United Church of Christ Explores Barriers to and Strategies for Excellent Schools

In early June 2005, a Public Education Task Force appointed by the General Synod of the United Church of Christ released a report entitled “Whose Child Left Behind? Why?” The report is based on a four-year investigation of the state of American public education, visits to schools that face different sets of challenges, and attempts to fulfill the Task Forces' mission to “identify systemic barriers to excellent public education and to recommend strategies to address those barriers.” The Task Force compared the experiences of educators, administrators, and students in rural, urban, diverse, homogeneous, poor, and rich schools to understand the challenges and advantages that each faces. Ultimately, the group identified a number of concrete “barriers to excellent public education,” all of which are presented through the lens of its moral commitment to public education.

The Task Force, Public Education, and Religion

The United Church of Christ convened the Task Force in recognition of what it perceives as the injustice of our country's education system, as reflected in glaring resource and achievement gaps. The report states, “Our faith speaks to public morality and the ways a nation should bring justice and compassion into its civic life,” and indeed their faith is infused throughout the report. Understanding the challenges faced by people working and learning within the public school system through this lens of community caring and social justice is helpful in understanding the link between a community and its schools, and highlights the important role members of the faith community can play in confronting injustice in the civil sphere, much the way they did during the civil rights movement.

Challenges Facing Schools

Based on their observations at schools across the country, the Task Force members were able to identify some of the greatest challenges faced by public schools, as well of some of the most successful ways of overcoming those problems. The report divides these into seven sections: segregation, race, and poverty; school finances; civil rights cases; rural isolation and poverty; the language, culture, and identity of the students; good teaching; and the support of UCC congregations.

Members of the Task Force were struck with the concentration of minority students and poor students at some of the schools they visited. Though many of those schools were populated with hard working teachers, good programs, and a positive attitude, the disadvantages of concentrated poverty were difficult to overcome. The report points to communities where more privileged parents were able to pay for and/or demand superior programs, facilities, and other resources; in poor or disenfranchised communities, the lower expectations and lack of resources resulted in visible, daily disadvantages.

The Task Force concluded that resources matter in creating good schools. Differences in “inputs” were apparent between one school and the next, a difference the Task Force attributed primarily to states' over-reliance on local property taxes to fund schools. The absence in some schools of programs such as art, music, sports, and extracurricular activities, has a palpable influence on a school's atmosphere, community, and potential for success, according to the report. These stand in stark contrast to the wealthier or specially-funded schools visited by the Task Force, where gleaming facilities, technology, and an abundance of special programming were in evidence.

The report emphasizes the role of civil rights cases in alleviating some of these challenges to public schools. The authors cite Sheff v. O'Neill, Connecticut 's desegregation lawsuit, for the addition of numerous excellent magnet schools to the Hartford area, an infusion of resources for early childhood education and other important programs, and for an increased focus on integration and the importance of diversity in Connecticut. They highlight the achievements of this and other desegregation and school finance cases, but emphasize that the need to spread the existing reforms to all students remains pressing.

Segregation and lack of resources were two challenges that hit the rural schools visited by the Task Force especially hard. Though these schools had the advantages of being small schools in close-knit communities with no shortage of personal attention, the Task Force witnessed a major lack of diversity, as well as a dearth of academic programs, that highlighted some of the disadvantages of being in isolate and under-resourced areas.

The report criticized the degree to which education reforms such as the No Child Left Behind Act have placed the responsibility for student achievement on the shoulders of teachers. The Task Force's experience in the myriad schools visited was that the teachers were “dedicated, qualified, [and] hard-working.” Based on the numerous factors detailed in the report that impacted a student's ability to achieve, the Task Force criticized the assumption that teachers are to blame for low test scores.

The Task Force writes, finally, of the Church's responsibility and ability to support public education, whether through supporting educators, students, and families within their churches; supporting the schools themselves; offering additional services to students; or advocating for improvement of the system as a whole. The myriad ways in which a religious organization could positively influence the education of the students in its community underlines the responsibility of the whole community to ensure that quality education is a right enjoyed by all of its citizens, the Task Force concluded.

NCLB Seen as Empty Mandate

Though the Task Force was convened prior to the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the Act and its repercussions quickly became an important element of the Task Force's mission. The Task Force members view NCLB as an empty mandate; it orders schools to accomplish reforms that require serious and systemic changes, but makes no effort to initiate or support such changes. They write,

While the goals of the law are important, Congress cannot declare that no child be left behind without taking major steps to improve the experience of schooling for the children who have long been left behind, without addressing institutional racism and discrimination against poor children in non-dominant groups, and without directing significant financial resources to these ends.

Prepared by Nelly Ward, August 4, 2005