District of Columbia

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Embargoed for release until
Monday, July 26, 2010, 10 AM

For more information contact:

Kari Hudnell (202) 955-9450 x 318
khudnell@communicationworks.com

Stephanie Dukes (202) 955-9450 x 314
sdukes@communicationworks.com

Prominent Civil Rights Leaders Unite to Push for a Federal Education Agenda That Gives All Students an “Opportunity To Learn”

WASHINGTON – July 26, 2010 –Prominent civil-rights leaders today joined force to call for the adoption of federal education policies that create the framework and conditions necessary to achieve equitable opportunities for all.

The leaders called on the Obama Administration and Congress to revamp the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) by leveraging federal resources available to all states. As a part of extending an opportunity to learn as a right, the leaders asked the President to demand and support universal access to early education for students in all states. They also seek to ensure that all students have access to highly effective teachers. Their plan calls for providing incentives to recruit and retain highly effective educators and improve the teaching and learning conditions in high–need, low-income, and rural areas. Their plan also urges the federal government to institutionalize a national resource accountability system so that all students and parents will live within communities with the type of educational systems where students can achieve high outcomes.

The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA is a community of 36 Christian communions with a combined membership of 45 million persons in more than 100,000 congregations across this country. Our member churches – from a wide spectrum of Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical, historic African American and Living Peace churches – do not agree on all things! We stand united, however, in our conviction that the church is called to speak for justice in public education.

To help keep girls in school and on track for success, the National Women’s Law Center and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund went straight to the source: Latina students and the adults who work with them every day. Listening to Latinas: Barriers to High School Graduation, explores the causes of the dropout crisis for Latinas and identifies the actions needed to improve their graduation rates and get them ready for college.

Learn about the Opportunity to Learn Campaign’s proposal for a federal resource standards and accountability system and how this system would supplement state education funding and accountability, improve resource distribution efficiencies and yield grater return on investment.

The Opportunity to Learn Campaign’s federal policy recommendations reinforce the national goal of boosting achievement and opportunity for all students, focusing needed attention on the specific solutions that ensure all students – particularly those from historically disadvantaged groups – are provided a fair and substantive opportunity to learn through access to high-quality learning opportunities.

The Opportunity to Learn Campaigns’s federal policy recommendations focus needed attention on the specific solutions that ensure all students – particularly those from historically disadvantaged groups – are provided a fair and substantive opportunity to learn through access to high-quality learning opportunities. The central federal policy recommendation calls for developing and monitoring a set of research-based, resource equity standards.