Sample Letter to Congress

Dear [Senator or Representative],

As a person of faith I want you to know that justice in public education is much on my mind during this election year.

Thank you for your attention to the needs of our children and their schools in this time as Congress has been discussing the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Because I do not support a philosophy of test-and-punish, I look for a more carefully considered role for the federal government in federal education policy.

Many of my concerns grow from the excessive use of standardized testing in NCLB. I do not view children as products to be tested and managed. I support the use of growth models and multiple forms of assessment, and I ask you, while setting high standards, to develop policy that values the accomplishments of all children and their schools. Please find a way to set high expectations for all children while at the same time eliminating the unrealistic goal of universal proficiency by 2014.

My second area of serious concern is about the pressure of raising standardized test scores in basic skills only… in reading and math. In many schools such pressure has dangerously narrowed the curriculum to the subjects being tested. As a person of faith I view each child as a unique human being, created in the image of God, to be nurtured and educated. I ask you to emphasize the formation of the whole child by fully developing each child’s gifts—intellectual, physical, civic, psychological, and ethical. Require a rich curriculum that includes reading, math, the humanities, the sciences, the social studies and the arts.

A third concern for me is the under-funding of NCLB by the federal government. Having authorized additional funding, Congress has never met its commitment to the states by appropriating what has been authorized. I ask you fully to fund the mandates of this law. I ask you also to use the leverage of federal power to expand educational opportunity by pressing states to address school funding inequity. The United States is a society with pockets of deep poverty and other pockets of astounding affluence. NCLB has been a double blow because it imposes sanctions without equalizing resources and opportunity. Please reduce sanctions that privatize services by directing public tax dollars away from the public schools.

Although NCLB culminates our society’s growing computerized capability to measure and quantify, education remains primarily qualitative—the establishment of trust between teacher and child—the development of community within and beyond the school. I ask you to change NCLB to uphold high expectations for all children but honor every child’s accomplishments; shift the focus from punishing public schools to strengthening them; reduce high stakes testing; and fully fund the law.

Most sincerely,