The Child Tax Credit’s purpose is to reduce child poverty – in 2010 alone, the CTC kept 1.3 million children out of poverty. Making eligibility changes to this valuable program would take money away from many poor families – thus undermining the CTC’s central purpose of poverty reduction.

Promise the Children joins other national advocacy groups to urge members of Congress to Protect the Child Tax Credit by signing on to a letter.

The letter ….

As organizations that come together to advocate for the needs of low-income and vulnerable populations, we strongly urge you to oppose any restrictions to eligibility for the Child Tax Credit. We believe that extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance is essential to protecting families and our fragile economic recovery. However, asking children in low-income families to bear the burden of paying for this tax package—while refusing to ask millionaires to pay their share—is immoral, unfair, and outrageous.Proposals to restrict access to the Child Tax Credit would affect nearly five million children in low-income, tax-paying families, counteracting the boost to consumers and the economy that the payroll tax cut is meant to produce.

The purpose of the Child Tax Credit, and in particular the refundable portion (called the Additional Child Tax Credit), is to reduce child poverty. The Child Tax Credit kept 1.3 million children out of poverty in 2010. The typical taxpayer harmed by proposals to restrict eligibility for the Child Tax Credit earns $21,240 per year and would experience an 8% increase in their taxes owed, amounting to a loss of $1,800 in the typical family’s income per year. Losing this income will compromise the ability of families to put food on the table or pay for rent or heat. Research has consistently shown that children in food-insecure families are more likely to have health and developmental problems.

It is particularly cruel to target the children of immigrants in these negotiations. Children of immigrants now make up nearly one-quarter of the nation’s child population. In 2010, nearly 30 percent of children with foreign-born parents were poor.Children of immigrants are far more likely to live in food-insecure households and are more likely to suffer from fair or poor health. These children, so many of whom are citizens, are an important part of America’s future. It is profoundly unwise to place so many at risk by denying them the credit designed to prevent or reduce poverty among working families.

In short, our poorest and most vulnerable children should not be a revenue source. Most of the deficit reduction plans put forward over the last two years have explicitly sought to protect the poor.

Sincerely yours,

We urge you to pass a fair tax package and oppose any changes in eligibility for the Child Tax Credit.

Some states passed additional mandates including statewide standardized tests that increased the number tests and levied dire consequences for students who failed. I will not discuss these mandates in this blog, nor will I discuss the recent appeal process instituted by President Obama regarding the 2014 deadline for improving test scores in our public schools. Tracking the NCLB Waiver Process State-by-State.

One view on NCLB is that the taxpayer has a right to know whether or not a certain public school is giving each child the opportunity learn. This view framed NCLB and led to the mandated testing of children in certain grades using national standardized tests. Should the school fail to improve test scores year after year, the state can take over the administration of the school and operate outside union rules and without consideration of parents, school districts, and school boards.

Another view is that NCLB is a failure, in part because the federal government has underfunded the bill. Student preparation for the standardized tests required by the NCLB is inadequately funded. Failure by too many children is unavoidable. Funding is needed to provide tutorial, adequate curricula, and additional training for teachers. So many children face failure through no fault of their own. They may have disabilities of various kinds, or they may learn in different ways, or they may not speak English. The tests are easier for children with certain aptitudes, or for children who have multiple support systems purchased by parents or available in wealthier communities. For more information see Text Here

I believe that the NCLB benchmarks for learning using standardized tests are essential. Principals and teachers must see how they are doing. However, I do not think that a test should be the sole factor in evaluating individual students, teachers or schools. It should be one factor along with such work as student projects, and individual research, written work and class participation. Standardized tests should be used to determine whether a school has what is needed to give students an opportunity to learn, or whether the school must decide on new goals and strategies.

While we cannot define exactly how to create a good learning environment, we can point to schools that have improved. We know that some schools have increased high school graduation rates and improved NCLB test scores from year to year. Without NCLB, these improvements might not have occurred and/or the public might not have noticed.

That is why I have a more positive view of NCLB and President Obama’s effort to improve our children’s opportunity to learn.

