OTL Highlights
Over two hundred Arkansans converged in Little Rock on November 12 and 13 for the first Arkansas Opportunity to Learn Summit with the goal of creating strategies for improving education and closing the gap in learning opportunities between Arkansas students. The two day event was born out of the shared concern of several organizations, such as the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation, and the Schott Foundation for Public Education, regarding the significant “opportunity to learn” gap between low-income and minority children and their higher-income, white counterparts. These affected children are missing out on opportunities to help them succeed in both school and life.
They 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. Read more.
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.
