From its inception in 1996 with one unusual school in Chicago, the Cristo Rey education model set out to honor its Catholic roots while simultaneously embracing a new way of preparing economically disadvantaged high school students for future success—not an easy balancing act to pull off. A new report from the Lexington Institute profiles the Cristo Rey model and also looks at how its newest school in San Jose is using an innovative blended-learning approach to move the existing model forward. The success of the network to date has been tremendous. Today, Cristo Rey is a nationwide network of twenty-eight private schools serving 9,000 students, including one school in each of Ohio’s three largest cities. Ninety-six percent of network students are minority (largely Hispanic) and 100 percent are economically disadvantaged (defined as families earning less than 75 percent of the national median income). Each student's family contributes an average of $1,000 toward tuition. Employers in the school's corporate work-study program provide most of the balance needed to cover operations. The work-study model requires students to work at least one day a week in the community while keeping up with rigorous high school coursework; in lieu of wages, companies donate money to the schools. (More than 2,000 employers invested upwards of $44 million in the Cristo Rey Network of schools in 2013–14.) Cristo Rey’s school day and year are extended, including a summer preparatory program to get students up to speed on both academic and work life. The results are impressive: All 1,400 of Cristo Rey's 2014 graduates nationwide were accepted to college, and 90 percent enrolled. Refusing to rest on its laurels, the network’s newest school—Cristo Rey San Jose Jesuit—is the first in the network to utilize a blended-learning approach. Integrating technology into math, English, Spanish, science, social studies, and even religion has helped to ease the pressure on the school day for students and has helped realize new operating efficiencies that may be adaptable to other Cristo Rey schools. We have written extensively about St. Martin de Porres High School in Cleveland, a Cristo Rey school, and hope to hear more great things from them and their sister schools in Cincinnati and Columbus. All three Ohio schools accept students on the EdChoice Scholarship voucher program, making them accessible and important options for families in those cities. This report gives a taste of success already achieved and a vision of successes to come.
SOURCE: Ashley Bateman, The Cristo Rey Network: Serving Sustainable Success (Arlington, Virginia: Lexington Institute, November 2014).
