Is Faith limited or encouraged by education?

When public schools are not accomplishing these purposes adequately, citizens have a responsibility to work to improve them. Public attention to social and economic influences on student readiness is also essential so that students are not hungry, in ill health, or victims of violence or abuse. The ELCA expects communities of learning and teaching to be safe places.

We recognize that school safety is an issue for all students, staff, and teachers. Unfortunately, incidents of bullying, intimidation, and other forms of violence are not unusual. We affirm that personal safety and security are essential for optimal teaching and learning.

In recognition of the differing ability and needs of students, this church is committed to the education of students with disabilities. This entails the provision of needed technical and adaptive technology, qualified teachers and staff, appropriate curricula and programs, and support services. This church affirms that public schools have a role in teaching and forming students to live morally in society, what Lutherans call “civil righteousness.”

This task raises many dilemmas in our pluralistic society. Yet no education is morally neutral, and public schools do communicate moral beliefs and values. Public schools, therefore, ought to teach the principles and virtues of living together in responsible freedom in a democratic society, which includes respect for the diverse cultures and beliefs of their students.

This church expects public schools to teach about religion as a vital part of human life and culture. When they do not teach about religion, public schools leave students with a distorted picture of the world. Public schools as government institutions should not sponsor religious exercises such as prayer or devotional reading of religious texts nor advocate for or against any particular religion.16 They should, however, help their students understand the importance of religion for individuals, history, and contemporary life by teaching about the beliefs, practices, and history of different religions in fair and informative ways.

This will require competent teachers and good curricula. The ELCA affirms the search for truth and meaning in its many different forms. Public schools, therefore, should address the full scope of human knowing, including the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences, mathematics, and technology.

The curricula should present the best current knowledge and method in each discipline. In teaching the natural and physical sciences, we expect public schools to acknowledge the distinctions between them and religion. Both ways of knowing have their own integrity and limits in method and purpose.

While religion and faith provide subject matter and methods to speak of God’s role in the origin and purpose of creation, we do not claim that they provide a scientific account of how the natural world functions. While the natural and physical sciences have tested methods to describe and explain the natural world and we learn from them, we do not look to science to answer religious questions. Schools and teachers should respect the distinct approaches to truth and knowledge in the natural and physical sciences and religion, explore the philosophical issues in their relationship, and recognize moral questions that may arise from them and various proposed answers to these questions.

The ELCA encourages its congregations and pastors to develop strong connections with their public schools for the sake of the children in their communities. While respecting the other’s purpose and character, congregations and public schools should understand themselves to be allies in serving children and youth. Congregations can join with public schools in affirming the importance of education and countering views that devalue or denigrate education.

Congregations can ask their public schools how they can assist students and provide space and volunteers for afterschool activities such as tutoring. Pastors and other rostered leaders can make themselves available as resource people in teaching about religion, and they and Lutheran social ministry organizations can be of assistance when schools experience a crisis where counseling and support are needed. In communities with release-time programs, congregations and public schools have special opportunities to work together in providing religious instruction for those families who want it.

Congregations should encourage members to be involved in their schools, willing to serve in volunteer and elected positions, and support teachers and students in their calling. Congregations and public school officials can meet to discuss scheduling of activities and events and other issues of mutual interest. Lutheran and public schools can enter into mutually beneficial relationships.

Congregations and public schools can cooperate in instructing teachers and students about how students may appropriately exercise their religious freedom in public schools, including the right of equal access for student-led religious groups. Because all are created in God’s image, all have equal worth and dignity and should be treated accordingly. This belief stands behind our strong support for our society’s expectation that all young people have equitable access to high-quality schools.

All students are entitled to good schools, and when they receive a high-quality education, society benefits. In educating millions, public schools continue to achieve notable successes in fulfilling this expectation. Public schools have provided a widespread, high level of education as the country’s scientific, technological, cultural, and economic leadership demonstrates.

Researchers differ, however, on the quality of public school education. Some argue that given the nature of public support and the resources provided, public schools do well when compared to public education systems in other countries. Others argue that public schools are not meeting the challenges of an increasingly complex and competitive global economy.18 All agree that public schools face the enormous task of offering high-quality education to prepare citizens and workers for today’s knowledge-based global world.

The ELCA’s commitment to equitable access for all calls us to attend to the glaring inequities in this country’s schooling. The disturbing reality persists that too many young people do not have access to good public schools. This reality is most pervasive in poor communities, especially where poverty is intertwined with a history of racism and discrimination.

More than a half-century after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, many schools remain racially separate and unequal,19 often in connection with residential segregation. Schools where a substantial majority of students live in poverty consistently represent schools with the fewest resources and some of the lowest performances.20 Federal, state, and district funding often shortchange schools that serve students who need the most support from their schools, for example, educational funding from the federal government to American Indian and Alaska Native communities, both on and off reservations.21 The connection between persistent poverty along with discrimination and lack of equitable access to high-quality schools means that many factors contribute to this society’s failure to educate all young people.

People who are poor face daily a vast assortment of interlocking hardships related to low-paying jobs, inadequate housing in dangerous and unhealthy environments, poor health and physical disabilities, disrupted families, language barriers, unwise personal choices, as well as inadequate schools. One of this society’s greatest challenges is to attend to all the factors that contribute to poverty. Good schools alone cannot break the cycle of generational poverty, yet they have an indispensable role in doing so.

