"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 continues to be pushed back. 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.
This year's 2010 Message on Public Education explores the politically charged issue of immigration as it affects public schools and children who are new to our country, their communities, and their schools. The federal No Child Left Behind Act has affected the way public schools across the United States serve English Language Learners. This resource speaks to specific issues in the upcoming reauthorization of this law. (We hope you will share with us how you used this resource.)
The priorities of the Arne Duncan U.S. Department of Education are becoming clear in the regulations and guidelines being proposed to guide distribution of several innovation funds, all part of the federal economic stimulus package, that will be distributed to states and specific school districts through competitive grant selection proceses. Many people believe that these priorities will also guide the Department's strategy for the upcoming reauthorization of the federal education law, now called No Child Left Behind. Proposals being promoted by Duncan's Department of Education include merit pay for teachers tied to standardized test scores, rapid expansion of the number of charter schools, expansion of private management, school closures along with relocation of the students, and termination of school teaching staffs with replacement by new educators. Check out the comments that hve been posted by the UCC Justice and Witness Ministries and our partners: Comments Submitted to Education Department Demonstrate Public School Priorities of UCC JWM and Our Partners.
Here is further commentary on the policies of the Duncan Department of Education:
October 26 2009: "They Stole our Public Schools and They Stole our Democracy..." a new Witness for Justice column, explores the meaning of the "public" in public education. An important question is whether requiring states to remove statutory caps on the authorization of new charter schools, as federal Race to the Top guidelines will demand, will serve democracy.
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.
June 2009, the New School for Social Research has released The New Marketplace, that questions whether small-school reform and charterization in New York City meet the needs of all children and families. While NCLB prescribes school restructuring and charterization as among a small number of sanctions for schools that continue to struggle, this the report instead urges the city to invest additional resources in school improvement, primarily for the large, comprehensive high schools tht continue to serve the majority of New York City's adolescents, and it warns: "When it comes to school choice, the DOE should not presume that all 13-year-olds have good judgment or activist parents."
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, andensuring better training for teachers.
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.
A Faith-Based Study Guide to support congregational study of the shocking book, TESTED by Linda Perlstein, is now available from the National Council of Churches Committee on Public Education and Literacy. Use this resource to help a reading group in your congregation discuss this book about the problems for one elementary school of the federal test-and-punish philosophy of education.
"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"
Speakers at the March 13, 2009 