During the final two weeks of school, the students at Cristo Rey Jesuit were suddenly seen carrying 3-pound packages of sugar and flour everywhere they went. The baking goods were not for a science experiment or a stint in home economics. Rather, it was for the “Baby Project” assigned to student by Ms. Flirtisha Harris in their Health classes. The packages of sugar and flour were to be treated as newborn babies and cared for for 2 weeks, day and night. While students were hard at work at the offices during their designated work day, the so-called babies were looked after in the day-care center that was Ms. Harris’ office.

Ms. Harris’ goal when assigning the project was to teach the students the difficulty of caring for a child at a young age: “The responsibility of being a parent is huge no matter how old you are,” she said.

On day one, the students carried their babies like sacks of flour and sugar. When asked by staff members what their babies’ names were, most of them responded that it didn’t have a name. As the days passed, more and more students began to bring their babies to life in a variety of ways: by giving them names, dressing them in newborn clothes and diapers, and swaddling them in blankets.  Each day the babies obtained eyes, hair and even smiles. Baby gear such as child carriers, pacifiers, slings and bottles littered the classrooms.

Morgan Jackson said she found her baby’s name –Demarion Kerry Jackson –by searching on the internet for boy names that begin with a "D.” When asked how she felt about her baby, Morgan responded by saying she did not want a baby until she was in her late 20’s or 30’s and that it was hard work  caring for a baby and going to school.

There was more to the “Baby Project” than caring for baking products, however. Students were required to keep a journal describing their thoughts and feelings on being a parent. In class, each student was arbitrarily assigned an income that he or she would earn given a certain education level.  Ms. Harris asked the students to make a budget using their income with a range of expenses that they needed to cover.  Some of the students had to work with an annual income of $19,500 or less. Ms. Harris explained that many high school drop-outs had limited earning power given their lack of education.

“The more education one receives, the potential for income increases,” said Ms. Harris as she pointed out that the salary potential for a person with a Bachelor or Master’s degree is much greater.  The students were told that they need to put the following things in their monthly budget:  daycare for $500; babysitting for $10 per hour with a 3 hour minimum; rent for $950 - $2000 depending on the location; electricity for $65-$210; water for $12; food, and insurance. Ms. Harris explained to the students that they need to budget for their needs, NOT their wants.

“Cable TV is not a need,” she said.

She asked each student to write a brief paragraph summarizing their situation and how they will break down their expenses.

“Caring for a baby costs about $20,000 per year,” Ms. Harris told the class.

You could hear a gasp from the back of the room from a student who had only been assigned an income of $19,500.  He told the class that he would have his grandmother take care of his baby boy.  Ms. Harris said that he would still need to pay his grandmother for her time and her expenses –nothing is free!  Having a baby is not about playing dress-up with your doll.  It is about a lifetime of responsibilities and sacrifices.

On May 20th, the Wall Street Journal reported on "a Good Catholic Story" -- the Cristo Rey model of education!

The piece, written by The Wall Street Journal's Deputy Editorial Page Director Daniel Henninger, talks about the success of the Cristo Rey model of education, and the value of Catholic schools.

How About a Good Catholic Story?

By Daniel Henninger

Here's something you don't read every day: a positive story about the Catholic Church. Amid the media brimstone and penitential outpourings, much of organized Catholicism proceeds with its mission. This is one corner of that mission that is helping young men and women.

On June 10, Cristo Rey High School in East Harlem will graduate all of its 50 seniors. All come from families near or below the poverty level. All will attend college. Most were accepted into seven colleges.

Begun in 1996 with the goal of making its students ready to attend college, the Cristo Rey Network now has 24 high schools teaching some 6,000 students in the U.S.—in big cities like Chicago, L.A. and New York; in Sacramento, Portland, Waukegan, Detroit and elsewhere. Virtually all the students in the network's schools are Latino or African-American. St. Martin de Porres High School in Cleveland, my hometown, is near St. Clair Avenue and 55th Street, a hard neighborhood. Its college-acceptance rate this year was also 100%.

The Cristo Rey system is often associated with the Jesuits, because they started the first school on Chicago's Lower West Side. But the system's operation and support now includes many Catholic orders and communities: the Congregation of the Passion, Dominican Sisters, Sisters of Charity, the Christian Brothers, the Clerics of St. Viator, the Basilian Fathers, the Salesians, the Vincentians—29 in all. There is no requirement that applying students be Catholic. About 60% are.

Cristo Rey high schools are not charters, which take public money. These are private schools, financed with a clever, innovative system, which I will describe in a moment.

I mention charters because one of the alleged sins of alternative schools for minority students, such as Cristo Rey, is that they "cream" the public system's smart, high-achieving students.

Cristo Rey explicitly does not take the highest-scoring students. Father Joe Parkes, the energetic Jesuit who serves as president of Cristo Rey New York High School, noted that the first time this year's graduates took the Iowa Test of Educational Development, their average score fell in the 48th percentile. Cristo Rey pulls its student body from the middle of the pack, at best. Four years later, they go to college.

This is not the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. It is a system that works, literally. The system's financial support model, which pays students to work, is surely one of the most innovative ideas seen in awhile in American education.

Every student at a Cristo Rey high school works full time one day a week with a local private company or not-for-profit. For entry-level work—real work, not make-work—the companies pay student teams between $20,000 (Denver) and $30,000 (Washington, D.C.). That money goes into the school's annual budget.

The employer gets a Cristo Rey student every day of the week, freshmen through seniors. So on a Tuesday, the school might assemble all the sophomores and shepherd them to work, and gather them in at day's end. This means the students have to do five days of school work in four days, and that alone may have a lot to do with the success rate.

That work contributes about 65% of a school's budget and keeps average tuitions low, at about $2,350. As a former president of the network has noted, "Our students are by far and away our biggest donor."

This is the honorable tradition of working your way through school.

Based on chats I had with some seniors at the Cristo Rey Harlem school, the time spent working at big-time firms left them self-assured, conversational and direct. Though college is the goal, you already sense they'll do fine long-term.

Glancing at the Cristo Rey website (cristoreynetwork.org), the number of companies who hire its students is astounding. Household names include: Black & Decker, Legg Mason, Prudential, Skadden Arps, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, (Arthur Andersen until the feds destroyed them), McKinsey, Iron Mountain, Citadel Investment, R.R. Donnelley, Sidney Austin, Baker Hostetler, the Cleveland Indians, Pitney Bowes, Grant Thornton, Wells Fargo, Eli Lilly, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Sullivan & Cromwell, Xerox. It's a long list.

A full college education is what Cristo Rey shoots for, and at its just-concluded annual meeting in Omaha, the network committed to having the National Student Clearinghouse monitor its graduates' performance in college.

If the trial lawyers now partnered with the exterminating angels in the media don't drain everything out of the American Catholic Church, good work like this will continue. There is an argument, too, that some struggling Catholic schools should become secularized charters, accepting public money and the inevitable public strings. But the time I spent at Cristo Rey in Harlem convinced me that its independence was crucially important. This admirable network of schools can only maintain its amazing rags-to-college batting average if it's free to stay as it is—getting paid to do God's work.

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