Membership Process

Pre-Accreditation/Membership Overview

All schools seeking accreditation must first become pre-accredited NAPCIS member schools. New member schools have up to three years to prepare for their first visit.

Pre-Accreditation Membership 

Pre-Accreditation Membership allows schools to benefit from NAPCIS resources and guidance as they prepare for accreditation.

A school must begin the accreditation process within 3 years of earning pre-accreditation status and pay an annual fee of $5 per student up to a $1,500 maximum.

Pre-accredited NAPCIS member schools are listed on the NAPCIS website and schools map, have access to consulting services from NAPCIS administrators, and through our relationship with the Cardinal Newman Society have access to mailings, monthly emails, special webinars and conferences.

A pre-accredited school must affirm the following: (these will need to be demonstrated later):

The Five Principles of Catholic Identity in Education

I. Catholic education is inspired by and rooted in the Divine, salvific mission of the Catholic Church.

  • The school is unabashedly and publicly Catholic, through and through, and leads with this commitment to a strong Catholic identity in its public presentation.
  • The school is committed to evangelizing its students and preparing them to evangelize the culture.
  • The school prioritizes the sanctification and salvation of its students.
  • Catholic education models, Christian communion and Catholic identity.

II. The school’s teachings and activities are in complete fidelity to the magisterium of the Catholic Church, including the Code of Canon Law, Catechism of the Catholic Church, and other magisterial teachings.

  • The school avoids scandal in all respects. It responds in clarity and public faithfulness to the moral teaching of the Church in response to any scandal that might be thrust upon it.
  • The school does not partner with or support groups or movements at odds or partially at odds with Catholic teaching either directly (e.g., material or speakers supporting non-Catholic positions, LGBTQ+ focused clubs) or indirectly (e.g., through the display of flags or symbols supporting Marxist, or other anti-Catholic worldviews).
  • The school’s employment policies and practices require all employees to demonstrate commitment to the mission and Catholic identity of the school and faithful witness to Catholic moral standards in school and out of school.
  • The school provides a loving, engaging, and compelling ecclesial experience to all members of the community.
  • The school partners with parents and recognizes them as the primary educators of their children.
  • The school builds and models community with its students, through sincere and loving engagement with them and strong personal witness of the Christian faith.
  • The school intentionally builds community among the faculty and staff, as friends and colleagues working in the Lord’s vineyard.
  • The head of school is a practicing Catholic.
  • Eighty percent (80%) or more of the teaching faculty members are practicing Catholics.

III. Catholic education teaches students to encounter Christ in prayer, scripture, and sacrament.

  • The school prioritizes opportunities in its schedule for Catholic prayer, liturgy, and sacraments which follow Catholic liturgical norms and traditions and show reverence and awareness of the mystery and holiness of the liturgy.
  • Students attend Mass at least once a week (preferably more) unless precluded by insurmountable challenges outside of school control.
  • The school provides the Sacrament of Reconciliation at least twice a year, preferably more (unless precluded by outside circumstances).
  • The school provides rich experiences of Catholic prayer, including daily prayer, the Rosary, and Eucharistic adoration at least twice a year, preferably more (unless precluded). Processions, retreats, devotions, and other communal expressions of the faith are practiced as appropriate.
  • The school is richly adorned with Catholic sacred art and Christian images that encourage prayer and teach the Catholic faith (including crucifixes, icons, images of saints, prayers, etc.) and provides clear visual evidence that it is a place where the Catholic faith is first and foremost and greatly prized.

IV. Catholic education integrally forms students as physical, intellectual, and spiritual beings called the perfect humanity and the fullness of Christ.

  • The school emphasizes, cultivates, and integrates faith and reason throughout the curriculum.
  • The school requires all students to participate in daily Catholic theology classes.
  • Catechesis is consistent with the U.S. bishops’ National Directory for Catechesis and Doctrinal Elements of a Curriculum Framework for the Development of Catechetical Materials for Young People of High School Age.
  • The school teaches love and mercy, respect for human dignity, the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, constancy between biological sex and gender expression, and chastity according to one’s vocation.
  • The school’s discipline program cultivates virtue and helps eliminate vice.
  • The school’s expectations for student and employee dress, language, and behavior, and its policies regarding literature, music, audio-visual, dance, performing arts, and other forms of expression and communication cultivate modesty and Christian virtue in students by practice and example.

V. Catholic education imparts a Christian vision of the world, of life, of culture, of history, ordering the whole of human culture to the news of salvation.

 

  1. General conformation with Catholic Curriculum Standards, which are/will be used to help drive instruction so that the curriculum:
  • provides for the integral formation of the whole person—body, mind, and spirit—in light of his or her ultimate end and the good of society;
  • presents all branches of knowledge as being connected, complementing each other, and ultimately connected to God, the source of them all;
  • helps students know and understand objective reality, including transcendent truth, which is knowable by reason and faith and finds its origin, unity, and end in God;
  • illumines with the light of faith everything the students learn about the world, life, and the human person;
  • cultivates in students not only the intellectual but also the creative and aesthetic faculties;
  • encourages a synthesis of Catholic faith, life, and culture; and
  • develops a Catholic worldview and enables a deeper incorporation of the student into the heart of the Catholic Church.

3. The intent to work within the general context of these Cardinal Newman Policy Standards:

Pre-Accredited Schools must Submit:

  • Articles and by laws of Incorporation
  • Evidence of tax-exempt Status
  • Parent handbook
  • Student handbook
  • List of novels taught at each grade
  • List of faculty and staff with positions, and religion.
  • List of board members
  • Description of Mass frequency and any challenges to attending weekly Mass
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