Impact

Our Impact

Realities

Preparing Students for College Success
For the classes of 2008-2011, 88% of Cristo Rey Network graduates have enrolled in college (source: National Student Clearinghouse). For the classes 2008 and 2009, 90% have persisted into their sophomore year.

This is twice the rate of our students’ peers of the same socioeconomic background.

Nationally, for the class of 2006, 61% of all high school graduates matriculated in a post secondary institution after high school graduation.

For African American high school graduates, the number was slightly more than 40%, and for Hispanic students the number was slightly under 40%.

Advocating Education Reform
All young people deserve a chance at a quality education. The schools in the Cristo Rey Network  are proving, through their outcome data, that the most vulnerable and at risk youth in America can and will succeed in college when given a high quality, college preparatory high school educational experience.

The Cristo Rey Network is a national voice and leader in the movement of education reform through meetings with elected officials, letters to the media, and prominent speaking opportunities.

Many minority students are being failed by the American educational system. For example, historically, Latinos ages 25 to 29 who actually go to college have an average completion rate of less than 10%. With all the reform movements of the past 25 years, Latinos have increased their college-going rates only slightly and their college completion rates have remained flat.

A 2009 report by McKinsey & Company stated that "educational gaps impose on the United States the economic equivalent of a permanent national recession," suggesting that if the achievement gap had been narrowed, gross domestic product in 2008 would have been higher by as much as $525 billion.

Transforming Local Communities
Cristo Rey schools increase economic activity, neighborhood stability and growth, employment, city tax base, and community development.

Schools enrolling 350-500 students operate on an approximate annual budget of $3-5 million dollars and employ 40-75 individuals (full and part time). With 24 schools in underprivileged neighborhoods lacking employment and economic activities, the Cristo Rey Network is generating a minimum of $72 million for the local economies.

The center of this neighborhood is where a Cristo Rey Network school is established, bringing a beacon of new hope, safety, and stability into the community.

Prior to a Cristo Rey school, neighborhoods stricken by decades of serious poverty, crime, and violence on the streets.