Students, Teachers, Sue & Win $53M For Troubled Schools In CA

Students and teachers from three underperforming schools in California have settled with the state for $53 million. An attorney with Public Counsel, an advocacy group, says it’s the first civil rights case brought under a state constitution to establish a right of access to literacy. Public Counsel and law firm Morrison & Foerster represented the plaintiffs. The case relied on a provision in the California state constitution mandating equality of education for all students in the state. There is no such requirement in the U.S. Constitution, or so it was determined by the Supreme Court in the1973 decision Rodriguez v. San Antonio Independent School, a decision which the author of a recent book on the Court, interviewed by Terry Gross, calls one of the most tragic cases in the Supreme Court’s history. In the California settlement, most of the money will be used to fund a block grant program, to be tapped by 75 of the state’s lowest-performing elementary schools for such things as literacy coaches and reading specialists, aides, professional development, and before and after-school programs.