"As Christians we believe that God desires for children the life abundant which comes from the fullest development of their gifts — physical, intellectual, social and spiritual." —1991, General Synod XVIII Pronouncement, "Support of Quality, Integrated Education for All Children in Public Schools"
The federal education law, now called the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), was scheduled for its five-year reauthorization in 2007, but that reauthorization has been delayed... at least until 2009, now that we have a new President, a new Congress, and a new Secretary of Education. With ecumenical and community partners, the United Church of Christ Justice & Witness Ministries has been working to ensure that serious problems in the law's implementation are remedied.
Justice and Witness Ministries' annual resource, the 2009 Message on Public Education, lifts up the importance of schools to form each whole child, created in the image of God, in contrast to the test-and-punish philosophy of the federal education law, No Child Left Behind, that has dangerously narrowed the curriculum in schools serving America's poorest children. If you would like additional printed copies for discussion in your congregation, please contact Jan Resseger (216-736-3711) or ressegerj@ucc.org.
Two Ways to Take Action This Summer...
Send the letter at our United Church of Christ Take Action site to urge your Senators and Congressional Representative to ensure that Congress changes directions, turning away from the ruinous public education policy of the past eight years, when the federal education law, now called No Child Left Behind, is reauthorized later this year. Please share this advocacy opportunity with others in your congregation and your community. If you would like to have people sign paper copies of the letter, here is a version you can print out.
Become a co-signer of "A Broader, BOLDER Approach to Education," a statement that refutes both the strategy and the philosophy of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the federal education law, whose five-year reauthorization is pending in Congress. The original signers are a prominent group of sixty leaders including Julian Bond, pediatricians T. Berry Brazelton and James Comer, sociologists Pedro Noguera and William Julius Wilson, educators Linda Darling-Hammond and Deborah Meier, and including the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches. Signers declare that school reform will demand that society address not only improving schools, but also expanding access to quality early childhood experiences, expanding access to pediatric care for all children, and improving out-of-school activities for children. At the the project's website, you are asked to co-sign.
UCC Is Part of New National Statement Calling for NCLB Overhaul...
June 11, 2009: 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. 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. 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.
March 2009 ecumenical conference, Transforming No Child Left Behind, indicts federal law...
Speakers collectively proclaimed seven goals for the pending reauthorization of the federal education law:
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recognize that it is immoral to demand equal outcomes on standardized tests without equalizing the resources that create the opportunity to learn;
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address the generational educational debt of poverty and segregation;
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improve vulnerable public schools and turn away from blaming teachers;
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develop the unique gifts of each child, created in the image of God, rather than worshiping standardization;
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test children only in ways that improve instruction, measure real performance, and encourage exploration, imagination, and critical thinking;
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set a visionary and at the same time workable school improvement timeline;
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address economic and social issues outside the school day that impair learning.
Featured Resources for Summer 2009
June 25, 2009: Broader, BOLDER Approach to Education initiative releases new recommendations for holding schools accountable when NCLB is reauthorized. Ideas include qualitative accountability (eliminating sole reliance on standardized test scores) including on-site inspections to evaluate school climate and quality teaching.
May 19, 2009: Schott Foundation for Public Education releases Lost Opportunity: A 50 State Report on the Opportunity to Learn in America, a startling new state-by-state analysis of public schools according to two primary indicators: (1) an opportunity to learn index that measures the odds of access for historically disadvantaged students to enroll in a high school where nearly all students graduate on time and are college ready, and (2) a school quality indicator---the percentage of each state's 13-year-olds who score proficient or advanced on the NAEP reading exam. Besides ranking the states, Schott concludes that students of color and poor students have access to roughly half the opportunity to learn of their more advantaged peers. The Schott Foundation has been a leader in advocating that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act address unequal resources, not merely test score outcomes.
April, 2009: Why High Stakes Accountability Sounds Good But Doesn't Work—And Why We Keep on Doing It Anyway, a powerful new report by Heinrich Mintrop and Gail Sunderman, from the Civil Rights Project, with a forward by Gary Orfield, questions whether No Child Left Behind can be made to improve public schools and particularly those that serve very poor children. The report questions the validity and workability of test-and-sanction, accountability-based school reform.
