Leaders in Catholic Education: Dale Ahlquist’s Call from Chesterton

By Dr. Melissa Mitchell — July 24, 2025

A renewal movement has been growing in Catholic education in the United States over the past twenty years. The movement began as a response to the decline of Catholic education that began in the mid-1960s. This period of decline is characterized by a loss of religious identity, a loss of religious teachers and administrators, and the progressive ideology that replaced catechesis in the Church’s tradition. As a result, families and educators began to seek alternatives to restore the unity of faith and reason that is the traditional foundation of Catholic education.

The renewal movement gained momentum with the founding of new schools and initiatives dedicated to recovering classical Catholic education: education that combines the principles of classical education with the tenets of the Catholic faith. One such initiative is the Chesterton Schools Network, cofounded by Dale Ahlquist, a father looking for an alternative Catholic school for his children. The first school, Chesterton Academy, was founded in 2008 dedicated to the following mission:

To help parents raise up a new generation of joyful leaders and saints, educated in the classical tradition and the truths of the Catholic faith. Our rigorous, integrated curriculum unlocks students’ potential and prepares students to succeed in college and professional life, and to excel in service of family, country, and of Christ our Lord.

The Chesterton model of classical education grew as parents adopted the model and opened new schools around the country. As a result, the Chesterton Schools Network emerged to inspire and support new Catholic high schools across the nation, empowering parents as the primary and principal educators of their children. The Chesterton Schools Network has played a crucial role in the Catholic education renewal movement by developing and spreading a classical model that cultivates wisdom and virtue, leading students toward truth, beauty, and goodness in the light of Christ. The heart of the renewal movement reclaims the Church’s rich pedagogical heritage by boldly responding to the challenges of modern secularism.

The following interview with Dale Ahlquist is the first in a series of articles to highlight Catholic leaders around the country who are playing significant roles in the Catholic renewal movement. 

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Melissa Mitchell: Please tell us about your family, your Catholic community, and your upbringing.

Dale Ahlquist: I am a humbly married man to an amazing woman who was born in Italy, grew up in Mexico, and made the mistake of going to college in Minnesota, where she remains to this day. She has given me six amazing children, who have all been touched by the work that I do with the Chesterton Academy. 

I was raised Baptist. I had a wonderful, loving Christian family and was exposed to a lot of Bible and church—I went to church four days a week. But I started reading G. K. Chesterton on my honeymoon, and that began a trek to Rome that I never saw coming.

Please tell us briefly about your professional career.

I started out working for a property development company, and then I was a lobbyist. During that time, I was in the process of becoming a Catholic and starting the Chesterton Society. I was received into the Catholic Church in 1997. It was around the year 2000 when I started working full time for the American Chesterton Society, which I helped create. I’ve been doing it one day at a time ever since then. 

What inspired you to open the Chesterton Academy and ultimately the Chesterton Schools Network?

The first Chesterton Academy started in the Twin Cities. I helped start the school for a very simple and selfish reason: I needed a high school to send my children to. Another gentleman and I were looking for a Catholic school that was devotedly, rigidly, and uncompromisingly Catholic. We wanted a school that did three things: form the minds of our children, form the souls of our children, and be affordable. A Catholic school with those three things did not exist, so we started the first Chesterton Academy in 2008 with ten children.

We have given parents a way to start their own schools at a relatively low cost, and having control of their children’s education is thrilling to them.

The Chesterton Academy grew relatively quickly. It attracted national attention because of the work of the Chesterton Society, which is a nationally based organization. Soon, people started coming to us for guidance to start their own Chesterton schools. This was the right approach because we happened to have a really good model. We laid out our curriculum, boxed it up along with the templates and the how-tos, and the Chesterton Schools Network started in 2014. In just the last eleven years, sixty-one schools have opened.

How would you describe the renewal movement in Catholic education we have experienced in the past twenty years, and how does classical education contribute to that renewal?

The renewal of Catholic education has been a result of parents’ dissatisfaction with Catholic schools. Most schools, unfortunately, are simply adopting the public school model with the addition of offering a religion class. Many Catholic schools apply modern American progressive ideas, including the newest and latest “experiments,” to Catholic education. It is a very compartmentalized approach to teaching, and the results have been abysmal, both academically and in faith formation. 

The response has been parents reclaiming their children’s Catholic education. Parents realize they have to embrace an education that is going to form the minds and the souls of our children rather than settling for existing models. Therefore, the classical approach is the popular one for these new Catholic schools and has led the way to the revival in Catholic education because a true classical education has to be Catholic. It has to be integrated with the Incarnation. It is Christ who informs everything we teach, and it is so refreshing to parents to see that their kids are not only learning more but going deeper and wider in their faith as well.

Can you speak to policy changes that make you hopeful for the future of Catholic education?

There is momentum around the country for parents who are sending their children to private schools to receive public money to do so. It’s the result of legislators and the public understanding that the students who come out of these private schools are better contributors because they’ve been taught how to think better. The public schools have been put on notice that they have to start doing a better job, and the best way to do this is to give them some competition to make them raise their own standards.

Parents realize they have to embrace an education that is going to form the minds and the souls of our children rather than settling for existing models.

I see great hope because of the involvement of faithful Catholics in politics. The Church and state will always butt heads, but it’s our duty to be good citizens and to create a moral state. We owe that to our families and neighbors. The more that faithful Catholics get involved in their government locally and regionally, the more likely these changes can be implemented.

Which Catholic leaders have inspired you in your calling to Catholic education?

Certainly G. K. Chesterton is the one who has inspired me the most. He is the kind of thinker we want our students and Catholic leaders to be. I’ve been very blessed in the Twin Cities to have a great archbishop, Bernard Hebda, who recognizes our endeavors are very good for the Church. Bishop Robert Barron has also been a true supporter of our mission and demonstrates what it is to be a Catholic leader: His eyes and ears are open, he has a very wide reach, and he makes the faith appealing.

What advice would you give to those discerning a vocation in Catholic education, particularly in leadership? 

The leadership in Catholic education is a specific calling. Good teachers are absolutely important, but you also want leadership with a sense of business, diplomacy, and personal relationships with boards, the public, and parents. It starts with an absolute heart for the students, but then you must implement practical skills that need to be acquired in order to be effective.