In Gary B. v. Snyder, a federal court rules giving children a chance at literacy is a constitutional right
A federal court says underfunded schools in Detroit violated students’ right to a basic education. Advocates hope the case is the beginning of a trend.
At his Detroit high school, Jamarria Hall loved the classes where students could share textbooks, passing six torn and outdated hardcovers among 35 students to take turns reading.
Hall loved those, he said, because in most classes at Osborn High School he had no books. Instead, students copied down whatever the teacher wrote on the board. Or maybe they had a printout from the school’s copy machine.
“How can you learn in that type of environment?” asked Hall, who’s trying to finish his freshman credits at Tallahassee (Fla.) Community College, three years after graduating from Osborn. “It’s setting you up to fail.”
A federal appellate court last week agreed and in a historic ruling determined that the students’ constitutional rights were violated by that level of deprivation.
In a 2-1 decision last week in the case, Gary B. v. Snyder, judges from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that students have a right to “a basic minimum education,” which the court defined as giving students the opportunity to learn to read.
The ruling doesn’t address the vast inequities between rich schools and poor schools, but it does set a minimum standard that states must meet in public education: providing kids with “a chance at foundational literacy.”
It’s the first time that a federal court has asserted that right. Advocates say the ruling could match Brown v. Board of Educationin importance and hope it triggers a broader crusade against unequal education.
The ruling applies to the four states in the Sixth Circuit — Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee — and it could guide similar federal lawsuits in CONTINUE READING: Gary B. v. Snyder: For children a chance at literacy is a constitutional right