Every year at the beginning of the school year, Justice & Witness Ministries creates a resource to explore pressing concerns for public education in the United States in the coming year. This year's  Justice & Witness Ministries 2012 Message on Public Education challenges the church to call society to see and address racial segregation and poverty, two issues America seems to have forgotten today as they affect school achievement.

"It has been a difficult year for public education. A five years’ overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whose 2002 version we call No Child Left Behind (NCLB), languishes in a divided Congress...  The rhetoric of school reform has little to do with the lives of children or the daily work of teachers. Meanwhile a deplorable wave of scapegoating school teachers continues unabated," begins this resource titled, Why the Conventional Wisdom on School Reform is Wrong and Why the Church Should Care.

In past years, we have printed copies and mailed them in September to all congregations of the United Church of Christ.  This year, due to constrained finances, the resource is available on-line only.