[Op Ed] Christianity Today | Hispanic Evangelicals Focus on Education Equity and Loving Our Neighbors as Ourselves

As students return to school this year, including 13 million Hispanic children, thousands of Hispanic American churches will go with them. We dedicate each new school year by celebrating Education Sunday on the first Sunday of September, because the cross is both vertical and horizontal – encompassing kingdom and community, righteousness and justice, prayer and activism. The NHCLC (National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference) is equipping parents with resources such as our parent toolkit and scholarship opportunities, and we are empowering church leaders with tools and training offered by our Faith & Education Coalition. We are people of the Word who care deeply about literacy, academic excellence, and our children.

Latino congregations, representing 16 million Hispanic American Evangelicals, are standing together to encourage academic achievement and insist on education equity, because Luke 10:27 teaches us to “love the Lord with all our soul, strength and mind – and our neighbors as ourselves.” This year, on Education Sunday, I am especially focused on that final element of Christian orthopraxy, loving our neighbors as ourselves.

It is good and right for Christian parents to ensure their children receive a high quality education. For some families there are multiple excellent options, including private and home schooling. For others, public school is the best or only option. In fact, more than 90 percent of U.S. students will attend public schools this year. So it’s clear that loving our neighbor as ourselves includes ensuring that our neighbor’s children, as well as our own, have access to a high quality education. It is a matter of biblical justice, an ideal we must honor if we are to be a land of liberty and justice for all.

Currently, justice is not being served throughout our nation’s schools. Researchtells us that Hispanic students make up about an equal proportion of all public high school graduates (18 percent) and college students (19 percent). Yet Hispanic students are earning college degrees at significantly lower rates than their peers and are more likely to require remedial courses in their first year. Meanwhile, across all demographics, 28 percent to 40 percent of college students require at least one remedial course to get up to speed – courses students and their families must pay for but for which they receive no credit. It is unacceptable that students are graduating from high school without the basic knowledge and skills to get through their first year in college. By not insisting on equitable education options for all students, including high and comparable academic standards, we have failed to love our neighbors as ourselves. We can do better, and we must, for our children. For our neighbor’s children.

Read more at Hispanic Evangelicals Focus on Education Equity and Loving Our Neighbors as Ourselves.