The Plan to Save Catholic Education

Something remarkable happened last month in the world of Catholic education, but so far, very few people know about it.

Let’s just say it was for Catholic education what the 1787 Constitutional Convention was to the burgeoning American republic. Leaders gathered to produce a document providing order, unity, and direction. Its impact will be just as massive, though in a different context and on a smaller scale.

The quiet revolution in Catholic education, often called “renewal,” has been won; the statistics bear that out. The Front Royal Education Summit, held on May 27–28, 2026, at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, was an overdue victory lap for the triumph of liberal arts-oriented small classical and academy schools whose enrollment is booming in the face of parochial school decline.

The movement started as an oddity, sneered at by mainstream Catholic schools as a radical alternative fueled by conservative alarmism and disillusioned parents. Many of these schools were rejected by their own dioceses and forced to declare independence. Once relegated to homeschoolers and retrogrades, the classical school movement has grown into an unstoppable locomotive, set to flip the Catholic education system on its head.

Many Catholic parochial schools are having an “uh-oh” moment. The smart ones, who understand the crisis, are beginning to realize that for too long they have been chasing the secular model of education. They have abandoned their roots in the Catholic intellectual tradition and Socratic methodology, opting for a secular core curriculum and going full steam ahead on “EdTech” educational technology. Aside from the abysmal enrollment numbers, it was the rise of AI artificial intelligence that finally caused them to rethink the decision to put an iPad in the hands of every child.

The jig is up. Technology is not just a distraction or a pacifier in the classroom anymore. It is far worse. Essentially, AI permits students and teachers to engage in an absurd farce. The teacher uses AI to produce curriculum, the student uses AI to complete the assignment, and then the teacher grades it using AI. At the end of the day, no teaching and no learning happened.

Even the LAUSD Los Angeles Unified School District has made a 180-degree turn. Starting next school year, it is banning all devices for the youngest students and capping technology use for the upper grades.

The Crisis and the Statistics

The educational landscape within American Catholicism is undergoing a structural realignment: traditional parish-sponsored parochial schools are in a multi-decade decline, while independent, small classical Catholic schools are experiencing rapid growth. The long-term enrollment trend for mainstream parochial schools is down 75%, from a peak of 5.5 million in 1965 to 1.68 million today. This has resulted in hundreds of school closures, as K-12 enrollment dropped 17.7% over just the last decade.

Meanwhile, just in the ICLE apostolate alone, not counting the Chesterton schools and others, member schools have grown to represent nearly 4% of all U.S. Catholic schools. Realizing the draw of the classical curriculum, entire dioceses, such as Denver, Oklahoma City, and Marquette, have systematically transitioned failing parochial schools into low tech classical academies rather than closing them, instantly reversing enrollment declines.

The Front Royal Summit

The summit assembled a coalition of U.S. Catholic bishops, diocesan superintendents, and Catholic university leaders. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Bishop Earl Fernandes of Columbus, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of Springfield, and Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane provided ecclesial legitimacy to the gathering. Lay education professionals were led by representatives from the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education ICLE, the Chesterton Schools Network, Catholic Education Partners, and scholars from institutions like The Catholic University of America, Christendom College, Benedictine College, and the University of Dallas, all notable.Newman Guide schools.

The purpose of the gathering was to clarify the crisis, combat the creeping secularization of Catholic education, provide a guide to unify the movement, and shift the focus of every Catholic school back to traditional faith formation.

The Front Royal Statement

After two days of prayer, talks and discussions, the Front Royal Summit produced its “Constitution.” The Front Royal Statement is a landmark educational manifesto that serves as a unified roadmap to combat the grave crisis of declining enrollments, secularization, and financial strain in K-12 Catholic schools. It outlines the philosophical, theological, and pedagogical pillars needed to return Catholic elementary and secondary schools to their traditional, supernatural mission. In a word, it is the plan to save Catholic education.

The statement begins with a blistering assessment of the crisis, calling out the purely therapeutic, individualistic, and utilitarian approaches to schooling.

It then enumerates seven cardinal principles for Catholic education renewal:

1. The Supernatural End of Education

Goal: To order education toward God and the supernatural formation of the whole child, ultimately leading them to their final destiny: the Beatific Vision, the source of true happiness.

2. The Nature and Dignity of the Human Person

Goal: To recognize the image of God in every child, honoring their inalienable dignity and cultivating their full potential as relational beings made for communion. The whole child (bodily, emotional, intellectual, volitional, and spiritual) is formed directly addressing the wounds of original sin through cooperation with God's grace.

3. What Children Deserve, the Rights of Parents, and the Duties of the State

Goal: To ensure every child receives a holistic formation aimed at human flourishing and the learning of virtue, while safeguarding parental freedom of conscience to make educational choices affordable and accessible to all families.

4. The Ecclesial Responsibility of Bishops and Priests

Goal: To guarantee an authentically Catholic education that safeguards the doctrinal, moral, and spiritual integrity of the school community. The pastoral oversight of shepherds who foster parental vocations, promote adult catechesis, ensure teachers demonstrate sound doctrine, and treat the academic program itself—not just religious classes—as the heart of Catholic identity.

5. The Formation and Responsibilities of Teachers and Leaders

Goal: To intentionally recruit and form educators who prioritize the salvation of souls and understand that academic excellence is entirely compatible with doctrinal fidelity.  Teacher formation which is independent of purely secular licensure.

6. The Integrity and Order of the Curriculum

Goal: To conform the student’s mind to reality and order all human knowledge toward wisdom and its ultimate source in God. A Christ-centered curriculum where Christ is the central ordering principle. 

7. The Transmission of a Living Catholic Culture

Goal: To enculturate students into the mind of the Church, providing a rich, living environment where communities and individuals can flourish.  This includes immersing students in the Church's worship and liturgy, as well as studying the best that has been thought and said. 

Read Full Front Royal Statement Here

Crucial to this plan is number five on the formation of educators. This is the best line in the entire statement:

"...teacher and leader formation must be intentionally designed to support the intellectual, spiritual, and pedagogical dimensions and should never be subordinated to purely secular licensure, certification, or accreditation frameworks. Such frameworks, shaped by the instrumental aims of public schooling and a secular anthropology, are often fundamentally incompatible with a Catholic philosophy of education".

Catholic schools have faced a long-standing challenge regarding the teacher pool available to them. For decades, they have primarily hired lay teachers trained within the mainstream secular educational system. Consequently, many educators were formed under secular academic models and contemporary cultural paradigms.

Standard teacher credential programs emphasize modern pedagogical pillars such as diversity, equity, inclusion, and atheistic scientific frameworks. Obviously, these philosophies diverge from traditional Catholic educational foundations. As a result, many well-meaning educators bring perspectives into the classroom that may unintentionally conflict with, or run counter to, the core mission and theological teachings of Catholic education.

The Institute for Catholic Liberal Education offers a solution. Its Catholic Educator Formation and Credential CEFC program is an 18-month alternative to state teacher licensure, designed for K-12 Catholic educators to integrate faith and reason into their teaching.

All the Catholic bishops out there who want to see Catholic education succeed in their dioceses need to listen to this vital message. It is not too late to turn it around and get with the program, but it will be a titanic task. This is truly a grassroots movement to restore Catholic education to the true, the good, and the beautiful, but it needs a top-down approach to make the necessary changes. Otherwise, mainstream Catholic diocesan schools will continue to sink, and the classical academy schools will absorb the families who are abandoning ship.