The National Council of Churches, a New York City-based organization representing more than 100,000 local Christian churches, is planning a one-day national conference next month to discuss improving the No Child Left Behind Act, which is slated for reauthorization this year.
The event, “Fixing No Child Left Behind,” scheduled for March 9 in Arlington, Va., will feature speakers such as Monty Neill, the executive director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, or FairTest, a Cambridge, Mass.-based watchdog group that is critical of standardized testing, and Michael T.S. Wotorson, the national education director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, based in Baltimore.
The National Council of Churches’ Public Literacy and Education Committee sent a letter last month to Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the chairmen of the House and Senate education committees, respectively, criticizing the law as placing too much emphasis on test scores.
“As people of faith we are deeply concerned that what was proposed as a civil rights law has, in reality, undermined the capacity of demographically complex urban schools serving children living in concentrated poverty,” the letter said.