Making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP): North Dakota School …
KIPP: Knowledge Is Power Program | Charter Schools,
Mastery Charter School in Philadelphia

January 31st, 2012 at 2:00 – 3:15 pm ET
Register here for this FREE webinar

The Coalition on Human Needs, the Half in Ten Campaign, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Children’s Leadership Council have partnered to provide a valuable resource to our local partners, members, and allies about what not-for-profit organizations (501C3’s) can do during election years.

During the webinar, the Alliance for Justice will educate you and your organization about what actions are legally permissible during an election year, especially as you plan possible activities and opportunities to lift the anti-poverty frame. You’ll get AFJ’s advice about allowable activities during this election year and practical examples of things your organization can do.

Speakers include:
Abby Levine, Alliance for Justice, the acknowledged experts about nonprofit advocacy law and rules, and
Mary Lou Beaver, Every Child Matters New Hampshire, with examples of C3 nonprofit activity before the recent primary.
Melissa Boteach, Half in Ten Campaign: moderator

Register here: http://bit.ly/zEhFDC

The byword – achievement – gap has come to imply that failure to learn is the fault of a student, a teacher or a principal, or all of these. Opportunity to Learn implies that the community and the federal government have responsibilities to our children. If we could only minimize testing and maximize the opportunities for our children to have adequate food, health care, and teachers trained to listen as well as teach our children who live in poverty, we would turn around education in our country today.

Here is what happened in Mustang Arizona as reported by Poverty and Our Schools. The student population in Mustang is between 1200-760 students with a 95% poverty level, and mostly non-English speaking children. The school has become an effective place of learning by involving the community.

Great care has been taken to ensure each child learns English by developing individualized programs. By partnering with Scottsdale Health children have health care, and there is a free dental clinic on the school campus. Food is put in children’s lunch bags by local food pantries to take care of holidays and weekends, and the free lunch program serves the children during the day. Extended-day learning time is provided by local afterschool programs including the Boys and Girls clubs (also on campus) and by the federal 21st Century after-school program. This is only a part of what is done to make the opportunity to learn effective in Mustang AZ.

What is done in or near your community? Becky Richardson, President. Promise the Children

Some thoughts about a momentous occasion: the 10th anniversary of No Child Left Behind, which occurred on January 8.

After 10 years of NCLB, we should have seen dramatic progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, but we have not. By now, we should be able to point to sharp reductions of the achievement gaps between children of different racial and ethnic groups and children from different income groups, but we cannot. As I said in a recent speech, many children continue to be left behind, and we know who those children are: They are the same children who were left behind 10 years ago.

In my travels over the past two years, I have seen the wreckage caused by NCLB. It has become the Death Star of American education. It is a law that inflicts damage on students, teachers, schools, and communities.

When I spoke at Stanford University, a teacher stood up in the question period and said: “I teach the lettuce-pickers’ children in Salinas. They are closing our school because our scores are too low.” She couldn’t finish her question because she started crying.

When I spoke at UCLA, a group of about 20 young teachers approached me afterwards and told me that their school, Fremont High School, was slated for closure. They asked me to tell Ray Cortines, who was then chancellor of the Los Angeles Unified School District, not to close their school because they were working together as a community to improve it. I took their message to Ray, who is a good friend, but the school was closed anyway. The dispersed teachers of Fremont are still communicating with one another, still mourning the loss of their school.

When I spoke to Citizens for Public Schools in Boston, a young man who works as a chef at a local hotel got up to ask what he could do to stop “them” from closing his children’s school. It was the neighborhood school, he said. It was the school he wanted his children to attend. And they were closing it.

In city after city, across the nation, I have heard similar stories from teachers and parents. Why are they closing our school? What can we do about it? How can we stop them? I wish I had better answers. I know that as long as NCLB stays on the books, there is no stopping the destruction of local community institutions. And now with the active support of the Obama administration, the NCLB wrecking ball has become a means of promoting privatization and community fragmentation.

