaching licensure, and a stipend toward living expenses. ACE teachers, who live in ACE community houses in their apprenticeship areas, represent a diverse set of backgrounds, experiences, and undergraduate academic disciplines.

Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program
The ACE Leadership Program began as a response to the ongoing needs of Catholic schools across the country for qualified, faith-filled leaders to serve as principals. This 26-month formation program develops Catholic school principals in the context of community and spirituality. An academic internship offers valuable leadership experience, supplementing classroom and online learning. Each year’s cohort consists of about 30 persons who have had experience as teachers and want to further their service through an M.A. in Educational Administration degree.

Certificate Programs in English as a New Language (ENL) and Teaching Exceptional Children (TEC)
The twelve-month ENL and TEC programs each entail 18 credit hours of study, combining on-campus and online learning and culminating in a specialized endorsement from the state of Indiana. These curricula allow Catholic school teachers, while retaining their positions during the academic year, to develop invaluable service skills and licensure—for helping students build familiarity with the English language or for offering special education to children with mild disabilities.

Professional Services

ACE Consulting
This program, entering its third full year, already has served more than 30 dioceses. Its portfolio of services to client schools includes conducting viability assessments, facilitating strategic planning initiatives, assisting with developing new school models, evaluating and ensuring the equitable participation of schools in federal grant programs, and providing professional education through its newly established Academy for School Leaders program. In July 2010, the inaugural Principals Academy was hosted on Notre Dame’s campus, offering professional development to Catholic school principals.

Notre Dame ACE Academies
These academies, being launched in three Tucson schools in the fall of 2010, represent an updated model of in-depth partnership between particular schools and Notre Dame’s ACE-proven resources. Each school retains high-quality school leaders, supported by the University as they participate in ongoing professional and personal formation. Each implements structural features that facilitate school improvement and shares a common Catholic school ethos and culture. A network of these urban K-8 schools will grow in locales offering parental-choice vouchers or tax credits.

Play Like a Champion Today
This educational series serving coaches and others who direct school and parish athletics, aims to help youth and high school sports programs to reflect Gospel values and promote moral character development in children. Its grounding in psychology and interdisciplinary insights uses the ND football team’s iconic sign as a touchstone of integrity. Since 2006, PLACT has trained over 10,000 coaches, who have impacted the lives of 250,000 young athletes.

ACE Collaborative for Academic Excellence
In order to strengthen curriculum and instruction in Catholic schools, ACE has designed an updated package of collaborations and workshops in which ACE faculty and staff work with diocesan-selected master teachers and principals. The Collaborative is currently in five dioceses, with more than 300 people participating. The opportunities to plan ahead and pursue continuous improvement can generate transformative approaches at the local level.

Strategic Intervention Teams
ACE has deployed these teams for several years with the intent of delivering professional development to Catholic educators who teach children with academic or behavioral challenges. Teachers trained through these team endeavors develop the process, protocol, and strategies for teacher-led intervention teams. The services have been implemented in more than 40 schools to date. Trained teachers maintain networks for sharing experiences and best practices.

Outreach & Engagement

“Catholic School Advantage” Campaign
The United States needs to integrate the Latino community—the fastest growing school-age segment of the U.S. population—into fuller participation in the country’s civic and economic life. More Latino students are entering U.S. classrooms, mostly public school classrooms, and American schools are not serving these children sufficiently. For example, only 52 percent of Latinos graduate from high school in four years. In contrast, Catholic schools serve Latinos and other students well, representing a real educational advantage, but only 3 percent of Latinos send their children to Catholic school.

Meanwhile, there are nearly 700,000 empty seats in Ameri- can Catholic schools, representing an enormous opportunity to provide high quality education and to give under-resourced Catholic schools a new lease on life. Based on the findings of the Final Report of the Notre Dame Task Force on the Participation of Latino Children and Families in Catholic Schools (Dec. 12, 2009), ACE has launched a campaign to double the percentage of Latinos who send their children to Catholic schools, from 3 percent to 6 percent, by 2020, thereby increasing their national enroll- ment from 290,000 to more than 1 million.

The interest in this initiative is very broad—Church, business, and more. The campaign is already sparking a multitude of dynamic collaborations, plans, and action steps in the Archdioceses of Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. This win-win for Catholic education and American society is poised to spread to other arch/dioceses next year.

ACE Advocates for Catholic Schools
ACE Advocates works to organize and mobilize Catholic school supporters and is increasingly being recognized as the national organization for those committed to sustaining and strengthening Catholic schools in the United States. Solid grounding for this movement has been provided by many cohorts of ACE alumni, but all who love Catholic schools are welcome. Currently anchored by formalized regional networks in 25 cities, ACE Advocates is turned to by professional educators, parents, alumni, and others for spiritual and professional resources, as well as news, public policy action alerts, and networking opportunities.

Center For K-12 Educational Access
This newest arm of ACE is a teaching, research, and advocacy enterprise exclusively dedicated to empowering our nation’s most financially under-resourced families with sustainable financial access to a quality Catholic education. The Center, developed at the invitation of Church leaders, education reform scholars, policy makers, and K-12 Catholic school officials, represents an unprecedented effort- both in the parental choice movement and in Catholic higher education—to respond to Pope Benedict XVI’s assertion that “everything possible must be done, in cooperation with the wider community, to ensure that [Catholic schools] are accessible to people of all social and economic strata.”

ACE Press
The goal of ACE’s publishing arm is to disseminate scholarship and educational and spiritual texts and resources in support of the Alliance’s mission to sustain and strengthen Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Established in 2006, more than a dozen published titles range from current research by ACE faculty and national authors to the reports of the Catholic School Advantage campaign to instructional texts and prayer resources for teachers and administrators.