You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." - Matthew 22: 35-39
The Church Speaks to Public Education Justice
As we think about whether American society embodies Jesus' teaching that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, we need to be concerned about public schools, the primary institution where we have agreed to nurture and shape God's precious children. Public schools are our largest public institution, serving nearly fifty million children.
In the national conversation about public education, our role in the church is special. We are concerned about our schools as an ethical and public policy matter. How do they embody attitudes about race and poverty, power and privilege, and cultural dominance and marginalization, and how do disparities in public investment reflect these attitudes?
The United Church of Christ has spoken prophetically to name poverty and racism as among the primary causes of injustice in our nation's schools. General Synod 15 warned: "While children from many areas have comfortable schools with all the educational trimmings, poor and ethnic minority children often face overcrowded and deteriorated facilities, and a lack of enrichment programs or modern technology." General Synod 18 cautioned: "Because the poor and their children are disproportionately people of color, the educational inequities in our public schools reinforce the racial/ethnic injustices of our society." General Synod 23 proclaimed public school support - and advocacy for the same - as one of the "foremost civil rights issues in the twenty-first century." General Synod 25 called all settings of the UCC to do justice and promote the common good by strengthening support for public institutions and providing "opportunity for every child in well-funded, high quality public schools."
News and Key Articles ...
February 2013: Here is Diane Ravitch writing for the NY Review of Books on the problems with Race to the Top and other federal education policies that demand teachers be judged by students' standardized test scores---Holding Education Hostage.
January 29, 2013: In late January, parent advocates from big cities across the United States went to Washington, DC to ask Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to establish a moratorium on public school closures. Check out this NBC news clip in which Melissa Harris-Perry interviews NYC parent activist Zakiyah Ansari, who was in Washington, DC along with hundreds of other parents to protest the wave of closing public schools in America's poorest urban neighborhoods... one of the so-called reforms being pushed as a condition for states to qualify for NCLB waivers. The New York Times reports that several parent organizations, including most recently, one in Philadelphia have filed civil rights complaints alleging that public school closures discriminate against black and Hispanic students and students with disabilities.
January 2013: In the context of the horrific shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, the UCC Justice & Witness Ministries has signed on with many of our partners to this excellent statement: Police in Schools Are Not the Answer to the Newtown Shooting. The statement urges school districts to improve support for students with more counselors, social workers, and psychologists. The statement objects to increasing police presence in school and objects to a locked-down climate that makes children feel less safe.
January 7, 2013: Historically the Title I formula has been a primary tool for equalizing educational opportunity as a civil right for every child. But that is changing. Specifically the U.S. Department of Education is transforming Title I—the federal civil rights program created in 1965 as the centerpiece of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—from a formula program driving additional funds to schools serving a large number or high concentration of very poor children into a grant competition by which the U.S. Department of Education rewards what it calls innovation. Read about this in a new Witness for Justice column: A System Where Every Poor Child Is a Winner.
December 2012: This new brief, Parent Trigger: No Silver Bullet, from the Center for Education Organizing of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform outlines how "parent trigger" legislation is merely a Trojan Horse for privatization and describes substantive and well researched parent organizing and parent engagement strategies.
December 22, 2012: Research documents that widening income inequality has become the most daunting factor undermining the American Dream. In this extraordinary and nuanced article Jason DeParle explores what this means in the lives of three students from Galveston, Texas: For Poor Strivers, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall.
Here is our web page on Child Poverty and Inequality... and Budget Cuts at State and Federal Levels.
December 20, 2012: Elaine Weiss of the Broader Bolder Approach to Education and Greg Kaufmann of The Nation magazine have published Top 10 Education Policy Wishes for this holiday season. These two experts believe we must improve and support schools in our poorest communities and support parents and children living in poverty.
Jonathan Kozol publishes new book: Fire in the Ashes.
Education writer and respected researcher David Berliner has a new article to be published in the Teachers College Record, Effects of Inequality and Poverty vs. Teachers and Schooling on America's Youth. This is a plea to our society to address the devastating impact of family poverty and economic inequality on the life chances of too many of our children. Child poverty in the United States remains 22 percent, far higher than any other industrialized nation, and economic mobility has declined in our society that has become increasingly stratified along economic lines.
Resources from the UCC Justice & Witness Ministries
December 10, 2012: Is the American Dream a reality for children today or only an American Fantasy?
The UCC Justice & Witness Ministries 2013 Message on Public Education:The Public Purpose of Public Education, examines what those who have thought seriously about the public nature of public education have expected the institution to accomplish and whether today's myriad attempts to privatize what our society has valued as the foundation of our democracy can produce a better outcome.
And here is a short companion piece to help you speak with your representatives to address the real issues that are too seldom part of our political discourse: Repairing the Breach: A Just Agenda for Public School Reform—Questions for Federal & State Public Officials. It provides background on public education policy from the perspective of faith and justice and then on the second page, questions for occasions when there is an opportunity to talk with state or federal representatives.
Two recent Witness for Justice columns explore important concerns in public education. On the need to stop blaming teachers and to require well-credentialed teachers, read the column from June 25, 2012, Let Them Eat Tests. And here is a column from April 2012: Too Much Test-and-Punish.
Last year's Message on Public Education, "Why the Conventional Wisdom on School Reform is Wrong and Why the Church Should Care," explores the role of poverty to challenge school attainment remains very timely in the fall of 2012.
From Our Partners
The National Council of Churches Committee on Public Education and Literacy has produced a series of excellent resources for use by members of the Council's many congregations and justice advocates. Resources are also available through the NCC's Poverty Initiative.
The National Opportunity to Learn Campaign is a group of civil rights partners advocating for justice when Congress reauthorizes the federal education law.
Key Resources on Specific Issues of Public Education Justice
- Federal policy to reauthorize federal education law follows Race to the Top philosophy. Check out our page that traces the direction of today's federal school reform policy.
- Looking for materials on the importance of passing the DREAM Act? Check out our page on Immigration and Public Education.
UCC Resource Archive
Annual Messages on Public Education
Witness for Justice Columns
Additional Important Resources
2012: Education and the Wealth Gap is an an interview published in Sojourners’ September-October 2012 issue about the United Church of Christ’s work over the years to support justice in public education along with our work today.
2011: Here is a reflection on Chicago's extraordinary Harold Washington Elementary School, published in the 2011 book, Faces of Learning: 50 Powerful Stories of Devining Moments in Education.
2005: Whose Child Left Behind? Why? Between 2001 and 2005 a UCC Public Education Task Force was charged by General Synod 23 to, "identify systemic barriers to excellent public education and to recommend strategies to address those barriers." Four years later and after reflecting on site visits to schools in greater Cleveland, Ohio; Phoenix, Arizona; Hartford, Connecticut; and Wartburg, Tennessee, the Task Force reported on, "inequality in inputs from one place to another. Vastly unequal investment will inevitably deny opportunity for the children who attend poorer facilities, in larger classes, and with less investment in teachers' salaries and ongoing training."