I have often wondered whether there is any other national legislature that has passed a law that had the effect of stigmatizing the nation’s public education system. Last year, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that 82 percent of our nation’s schools would fail to make “adequate yearly progress.” A few weeks ago, the Center for Education Policy reported that the secretary’s estimate was overstated, and that it was “only” half the nation’s schools that would be considered failing as of this year. Secretary Duncan’s judgment may have been off the mark this year, but NCLB guarantees that the number of failing schools will grow every year. If the law remains intact, we can reasonably expect that nearly every public school in the United States will be labeled as a failing school by 2014.

If you take a closer look at the CEP study, you can see how absurd the law is. In Massachusetts, the nation’s highest-performing state by far on NAEP, 81 percent of the schools failed to make AYP. But in lower-performing Louisiana, only 22 percent of the schools did not make AYP. Yet, when you compare the same two states on NAEP, 51 percent of 4th graders in Massachusetts are rated proficient, compared with 23 percent in Louisiana. In 8th grade, again, twice as many students in Massachusetts are proficient compared with Louisiana, yet Massachusetts has nearly four times as many allegedly “failing” schools! This is crazy.

More evidence of the invalidity of NCLB. The top-rated high school in the state of Illinois, New Trier High School, failed to make AYP. Its special education students did not make enough progress. When outstanding schools fail, you have to conclude that something is wrong with the measure.

The best round-up to date of the catastrophe that we call NCLB was published by FairTest in its report, “The Lost Decade.” I know you have read it, as this is an organization dear to your heart. I recommend this report to our readers. It shows in clear detail that progress on NAEP was far more significant before the passage of NCLB.

Congress, in its wisdom, will eventually reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I hope that in doing so, they recognize the negative consequences of NCLB and abandon the strategies that have borne such bitter fruit for our nation’s education system. NCLB cannot be fixed. It has failed. It has imposed a sterile and mean-spirited regime on the schools. It represents the dead hand of conformity and regulation from afar. It is time to abandon the status quo of test-based accountability and seek fresh and innovative thinking to support and strengthen our nation’s schools.

Reprinted from Education Week’s blog Bridging Differences

As the deadline looms for the supercommittee to report back to Congress, some have raised the specter that “failure” would lead to a collapse in financial markets. For example, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry has expressed concerns that a failure to reach an agreement would send a dangerous signal to markets, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has said that a “go big” agreement is needed to “reassure markets about our ability to repay our creditors.”

These concerns are misplaced.

First, even if the supercommittee fails to find an agreement, there would still be a $1.2 trillion 10-year spending reduction put onto the books via a process called sequestration that would limit annual appropriations by Congress. From a pure deficit-reduction perspective, a $1.2 trillion agreement would be no different than a so-called failure. Congress can of course revisit those cuts, but they could also revisit any other kind of spending agreement too.

Second, remember that financial markets are forward looking and respond primarily to unexpected news. Does the market believe that Democrats and Republicans will come together in a Kumbaya moment to pass $3 trillion in tax increases and/or cuts to spending? I wouldn’t bet on it. Goldman Sachs noted in a recent Q&A on the supercommittee that, “a ‘grand bargain’ to resolve this imbalance appears to be a low probability this year. Instead, the politically realistic outcomes range from no agreement to a deal reaching $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years.” They also note that just “32% of economists polled in the November Blue Chip financial survey expected a super committee agreement to become law.” Thus a failure would merely confirm market expectations, and there should be little reaction in the markets.

Third, as I noted in an earlier post, real interest rates on federal debt are negative for some maturities, and very low for longer term bonds. There is no indication that markets are worried about U.S. debt and need to be reassured. For example, Moody’s rating agency recently stated that, “failure by the committee to reach agreement would not by itself lead to a rating change.”

Finally, the main worry for businesses is the lack of demand for their goods and services and the main worry for individuals is the lack of jobs. The markets would react if Congress fails to fails continue a payroll tax holiday or fails to continue unemployment insurance payments. The real, immediate crisis is jobs and economic growth – Congress needs to focus on getting people back to work. A jobs-first focus would, more than anything else, reassure markets that the U.S. economy is poised for growth, and not slipping into premature, job-killing austerity.

HERE

*Reading: How Are the Children?

