THE 6TH CIRCUIT COURT AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO A FOUNDATIONAL LEVEL OF LITERACY

By Bob Moses

Throughout U.S. history the courts, Congress, local legislatures, and the executive branch of government have resisted the idea that public school students have a constitutional right to meaningful education. Our decades of work with the Algebra Project bring this into sharp focus. The lack of opportunity rooted inside the educational system, and with mathematics in particular, continues to lock generations of youth from full participation in democracy and the economy, basically making full citizenship impossible. Furthermore, the caste system created by this failure has broadened to include not just blacks, but people of color and people living in poverty.

Detroit Students Have a Constitutional Right to Literacy, Court Rules

By Dana Goldstein

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the state of Michigan had been so negligent toward the educational needs of Detroit students that children had been “deprived of access to literacy” — the foundational skill that allows Americans to function as citizens — in violation of the 14th Amendment.