American and Puerto Rican societies have an obligation to do all they can to realize the dreams of children and youth who live in poverty that education will improve their lives. We of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, therefore, commit ourselves to work with others for public policies that boldly and consistently push toward ensuring that all students have equitable access to high-quality schools. We oppose all forms of invidious or harmful discrimination.

We affirm that public schools and their teachers should set high expectations for all students, challenge them all to achieve these expectations, and have the means to meet these expectations. As a church body, the ELCA has the calling to focus public attention on the vast inequities in our educational system, to voice the hope and obligation of achieving equitable access to high-quality schools for all students, and to help create conditions to deliberate about and act on that calling. As individual Christians in our calling as citizens, we have responsibility and competence to determine what specific measures will most improve equitable access for all students to high-quality schools in our communities, states, and nation.

Citizens, political officeholders, educators, and researchers representing a wide range of attitudes toward public schools recognize that public schools should and can do better in improving the performance of their students. When they are considering any proposed school reform, we encourage all citizens to evaluate it in terms of its appropriateness, effectiveness, and cost. Does it improve educational quality for all students?

Is it effective in enhancing student learning? Does it assist educators in their work? Is it affordable and sustainable?

Does it protect students from invidious discrimination? Is it supported by reliable research? Is there a means to evaluate the results of the program and decide if the program should be continued, modified, or ended?

Because poverty and discrimination have such a large and negative impact on student learning, this church calls for public policies that give top priority to children and youth who do not have equitable access to good education, both in large cities and rural areas, and on American Indian reservations and in Alaska Native communities. This requires compensatory measures for children and young people who are encumbered by social disadvantages to increase their chances of equal opportunity for a good education. Expanding and funding good early childhood education for children in poverty and special education, which increases the possibilities of later educational success.

Creating incentives to attract high-quality teachers, administrators, and staff to schools where most students live in poverty. Creating opportunities for education that cross ethnic, social, economic, and jurisdictional lines. Large discrepancies in per-pupil funding in school districts within the same state are a major barrier to equitable access to high-quality schools for all students.

While increased funds by themselves do not ensure better educational results, their strategic investment can make a difference.23 Moreover, equity in funding among school districts is a matter of justice and is mandated in most state constitutions. In states where per-pupil funding is vastly unequal (usually where school districts rely on local property taxes for their revenue), citizens should work actively to reform the funding system.24 Reforms should be evaluated in terms of their effectiveness in improving student learning. A growing number of school districts and states seek to increase the range of schools students can attend through policies that establish magnet schools, open enrollment, charter schools, tax credits, and vouchers.

Research on this whole range of options continues. 25 Many families and communities are encouraged by the experiences of their children with these options, particularly in urban neighborhoods. Increasing school options appeals to the idea that parents and students can choose among schools and to the belief that competition among schools improves educational quality.

It also recognizes that there are diverse ways to educate young people. Others argue that some of these options will increase racial segregation, weaken public schools, benefit principally the privileged sectors of society, and leave too many students in poor-performing schools. The effects of each of these policies—or proposed policies—need to be evaluated in the local context with a special focus on whether or not the option improves educational quality and offers greater opportunities for children and youth living in poverty.

Public schools should be held accountable for educating all their students, but how to do so is a source of ongoing contention. What should the standards be? Who should set them?

What is their impact on student learning? What should be the consequences for schools that fail to meet them? What policies and funding exist to improve schools that do not reach standards?

Intended to spur academic achievement, federal and state legislation holds public schools accountable by means of standards and regular testing and by requiring change in low-performing schools. The effects of such laws require continuing assessment. Give careful and comprehensive assessment to measure the impact on student learning.

In addition to the above-mentioned reforms, efforts to improve educational quality focus on every other aspect of public schools. Whether or not these reform proposals will improve education may vary from one context to another. In some circumstances parents may be able to choose from among a number of options to meet the educational needs of their children, including public, magnet, private, charter, religious schools, and home schooling.

The affordability of each option. Because education is a shared responsibility, the ELCA encourages parents to consult with others who may be of assistance in making their decision. Will Our Church Have Schools and Colleges?

Will Our Schools and Colleges Have a Church? In a living tradition devoted to educating in the faith for vocation in the Church and world, it is not surprising to find that institutions of learning and teaching have been integral and vital to its life and mission. “When schools flourish,” Luther was recorded as saying, “then things go well and the church is secure.

Let us have learned citizens and teachers. The youth furnish recruits for the church; they are the source of its wellbeing. If there were no schools, who would there be to take our place when we die?

In the church we are forced to have schools. God has preserved the church through schools; they are its conservatories.”28 Since the Reformation, Lutherans have taken on the demanding task of establishing and maintaining educational institutions in hope and commitment to equip a new generation to witness to the gospel and carry out their vocation in society. A steward of this tradition, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has an extensive network of educational institutions to benefit Church and society.

2007.30 There are eight ELCA seminaries, and dozens of centers and programs for continuing education.31 Under the auspices of the three seminary clusters, other educational programs and institutions of the ELCA are joining as interdependent lifelong learning partners with the seminaries to expand access to lifelong learning in the faith for all the baptized by building a theological education network. What are the ELCA’s hopes for and commitment to the future of its schools (early childhood education centers through high school), colleges, and universities? All are highly prized by the constituencies that directly support and benefit from them, yet they are too often not well known or appreciated by many ELCA members.

For the most part all must find their own financial support.