Catholic education groups collaborate on what to teach and in what manner - includes related article on Catholic school parents

National Catholic Reporter, July 29, 1994 by Dawn Gibeau

Leaders of religious education organizations that historically have worked separately to serve different constituencies - those who attend Catholic schools and those in parish education programs - agreed July 2 to work together to better serve Catholic youth.

The decision came in the wake of a study that found virtual parity between the two programs in their effectiveness in faith formation (NCR, July 15). The Educational Testing Service's Washington office conducted the study, Toward Shaping the Agenda: A Study of Catholic Religious Education/Catechesis.

Attending the July 2 meeting were those who served on the advisory panel to the study. They are staff from the U.S. Catholic Conference, National Catholic Educational Association and National Conference of Catechetical Leadership.

The panelists agreed to meet again Sept. 13 to begin working on how their three organizations will collaborate, then meet regularly thereafter.

They also began looking at recommendations from the ETS study, starting with the first, which was to "call it catechesis," a proposal that would erase nuances that emphasize cognitive instruction inreligious education vs. faith formation in catechesis.

Panelists "felt that's something very difficult, if not inappropriate, to do from the top down" and "it's better to allow language to emerge on its own," explained Neil Parent, executive director of the National Conference of Catechetical Leadership.

Representatives from the three organizations will begin assessing other recommendations in September. Some of them:

* Institute a fee-based approach to parish education to offset Catholics' increasingly poor parish contributions. Parents who pay a fortune" to have their children's teeth straightened "can and will pay for what they want for their children," the study says, suggesting $250- $500 fees for parish religious education programs.

* Create a national research and development center," then take up a national collection and charge a basic fee per catechist to fund it.

* Create "a career path and theological preparation for lay ministry," a suggestion Educational Testing Service said came from bishops and diocesan educators, not lay ministers themselves.

At the July 2 meeting, participants also recommended to ETS that the study report be disseminated widely, Parent said, not only to bishops and directors of religious education but also to other research units for comment on methodology and findings. We're assuming not everyone is going to agree" with the results, he said, but it seemed to us the Catholic educational community would be better served by hearing the disparate voices than to hear no voices at all.'

In addition to planning for collaborative work, the NCEA and NCCL will have separate agendas, according to Parent and Robert Colbert, executive director of the NCEA's department of religious education. The U.S. Catholic Conference will work collaboratively with the other two groups and will not pursue independent plans, said Mercy Sr. Lourdes Sheehan, USCC secretary for education.

On its own, NCCL is developing a million-dollar, print and video catechist formation program, Parent said. It is being designed to be as flexible as possible, so an isolated rural catechist could use it individually, or it could be used in a diocesan program or by a parish educator to train groups of catechists.

Collaboration among the three groups is important, said Parent. We recognize that the church's resources are so limited, particularly when it comes to religious education and catechism, that we do not.want to get in each other's way and compete for limited resources.

"We want the children in the parochial schools to succeed. Their parents are sending them for faith formation, and we need to have that be a very, very good he said. However because out-of-school programs serve a vastly larger number of children," there should not be "a great inequality in allocation of resources."

In some dioceses, he said, bishops have set ceilings on the percentage of income a parish may devote to schools.

He said that church leaders today may have to ask themselves questions similar to those faced by 19th century Catholics. They decided to build a separate educational system rather than entrust their children to a public school system with its then-hostile attitude toward Roman Catholics, Parent said.

"I think the answer is evolving naturally," he said. "I think no one wants to jettison the parochial school system," which has proven to be very good, especially in secular education, which many studies have found superior to what public schools provide.

Today's question is how to retain a very good system in a way "that does not drain resources away from other needs in the church, particularly the parish religious education programs," he said.

ETS study results can be viewed in various ways, he said. One way indicates "we're doing a good job on the outside; another way is to say, we don't know if we're doing a good job on the outside, but they're not doing a much better job on the inside," so across-the-board improvement is important.