Among the most accomplished and fabled tribes of Africa, no tribe was considered to have warriors more fearsome or more intelligent than the mighty Masai. It is perhaps surprising then to learn the traditional greeting that passed between Masai warriors. “Kasserian ingera” one would always say to another. It means “and how are the children?”

It is still the traditional greeting among the Masai, acknowledging the high value that the Masai always place on their children’s well-being. Even warriors with no children of their own would always give the traditional answer, “all the children are well.” Meaning, of course, that peace and safety prevail, that the priorities of protecting the young, the powerless, are in place, that Masai society has not forgotten its reasons for being, its proper functions and responsibilities. “All the children are well” means that life is good. It means that the daily struggles of existence do not preclude proper caring for their young.

I wonder how it might affect our consciousness of our own children’s welfare if in our culture we took to greeting each other with this daily question: “and how are the children?” I wonder if we heard that question and passed it along to each other a dozen times a day, if it would begin to make a difference in the reality of how children are thought of or cared for in our own country?

I wonder if every adult among us, parent and non-parent alike, an equal weight for the daily care and protection of all the children in our community, in our town and state, in our country. I wonder if we could truly say without any hesitation, “the children are well, yes, all the children are well.”

What would it be like … if religious leaders began every worship service by answering the question: “and how are the children?” If teachers began every class by answering the question: “and how are the children?” If every town leader had to answer the same question at the beginning of every meeting: “and how are the children? are they all well?” If every business leader and corporate executive had to answer the same question at the beginning of every workday: “and how are the children? Are they all well?” Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear their answers? What would it be like? I wonder . . . I wonder . . ..

Let’s begin here and greet members and friends in our Unitarian Universalist Congregation with and how are the children? And before we can respond to one another “all the children are well”, what actions must we take in this congregation? In our community? In our state? In our Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations? In our country?

And how are the children? Working together, may all our children be well.

Sermon

Audio
Once upon a time there was a small village sitting next to a beautiful flowing river. Everyday the people went down to the river to bathe and wash their clothes. One day Maria, a young woman from the village saw a baby floating by – struggling in the water. She jumped into the water and rescued the child and not knowing what else to do she took the baby home.

Maria’s neighbors, being kind and generous, helped her to care for the baby as they marveled at the vitality and joy brought to the village by the young spirit. A short time later two more babies where seen and rescued as people worked by the river. Others helped to feed and clothe as Maria had. And as time went on the village people rescued more babies and young children. This was extremely disturbing to the people and they decided to gather together and use there energy a set up an orphanage to care for the babies.

One day Maria, who had been instrumental in organizing the effort, stood up in a planning session and asked the good and generous people of the village. “Why do you suppose there are so many babies lost to the river? I think we need to go up the river to find the cause. Who will go with me?”

“I can’t,” said one villager, I’m too busy making meals for the babies. I can’t,” said another, “I have to write a funding grant and I have a deadline.” “I can’t,” said another, “I’ve just been elected chairman of the board, and I have important responsibilities to the orphanage. I’ve never been out of the village” said another.” I’m too afraid.” Eventually Maria found some villagers who agreed to go with her and bring back news to the village about what they could do to stop the increasing influx of children caught up in the river.

I am here today in part to talk about a troop of Unitarian Universalists who have banded together like Maria’s crew to look into the source of this country’s persistent problem of childhood poverty and come back to report the situation and organize group activities in Unitarian Universalist churches so that can have an impact on the deepening crisis of childhood poverty.

In the US we declared a war on poverty in the 1960’s and clearly we are loosing. According to The Children’s Defense Fund’s The State of America’s Children 2011, using numbers from 2009 – the number of children who fell into poverty between 2008 and 2009 was the largest single-year increase that has ever been recorded. Globe reports that Boston Medical Center is seeing a increase in malnourished children and the back lash against health care reform and threats to Medicaid are encouraging restrictions at the state level to access to health care for low income families with children.

Some of our neighbor’s families are underwater and need our help. Many Unitarian Universalist churches and individuals are extremely generous and work hard to make sure pantries and soup kitchens are stocked and volunteers are on hand. This is wonderful and necessary. A great show of faith. Bless you.

