c. 1998 Religion News Service

CHICAGO _ The voice of religious leaders is sorely needed to help improve public education and ensure that all students have an equal chance for quality schooling, Philadelphia’s top school official said Wednesday (Nov. 11).”The basic morality of the nation is at stake in public education,”David Hornbeck, Philadelphia’s superintendent of schools, told the annual general assembly of the National Council of Churches. More than 200 church leaders, staff and visitors are attending the assembly.”The leadership responsibility to act courageously and imaginatively and to speak relentlessly and powerfully with a prophetic voice and moral authority rests with our communities of faith,”he said.

Hornbeck’s remarks, which were cheered by a standing ovation, came during a session at which assembly delegates considered a proposed policy statement on public education.

Hornbeck, a member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and also board chairman of the Washington-based Children’s Defense Fund, said he considers public education to be the”next great civil rights battleground”for the country.

Religious and political conservatives in recent years have mounted a fierce attack on public education and pushed such alternatives as home schooling and voucher systems that would use taxpayer money to fund private and religious schools.

Hornbeck cited statistics demonstrating the disparity in educational achievement among students of different incomes and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Across the country, African-American and Latino high school graduates are significantly less likely than white high school graduates to complete high school physics, biology, chemistry and calculus courses. Minority and low-income students are far less likely to take algebra in the eighth grade than more affluent ones.

Hornbeck said his school district has worked to have students from a variety of backgrounds reach higher academic standards and has seen progress in 241 of the system’s 249 schools in results from stricter testing.”Success can belong to every child just as surely as we can produce it for a few,”he said.

But Hornbeck said continued success across the country can only be accomplished with partnerships of schools with local congregations to assist in tutoring, mentoring, security and other programs.”Public education and the disadvantaged children of this nation are at a crossroads,”he said.”We need your moral vision and your political power. We need it forcefully and we need it now. Those who do not understand and/or care whether poor kids and black kids and brown kids succeed have out-organized, out-smarted us and out-voted us.” Delegates to the assembly received for debate a proposed policy statement on public education from the NCC’s ministries in Christian education.”Just as the nation has come together in the past to address situations deemed to be crises, so it must come together now in a national crusade to save the public schools and to bring to all children the abundant life which ought by right be theirs as children of God,”the statement argues.

Delegates rose to make a variety of suggestions about the proposal, ranging from putting more emphasis on increased public spending to possibly including support of charter and magnet schools as well as consideration of vouchers.

Bettie Durrah, a delegate from the Presbyterian Church (USA) at the meeting, urged that church members demonstrate their commitment to public schools by keeping their children in the public system.”We have talked a good talk but in order to walk the real walk, one must place … children in public schools,”she said.

A second _ and final _ debate on the proposed policy statement on public education will be held at next year’s general assembly in Cleveland.

In other business, the assembly welcomed its 35th member denomination, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. That church formed its American diocese in 1978 and is based in Bellerose, N.Y. It is composed of immigrant Indian Orthodox members and their American-born children.

The assembly also approved a policy statement on”Disabilities, the Body of Christ and the Wholeness of Society.””It is the witness of the NCCC (National Council of the Churches of Christ) that all human beings, including those among us with disabilities, are entitled to rights in church and society,”the statement concludes.”The rights of each person, including people with disabilities, are equal to and balance by the rights of others.”

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