A national task force commissioned by the University of Notre Dame launched a campaign Dec. 12 that seeks to enroll 1 million Hispanic students in Catholic schools by 2020.
The Catholic School Advantage campaign comes out of a 65-page report the task force released the same day: "To Nurture the Soul of a Nation: Latino Families, Catholic Schools and Educational Opportunity."
Dec. 12 also was the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patroness of the Americas, to whom Hispanics have a special devotion.
A key finding of the report showed that while more than 75 percent of Latinos in the U.S. are Catholic, only 3 percent of Latino children currently attend Catholic schools while public schools across the country have seen a rapid growth in the number of Hispanics.
The report also said public schools have not served Latino students well, saying they are behind their peers on most measures of educational achievement. According to the report, Latino students fare much better at Catholic schools where they are 42 percent more likely to graduate from high school and two and a half times more likely to graduate from college than peers who attend public schools.
"Much is at stake. No less than the future generation of leaders for our country," said task force co-chair Juliet Garcia, president of the University of Texas at Brownsville. "Catholic schools must remain a steady and strong conduit for the many new generations of Latinos at their doorstep," she said in a statement. READ FULL STORY
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