Superintendent Sensemaking of District-Level System-Building Efforts Within U.S. Catholic Pre-K–12 Schools

• In Event: Forming and Reforming New Research Trajectories in Educational Change

Abstract

Individual Catholic school leaders in the U.S. have been engaged for the past 40 years in addressing persistent student enrollment declines. Yet system-level leaders have mostly supported local efforts rather than engage in intentional system building reforms. In this paper, we provide initial evidence of an investigation of Catholic sector superintendents’ perspectives on why system-level leaders have not been involved in systematic reform efforts. This paper reveals how system-level leaders across the Catholic sector in the U.S. have come to terms with the lack of systemic reform in the sector at a moment when they all have agreed that the sector needs to improve its practice in order to survive in a hyper-competitive, market-driven landscape.

Authors

• Andrew F. Miller, Boston College

• John Reyes, Boston College

• Melodie M. Wyttenbach, Boston College