Education Reform and the Power of the Church
God loves children. He loves the downtrodden, the poor, and the oppressed. He deeply desires for them to know His love, as well as have access to the full lives He created all of us to live. And He makes it clear that His intention is for us to help make sure this happens. As His followers, we are to advocate and defend.SHOCKING STATISTICS
In the United States, almost 15 million children (21% of all children) live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level – which is $22,350 a year for a family of four. And research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 44% of children live in low-income families.God’s call for us to love His children and defend the poor and the oppressed is as urgent as ever. And a major way we can love and defend these children is through advocating for public education reform.
Consider the following statistics:
• Nearly 23% of all young black men ages 16 to 24 who have dropped out of high school are in jail, prison, or a juvenile justice institution in America
• Male dropouts of all races were 47 times more likely to be incarcerated than their peers of a similar age who had graduated from a four-year college or university.
• More than half (54%) of the nation’s dropouts ages 16 to 24 were jobless on an average month during 2008.
• Nearly 37 of every 100 dropouts live in poor or near-poor families.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN THE SYSTEM
Our nation’s public education system is not just. In fact, in many cases it actively perpetuates injustice by keeping some children – mostly those from disenfranchised populations – in cycles of poverty and oppression.Children of color and lower income families are much more likely to live in neighborhoods with low-performing public schools. Attending these schools makes it much more likely that these students will end up being behind grade level, dropping out of high school, committing a violent crime, going to prison, being a single parent, and ending up living in poverty in a very similar neighborhood to the one they grew up in – continuing the cycle of poverty and racial injustice they were born into.
Living in DC I have seen these statistics first hand. My husband teaches in one DC’s lowest-performing public schools. The school’s population is 99% African American, and only 27% of the students in the school are on grade level in math and reading. I’ve seen firsthand that there is a whole generation of kids disappearing before our eyes. A generation of kids who do not know about Christ, who are living in a culture of poverty and violence and who are being prevented from entering into the full life Christ has for them.
Academic inequity and failing public schools have an enormous impact on an individual’s quality of life. Advocating for public education reform is a clear way the Church can help prevent an enormous amount of the injustices God calls us to fight against. A more just education system – effective, high-performing schools, high curriculum standards, more quality teachers, and more after-school programs and parent support – helps prevent poverty, joblessness, homelessness, incarceration, single-parent homes, and much more.
It is a crisis, an emergency, and we cannot be content. This is why it is of the utmost importance that the Church advocate for education reform and involve ourselves in the public school system. These kids need us PRESENT, need our examples, our words, our time, our voice, our love. Showing them something different than what they know, the more full life God desires for them. We can show them something different, something they might never see otherwise.
Through working at The Expectations Project this past year, I have been filled with hope as I’ve seen how much can be done to seek justice for all God’s children. We can be advocates for these children. We can help work toward ensuring every school has the teachers and the curriculum and the supplies every child deserves. We can help ensure that every child is being given the same chance to succeed in school, that every family is being supported, that every opportunity is being given to every student – this is one of the most crucial ways a child will be able to escape the bubble they might otherwise have been trapped in their whole lives. Right now so many of our nation’s public schools prevent children from living up to their full, God-given potential, rather than helping them live into it.
THE CHURCH’S ROLE
We, the Church, must demand the change these kids need, and act to help make it happen. As I’ve worked in the city the past couple years, God has opened my eyes more and more to the POWER of the Church – God has given us His Spirit with the intention of us joining Him in His work of redemption, helping Him to put the world to rights! He taught us to pray for His Kingdom to come, on earth as it is in heaven! He asks us to live like He lived, crossing racial and socio-economic barriers to ensure all people are seen as equal before God, and have the chance to hear of the great love of Christ that truly does make us all equal before God.Nationwide, there are over 322,000 churches and only 44,500 schools that meet the definition of “high poverty” schools. This means that our country has more than seven times as many churches as we do high poverty public schools! (Educating All God’s Children, 160)
With these numbers, there should be NO child living in poverty, no family unsupported, no failing school. There are more than enough churches and more than enough followers of Christ to ensure every child has heard the Good News of Christ, and to ensure every school is providing every child of God an equal opportunity.
This is why our mission at The Expectations Project is to partner with “faith-motivated individuals, leaders, congregations and organizations to develop local and national campaigns that help enact transformational change for low-income public schools.” We as the Church have the biblical imperative AND the resources to make sure justice is done for all children. If the Church unites together around the children of our nation, if the Church invests in broken communities and failing schools – it will be powerful. Throughout history, the Church has been able to motivate, mobilize and lead change in a way that no other group has. It is crucial that the Church now bring this vision of renewal the public education reform movement, unifying people around this crucial issue that has the power to prevent so many other injustices.
As my pastor, Aaron Graham, says, “The Church cannot simply lobby for a new social order, it must be that new social order.”
And it is, bit by bit. There are churches and individuals across the country investing in their schools and communities, seeking equality for all God’s children. More and more of the Church is catching Christ’s vision to redeem all things – individuals, institutions, cultures – and is living out this vision of redemption in our schools. In the words of CS Lewis, Aslan is indeed on the move.
You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, so that mere earthly mortals will never again strike terror. (Psalm 10:17-18)
