Cristo Rey High School in Chicago, Pilsen Area

Maybe you saw the piece on the CBS Sunday evening television staple, 60 Minutes, on the Cristo Rey High School Network. If you haven't, you need to cue up Cristo Rey on You Tube. And after seeing that piece and reading this blog and if you care at all about the education of our youth, you may feel the need to contact your Senator, your Congressman and Arne Duncan Secretary of Education and inform them about Cristo Rey's enlightened and revolutionary education program.

As you may know or will soon find out, the good folks at Cristo Rey know what they are doing in educating our young people over its fruitful 14 year history. Conversely, our government is seemingly feckless on how best to educate our youngsters as evidenced by its feeble history spanning generations. Want proof? Check out the latest stats on the US Public Schools by the Numbers as printed in the Wall Street Journal October 30, 2010:

1. 7,000 students drop out of high school every school day, for a total of 1.3 million students a year.
2. 12% of US public high schools produce nearly half of the nation's dropouts and 58% of black dropouts.
3. 50% of incoming ninth graders in urban high poverty schools read three or more years below grade level.
4. 39% of high school students reported spending one hour or less a week reading or studying in class in 2009.
5. 23% of new American teachers come from the top third of their graduating class.
6. 14% of new American teachers in high poverty schools come from the top third of their college class.
7. 100% of teachers in Singapore, South Korea and Finland come from the top third of their college class.

Sources: Alliance for Excellent Education, McKinsey & Co.

As the above alarming facts reveal, the American public school eduction is an unmitigated and unrelenting failure. President Obama bellowed for change two years ago. For education, nothing has changed. It's still a train wreck. Well, it's time for an apocalyptic change for our schools. Since government is hamstrung by powerful teacher unions and corrupt officials, let the private sector invoke the change. Enter Cristo Rey.

The founders of Cristo Rey discovered these same troubling facts and acted upon them years ago. Their program in educating impoverished youth is in effect every school day at the Cristo Rey High Schools around the country. It's not easy but the leaders at Cristo Rey and the students they educate are succeeding.

At the Chicago Cristo Rey High School in the Hispanic neighborhood of Pilsen, the flagship school of the network, 538 young male and female Hispanic students march into school on-time and in uniforms all adhering to a strict set of rules of conduct and behaviour.

By design, Cristo Rey does not take the academic wonks of the neighborhood. They come from the middle of the pack. These hungry students come from families that average $34,000 annual income. (According to the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the poverty level for a family of 5 has a mean household income of $26,000.) The costs to educate one student at Cristo Rey is around $10,000/year. Well then, these obvious discordant numbers don't jive...they don't compute. How does this work? Let me briefly explain.

The Jesuits who run the Cristo Rey network came up with a novel approach. The students go to class four days a week and work one day a week. They work? Where? In Chicago, Cristo Rey made alliances with companies and corporations (ie., Ernst and Young, Black and Decker, R.R Donnelley, JP Morgan Chase and many others) that employs all 538 students for one day a week. These jobs are real working jobs. Not glamour jobs. They are entry level jobs. Mailroom. Receptionist. Messenger. The students are paid for their services. But the pay the student earns is not theirs, it is returned to the school as part of the tuition costs. The balance of the tuition costs come from grants and on average $2900 from the families own pockets. Cristo Rey felt that the program will work only if the families are invested financially and have some "skin in the game." Attendance does not seem to be problem at Cristo Rey. The families are committed and in turn the students to the Cristo Rey method.

To date, Cristo Rey Chicago proudly proclaims a 70% graduation rate. The students also learn the value of work and rigorous educational training. Granted Cristo Rey is not for everybody. 100% of the graduating senior class was accepted last year to college. Remarkable. Cristo Rey gave these students a platform to succeed and they seized upon it.

So, the bad news is our public school system remains broken with little hope. The good news is the alternative Cristo Rey network prospers amidst great daily challenges providing hope and dreams realized to the least amongst us. Thank God for Cristo Rey and for those getting paid, and, more importantly, for those doing two years of volunteer service to do God's work.

Only in America could this happen. God bless this country.

(Postscript: The picture above is of our son, Jack, in his classroom doing God's work as the Physics teacher, cross country coach and part time bus driver at Cristo Rey High School in Chicago.) Stay warm, my friend.