The United Church of Christ Justice & Witness Ministries, Christians for Justice Action, United Black Christians, and UCC Coalition for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns are among 84 signers of a new statement, Empowering Schools and Improving Learning, a comprehensive blueprint for overhauling the federal education law, currently called No Child Left Behind. "This is the largest alliance of major organizations ever to come together on a detailed set of recommendations for overhauling No Child Left Behind, commented Quentin Lawson, Executive Director of the National Alliance of Black School Educators. Eschewing standardization, the statement promotes a philosophy of education centered in the need to develop fully every child's God-given potential. Empowering Schools and Improving Learning calls for:

• developing tools to measure academic achievement that go beyond multiple-choice tests,
• providing sufficient funding to guarantee all students the opportunity to learn, and
• ensuring better training for teachers.

The new statement is a deeper and more detailed version of the concepts in the Joint Organizational Statement on No Child Left Behind, first published in 2004, that has now been endorsed by 151 national organizations.