We here at Promise The Children are asking you to take another step – to travel up the river with us and get to the source of this tragedy or at least to the institutions that are creating policies that impact the solutions. Right now the scene in Washington Dc where our policies are made is particularly disturbing. The programs that have been put in place to protect the poorest children – Snap, WIC, Head Start, Medicaid and more are on the chopping block in the name of deficit reduction. They have already been strained with 30 years of shrinking resources and neglect.

Promise The Children has joined with other churches on a campaign to create a Circle Of Protection around our nation’s children in this crisis. We are working to remind our leaders that our little ones are sacred – all of them – there are no throwaway children. They all need nutritious food to grow, they need schools to learn, and they need medical care and opportunities to thrive NOW – if we are to insure their future. Love has no austerity program when it comes to children. We are the wealthiest people in the history of mankind. Our abundance is the envy of the world. We must raise our voices over how that abundance is to be distributed.

We can’t get so busy feeding the poor that we forget to ask why there are so many. We can’t wear ourselves out bailing out the boat that we have no time to repair the design so that our boat is sea worthy. At the very least we can get the ear of the captain and raise our concerns and ideas about turning the boat around even while we pull the babies out of the water and make sure they are safe and dry.

Today I have with me Circle of Protection post cardsthat will be delivered to Senator Kerry a member of the super committee now meeting in Washington to cut another $1.2 trillion from our deficit. We are asking that children’s programs be given a priority in this process. On October 26th we will meet with his staff and hold a vigil at his offices down town. If you can come, please do. If you work down town it is right near government center. Please join us. Sign a post card at coffee hour today and it will be delivered with hundreds of others that day. Join us – the more shoulders to the wheel – the better we can turn this situation around.

Become a children’s advocate – sign up for our email alert network. Visit our website.

I’d like to thank you for having me here today. As Unitarian Universalists, we have always been at the forefront of progressive issues from slavery to immigration rights. I am so pleased that you have dedicated a Sunday to children. We must do whatever we can in order to build our awareness and open our hearts – and lift our voices. Bless you.

I’d like to close with the first stanza of a poem by Drew Dellinger, “Hieroglyphic Stairway:”

It’s 3:23 in the morning, and I’m awake because my great-great grandchildren won’t let me sleep.

My great-great grandchildren ask me in dreams,

What did you do while the planet was plundered?

What did you do when the Earth was unraveling?

Surely you did something when the seasons started failing,

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

Did you fill the streets with protest when democracy was stolen?

What did you do once you knew?¹

[1] http://drewdellinger.org/pages/products/340/hieroglyphic-stairway_-poetry-poster accessed 10/21/2011

In his last Sunday sermon at Washington National Cathedral, Dr. King retold the parable of the rich man Dives who ignored the poor and sick man Lazarus who came every day seeking crumbs from Dives’ table. Dives went to hell, Dr. King said, not because he was rich but because he did not realize his wealth was his opportunity to bridge the gulf separating him from his brother Lazarus and allowed him to become invisible. Calling for a Poor People’s Campaign, he warned this could happen to America, the richest nation on earth. The day he was assassinated, he called his mother to give her his next Sunday’s sermon title: “Why America May Go to Hell.” He warned that “America is going to hell if we don’t use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life.”

He called with urgency for a Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 when there were 25.4 million poor Americans including 11 million poor children and our GDP was $4.13 trillion. Today there are 46.2 million poor people including 16.4 million poor children and I’ve no doubt he’d be leading another campaign to end poverty and to create jobs and income for everyone in America. He would be dismayed that 20.5 million of our neighbors are living in extreme poverty including 7.4 million children who are the poorest age group in America. And the younger they are the poorer they are. One in four or 5.5 million infants, toddlers and preschoolers were poor in 2010, the years of greatest brain development.

Children don’t have any belts to tighten and face more and more cuts in survival programs. The New York Times reported in 2010 that almost six million Americans had no income—one in 50—and depended on Food Stamps to stave off the wolves of hunger. What has happened in America that we have normalized child and family poverty, homelessness and hunger—punishing innocents with federal and state cuts for budget deficits they did not cause while 279 current members of Congress (238 Representatives and 41 Senators) have pledged not to ask the wealthiest corporations and individuals to pay a dime in new taxes to restore some of the hundreds of billions they drained from taxpayer coffers that have nearly bankrupted our nation and torn asunder the lives and hopes and futures of millions of Americans?

