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National figures as diverse as President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, the Reverend Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich tout education as the national civil rights issue of the 21st century. Yet institutions as exalted as the Supreme Court, which in 2007 discerned that the Brown case was meant “to end legalized racial classification and separation (rather than promote equity),” according to co-author Jeanne Theoharis, essentially “emasculated” Brown’s intent. The issue, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, was “not the inequality of the facilities [at racially segregated schools] but the fact of legally separating children based on race.”
In a city like New York, where so-called “minority” students constitute a significant majority of the schools’ population, true racial integration remains an elusive, near-unattainable goal. But promoting equality of opportunity in education – equal access to excellence – should not be tethered to race, geography, or socioeconomics, say the authors and students in “Our Schools Suck.” The perspectives of the students themselves, which diverge dramatically from the words of the politicians, Department of Education officials, pundits and many academics who speak about them, argue most profoundly for equity of access to high-quality, compassionate, challenging schools, and, the authors maintain, require “a federal constitutional amendment establishing the constitutional right to a quality education.”
