News: Decision from NCTE Executive Committee

The following is a message to all NCTE members from the NCTE Executive Committee.

The NCTE Executive Committee acknowledges the communications it has received from many members of the community regarding CCCC.

For many years, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) played a critical role in serving the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and its mission. In recent years, however, CCCC has struggled with its fiscal sustainability, declining participation, and governance challenges. As a result, earlier today the Executive Committee of NCTE made the difficult decision to de-charter its special topics conference CCCC. To clarify, today’s decision to de-charter does not mean that NCTE has altered its commitment to supporting teachers at the college and university level. This is exemplified by the fact that the NCTE College Section is thriving. The process in making this decision spanned several years, with attempts to work collaboratively with CCCC’s executive committees across multiple iterations. While the organization appreciates the years of collaboration with CCCC, after deep evaluation and thoughtful consideration, the Executive Committee concluded this step was necessary to more effectively serve the college English and writing and composition community and NCTE membership as a whole.

Although this has been a very difficult decision, we are excited about the future. This change will allow us to provide better support to the college English and writing and composition community. In the coming days and weeks, we will be working hard to make this transition as smooth as possible. We thank CCCC, its leaders, and its members for its many years of contributions and look forward to continuing to involve the composition, rhetoric, and writing communities as we move forward. NCTE remains devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education. As future planning takes place, NCTE will communicate updates.

A transition team focused on supporting composition, rhetoric, and writing studies will be named by the NCTE Executive Committee imminently.