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‘Access to Literacy’ Is Not a Constitutional Right, Judge in Detroit Rules
Do students at poorly performing schools have a constitutional right to a better education?
On Friday, a Federal District Court judge in Michigan decided that they did not when he dismissed a class-action lawsuit filed by students at troubled schools in Detroit.
The suit, filed in September 2016, argued that students at some of the city’s most underperforming schools — serving mostly racial minorities — had been denied “access to literacy” because of underfunding, mismanagement and discrimination.
The complaint described schools that were overcrowded with students but lacking in teachers; courses without basic resources like books and pencils; and classrooms that were bitingly cold in the winter, stiflingly hot in the summer and infested with rats and insects.
Conditions like those, the lawsuit said, contributed to dismal test scores and left students woefully underprepared for life after high school.
“The abysmal conditions and appalling outcomes in plaintiffs’ schools are unprecedented,” the complaint said. “And they would be unthinkable in schools serving predominantly white, affluent student populations.”
The lawsuit, which a lawyer for the plaintiffs said was the first of its kind at the federal level, named Michigan officials including Gov. Rick Snyder as defendants because the state had played an outsize role in managing Detroit’s schools while the school district, and the city, struggled with a lack of resources.
In his decision on Friday dismissing the suit, Judge Stephen J. Murphy III said that “access to literacy” — which he also referred to as a “minimally adequate education” — was not a fundamental right. And he said the lawsuit had failed to show that the state had practiced overt racial discrimination.
But he conceded that the conditions at some Detroit schools were “nothing short of devastating.”
Full story here
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/education/detroit-public-schools-education.html
Do students at poorly performing schools have a constitutional right to a better education?
On Friday, a Federal District Court judge in Michigan decided that they did not when he dismissed a class-action lawsuit filed by students at troubled schools in Detroit.
The suit, filed in September 2016, argued that students at some of the city’s most underperforming schools — serving mostly racial minorities — had been denied “access to literacy” because of underfunding, mismanagement and discrimination.
The complaint described schools that were overcrowded with students but lacking in teachers; courses without basic resources like books and pencils; and classrooms that were bitingly cold in the winter, stiflingly hot in the summer and infested with rats and insects.
Conditions like those, the lawsuit said, contributed to dismal test scores and left students woefully underprepared for life after high school.
“The abysmal conditions and appalling outcomes in plaintiffs’ schools are unprecedented,” the complaint said. “And they would be unthinkable in schools serving predominantly white, affluent student populations.”
The lawsuit, which a lawyer for the plaintiffs said was the first of its kind at the federal level, named Michigan officials including Gov. Rick Snyder as defendants because the state had played an outsize role in managing Detroit’s schools while the school district, and the city, struggled with a lack of resources.
In his decision on Friday dismissing the suit, Judge Stephen J. Murphy III said that “access to literacy” — which he also referred to as a “minimally adequate education” — was not a fundamental right. And he said the lawsuit had failed to show that the state had practiced overt racial discrimination.
But he conceded that the conditions at some Detroit schools were “nothing short of devastating.”
Full story here
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/education/detroit-public-schools-education.html