Beginning today, let’s honor Dr. King by our committed action to end child poverty and close the morally obscene gulf between rich and poor in our nation where the 400 highest income earners made as much as the combined tax revenues of 22 states. They don’t need any more tax breaks and need to give back some of their unfair share of our nation’s tax subsidies and bailouts to feed and house and educate our children and employ their parents.

Let’s follow Dr. King by naming and changing the pervasive racial disparities, undergirded by poverty, that place one in three Black and one in six Hispanic boys born in 2001 at risk of prison in their lifetimes. Incarceration is becoming the new American apartheid and poor children of color are its fodder. Let’s reroute our children into a pipeline to college and productive work to compete with children from China and India and enable our children to compete economically in a globalizing economy.

Let’s honor Dr. King by speaking truth to power and demanding justice for the poor and vulnerable children with our voices and votes and powerful persistent nonviolent direct actions. Citizens of every race and income level must band together to bring our nation back from the brink of self destruction fueled by unbridled greed of the few and a military budget that dwarfs our early childhood development budget where the real security of our nation lies.

Let’s honor Dr. King by stopping the resurgence of racial segregation in our schools, unfair treatment of children of color through zero tolerance school discipline and special education practices that push them out of school and towards prison. And we must stand together and resist efforts to undermine the hard earned right to vote which is the life blood of democracy. Let’s not return to Jim Crow shenanigans that denied the right to vote to Blacks and other citizens and strangled our democratic processes far too long.

Let’s honor Dr. King by building a beloved community in America where all have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and enough work at decent wages to support a family, buy a home, and raise children in safe neighborhoods.

Let’s truly honor Dr. King by transforming our education system that sentences millions of children to social and economic death by failing to prepare them and our country for the future. That more than a majority of children in all income and racial groups and nearly 80 percent of Black and Hispanic children cannot read or compute at grade level in 4th, 8th, and 12th grades is a national catastrophe which will bring our nation down.

Let’s honor Dr. King by ending the violent wars within and without that destroy lives, families, communities, and drain life giving resources on weapons of death rather than weapons of life. The guns that snuffed out Dr. King’s life have snuffed out the lives of over 110,645 children since 1979. Every three hours a child or teen is killed by a firearm in the United States.

Let’s honor Dr. King with our unrelenting efforts to ensure that “the bank of justice” is not bankrupted further and like him refuse to accept “there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of the nation.” Let’s send the bounced checks of jobs, quality education, food and early childhood development back to Congress and state capitols and tell them to refill our nation’s insufficient bank accounts with transfers from the overflowing coffers of powerful corporations and individuals from unjust tax breaks and subsidies and to pay the long overdue promissory notes of justice and hope millions of children are waiting to receive from the crumbs of Dives’ table.

The day after Dr. King was shot, I went into riot torn Washington, D.C. neighborhoods and schools urging children not to loot, get arrested and ruin their futures. A young Black boy about 12 looked me squarely in the eyes and said, “Lady, what future? I ain’t got no future. I ain’t got nothing to lose.” It’s time to prove that boy’s truth wrong in our militarily powerful, materially rich but spiritually poor nation and to honor the sacrifice of this prophet of God who died to help redeem the soul of America.

It’s now up to each of us to pick up the mantle of justice and lift high the torch of freedom for our children and grandchildren. Dr. King told and showed us what to do. Let’s do it.

Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to Cambridge Forum recently entitled Bullies and Cyber-Bullies: Victims, Victimizers, and Communities. The distinguished panel featured a range of specialists that included Elizabeth Englander – author and Director at the Mass Aggression Reduction Center (MARC). Englander works closely with teachers and policy-makers in Massachusetts to address issues of bullying in schools. Dr Tracy Vaillancourt raised issues about the role that brain chemistry playes in the life-altering effect of bullying.