July 13, 2023

A daily news briefing from Catholic News Agency, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask your smart speaker to play “Catholic News,” or listen every morning wherever you get podcasts. www.catholicnewsagency.com - Authorities have arrested a suspect in the murder last week of a teacher from Kentucky on the campus of The Catholic University of America. On July 5, 25-year-old Maxwell Emerson was shot and killed on the university’s Washington DC campus. The DC Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement this week that it had made an arrest in the case, apprehending 22-year-old DC resident Jaime Maceo and charging him with first-degree murder. Police reportedly identified Maceo from security camera footage showing the altercation that led to Emerson’s death. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254784/arrest-made-in-murder-of-kentucky-teacher-on-catholic-university-of-america-campus A new national survey shows students in the United States are still struggling to make up learning loss experienced over the course of the COVID-19 crisis. The report this week from NWEA examined test scores from nearly 7 million elementary and middle school students in about 20,000 public schools around the US. The researchers found that “achievement gains in 2022–23 lagged pre-pandemic trends” in nearly all surveyed students, with numbers “falling short of pre-pandemic averages by 1–19% in reading and by 6–15% in math.” The NWEA noted that the decline was sharper than what was observed in 2021-2022. Reading in upper-level grades suffered the most, the researchers said. Overall, the average student at the end of the school year required over four months of additional schooling in both math and reading to come up to grade level, the report said. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254776/national-data-shows-us-students-still-stalled-after-pandemic A former Jesuit priest has pleaded guilty to sex crimes committed in and around New Orleans, in which he was charged with drugging and raping 17 adult male victims, many of