Cardinal Newman Society to accredit Catholic schools

The Cardinal Newman Society — known for its list of authentically Catholic colleges — is now accrediting faithfully Catholic K–12 schools, a move that organizers hope will expand education access for families.

“This is a key step in Catholic education reform and helps ensure that families at faithful schools have access to school choice funds in states that require accreditation,” Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, told EWTN News.

The organization acquired a Catholic accreditation group, the National Association of Private Catholic and Independent Schools (NAPCIS), which will accredit Catholic schools that are in line with the society’s standards for Catholic education.

EWTN News spoke with Dan Guernsey, who serves as the executive director of NAPCIS, about how the new relationship will affect families and education reform going forward.

EWTN News: How do you hope accrediting independent and parochial schools will help Catholic families going forward, particularly in regard to school choice funding in various states?

Guernsey: Catholic teaching holds that the states have a responsibility to ensure families have access to schools in line with their values, including their religious values. More than half of Americans now have access to funding to assist in the attendance at Catholic schools, and the trend is continued growth. There is a danger that state governments may attempt to tie private school funding to state control, but some states avoid this by relying on accreditation to ensure a school’s eligibility for school choice dollars.

It will be increasingly important that schools have an accreditor that is cost-effective, efficient, not overly intrusive, and fully credible with faithful Catholic families — with the bonus of achieving Newman Guide recognition.

What role does accreditation play in the bigger picture of Catholic education reform?

In alignment with the Newman Guide, NAPCIS only accredits schools that are serious about Catholic formation, so we can focus on the priorities of faithful Catholic families: Is Catholic teaching and culture bold and completely faithful to the magisterium? Are the academics solid and part of an integral formation in the light of our faith? Is the school safe? Does it have the personnel and resources needed to fulfill its mission?

Accreditation, done rightly, assures families of a school’s success in fulfilling its mission. Sadly, most accreditation today places onerous and unhelpful burdens on schools regarding personnel and resources, while not holding schools to their mission — especially the unique mission of Catholic education. This ultimately detracts from a school’s mission and misaligns its resources. NAPCIS flips this around, accrediting schools that put their Catholic mission first and then aligning accreditation to that mission.

Accreditors play an outsized role in too many schools today, including many Catholic schools. There is such a thing as “too much of a good thing.” Many accreditors, focused on their own excellence and status, “push” schools and claim to be arbiters of school “improvement” rather than simply certifying a school’s academics, operations, and mission integrity.

In the worst cases, accreditors demand that schools initiate policies and practices that run counter to a school’s mission or values. They may, for example, press for excessive technology, secular/Marxist social justice, or sexual philosophies at odds with Catholic morality, justice, and chastity. NAPCIS provides space for faithful Catholic schools to exercise their autonomy under the principle of subsidiarity, or local control.

What inspired the NAPCIS and Cardinal Newman Society partnership? How will this partnership affect students and families?

I like to think of the new partnership not so much as a marriage made in heaven but as a marriage made for heaven. Both organizations have worked for more than three decades to assist the Church in ensuring her youth are fully activated for this life and the next.

By aligning NAPCIS accreditation with Newman Guide standards, we’re helping schools attend to Catholic identity while also reviewing school operations. The Newman Guide focuses exclusively on mission, and it upholds high standards that would be unacceptable to another accreditor striving to recruit large numbers of lukewarm Catholic schools.

Partnered with the Cardinal Newman Society, we’ll help schools strengthen their Catholic identity and ensure their religious freedom in a social and educational environment dominated by secularism, relativism, and materialism.

This interview has been edited for brevity.

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