Pope Francis is in the United States this week, and he made a pit stop at an innovative Catholic school in New York City. To mark the occasion, Bellwether has written a number of pieces about our recent (and ongoing) work on Catholic schools:

• Kelly Robson and Andy Smarick on the 50-year decline of Catholic schools and recent innovations that might reverse the trend via Hechinger Report
• Kelly and Andy on schools using the charter network model to fuel a renaissance on The 74
• Andy on reasons for optimism in National Review
• USA Today quotes Andy in a piece about the school Pope Francis visited and others using a similar model to revive Catholic schools
• Ed Week quotes Andy in a piece about the CMO-like network approach being used a growing number of Catholic schools.

We also have two projects coming down the pipeline:

• A donor guidebook for Philanthropy Roundtable about Catholic schools — you can read the first chapter here and an article excerpted from the book here
• A report for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice focuses on the CMO-like networks gaining traction in Catholic schooling (read more about these in Kelly’s blog post here)