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New Chief Executive for Philly Archdiocese

“New chief executive to run Philadelphia Archdiocese high schools”
by Martha Woodall
Philadelphia Inquirer
October 8, 2012

An education manager and consultant will become the first chief executive of the new foundation that is running high schools and special education schools for the Archidiocese of Philadelphia.

The Faith in the Future Foundation was scheduled to introduce Samuel Casey Carter – an author and manager who has experience with Catholic and charter schools – during a ceremony at SS. John Neumann and Maria Goretti High School in South Philadelphia Monday at 11 a.m.

“I do believe what we do here will become a national model that others will replicate,” Carter, 46, a Pittsburgh native, told The Inquirer in an exclusive interview before the announcement.

H. Edward Hanway, the Faith in the Future chairman, said Carter – who is called “Casey” – was selected following a national search to helm the independent foundation that was created earlier this year to garner financial support for Catholic schools, raise their visibility and increase enrollment.

The archidiocese announced in August it had turned management of the 17 archdiocesan high schools and four special education to the foundation.

“We wanted someone who was a demonstrated leader who understands the challenge of K-12 education, particularly Catholic education,” Hanway said.

Carter, he said, was one of at least three finalists who emerged from a field of 10 national candidates that were identified with the help of a search firm.

Hanway said the foundation was especially interested in finding a top administrator who could develop a clear vision and articulate a persuasive strategy to help the schools grow.

“Casey has the right mix of strategic ability and experience with practical applications,” Hanway said. “That’s why the search committee felt he would be an outstanding choice.”

He declined to reveal Carter’s salary.

Carter has been living just outside Washington, D.C., where he is president of Carter Research, an education consulting firm. He said he, his wife and three daughters will relocate to Philadelphia.

Monday was to be his first day on the job.

He said he is excited to be involved in Philadelphia’s ground breaking effort with the foundation to bolster and advance Catholic schools.

Carter already had what he said was an inspiring meeting recently with Archbishop Charles J. Chaput. He plans to immediately embark on what he’s dubbed his listening tour. He intends to visit all the archdiocesan high schools and special education schools by Thanksgiving.

The resume for Carter’s extensive career includes serving as president from 2005 to 2007 of National Heritage Academies. The Michigan-based education management firm operates 76 elementary charter schools in nine states. None are in Pennsylvania.

“I’ve spent most of my career discovering what works in the education of the young and working with others to replicate it,” he said.

As a consultant, Carter has worked with officials at the Cristo Rey Network, which operates private Catholic high schools for low-income students in 17 states and Washington, D.C. Cristo Rey Philadelphia High School opened in the city in August.

Carter said he also has worked with KIPP, a national nonprofit network charter schools that specialize in college-prep instruction for low-income students. KIPP Philadelphia has four charters.

As a Bradley Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Carter wrote a well-known work the foundation published in 2000 entitled No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools

Adam Meyerson, now president of the Philanthropy Roundtable in Washington, D.C., said Carter wrote the volume under his direction.

Meyerson called it “a highly influential and inspiring book” that showed there were a public, charter and religious schools across the nation where children of all races and income levels were meeting high expectations and that these successful models could be replicated.

He said Carter’s new position in Philadelphia will enable him to apply some of the management lessons that charter organizations have found to Catholic schools.

Carter earned his high school diploma from Portsmouth Abbey, a New England boarding school operated by the Benedictine monks. He earned his undergraduate degree from St. John’s College in Annapolis. He studied theology at Oxford University and earned a master’s degree in philosophy from The Catholic University of America.