By Michael St. Pierre, superintendent of schools, Catholic Diocese of Allentown<\/p>\n
The Morning Call\u2019s recent article on Lehigh Valley graduation rates offered a helpful look at how the region\u2019s public and charter schools are serving their students. To add another part of that picture, here is a look at how students at the Diocese of Allentown\u2019s six Catholic high schools did this year.<\/p>\n
The end of summer marks the beginning of a new journey for graduates of diocesan high schools, with the vast majority heading off to start college. Now is a good time to look back at some key statistics that define the excellence of the Diocese of Allentown\u2019s six Catholic high schools.<\/p>\n
Here are the combined highlights for all six high schools in the Diocese of Allentown: Allentown Central Catholic, Allentown; Berks Catholic, Reading; Bethlehem Catholic, Bethlehem; Marian Catholic, Tamaqua; Nativity BVM, Pottsville; and Notre Dame, Bethlehem Township.<\/p>\n
Graduation rate: 98.7%<\/p>\n
Across the Diocese, there were 667 students in the Class of 2026, and 658 of them graduated successfully. The high school graduation rate in the diocese\u2019s Catholic high schools compares favorably with the statewide high school graduation rate of 89.1% for public and charter schools, as reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.<\/p>\n
College-bound: 91%<\/p>\n
A total of 534 graduates will attend a four-year college and another 65 will attend a two-year college. Of those not planning college, 12 are entering the military, 17 are attending a trade or technical school, and others are entering the workforce or taking a gap year.<\/p>\n
$102 million in scholarships<\/p>\n
College-bound students from diocesan high schools earned a record $102.1 million in college scholarships, showing their level of academic talent and the diligent support they received from teachers, counselors and families. Some students received scholarship offers from multiple colleges and universities.<\/p>\n
50,000 community service hours<\/p>\n
Seniors in the six high schools volunteered 53,476 hours on community service projects during their senior year.<\/p>\n
In addition, four seniors from across the Diocese qualified for the National Merit Scholarship program, an annual nationwide academic competition that provides students with recognition and college scholarships.<\/p>\n
Taken together, these statistics show the quality of our Catholic high schools and the value that a Catholic school education in the Diocese of Allentown brings to students, their families and our communities.<\/p>\n
Beyond record-breaking college scholarship amounts and other very favorable statistical measures, our six high schools produced another stellar group of graduates who are ready for life beyond high school and prepared to live out their God-given vocations.<\/p>\n
This is a contributed opinion column. Michael St. Pierre is superintendent of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Allentown. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author(s), and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. For more details on commentaries, read our guide to guest opinions at themorningcall.com\/opinions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Michael St. Pierre, superintendent of schools, Catholic Diocese of Allentown The Morning Call\u2019s recent article on Lehigh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,1559],"class_list":["post-268809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}