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Equal Opportunity
Public Education
The ACLU supports right of all students, under the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to the equal protection of the laws. If we are to achieve the civil liberties goal of equal protection of the law, the government has a duty to see that actual equality of educational opportunity exists. As the U.S. Supreme Court noted in its 1954 unanimous decision:
Brown V. Board of Education
Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.
Council for Fair School Finance
In order to pursue the goal of equal educational opportunity, the ACLU of Massachusetts joined with nine other organizations to form, and chair, the Council for Fair School Finance. In 1989, the Council undertook the support of litigation to interpret John Adams’ Massachusetts constitutional language on the duty to cherish the public schools. In 1993, a unanimous Supreme Judicial Court declared in McDuffy et.al. v. Secretary of Education that: “…the provisions of…the Massachusetts Constitution impose an enforceable duty on the magistrates and Legislatures of this Commonwealth to provide education in the public schools for the children there enrolled whether they be rich or poor and without regard to the fiscal capacity of the community of district in which such children live.”
In addition, the McDuffy decision laid out seven skills necessary for high school graduates to possess. The Commonwealth responded by creating seven curriculum frameworks and mandated that school districts align their curriculum with these goals. After seven years, the Council noted that funding was inadequate to provide every student the opportunity achieve the seven goals in McDuffy, and that cuts in the state budget were disproportionately affecting the quality of education in poorer school districts.
Hancock et al. v. Commissioner of Education was undertaken in 2000. The trial in the Superior Court was undertaken in June, 2003. Judge Margot Botsford issued her 350+ page Fact Finding Report and Recommendations in April, 2004 which noted some progress since 1993, and then a description of the failures of the state to provide an adequate education to the children in four focus districts. (Summary) The Supreme Judicial Court decision in February of 2005 concluded that even if progress was “painfully slow” the legislature was responsible for the pace and not the courts, under the present circumstances and at the present time.
The Council for Fair School Finance maintained a website during the trial. The materials from that website, including daily trial descriptions of our case and the witnesses we presented are available here The Council continues to monitor the conditions in the public schools, the equality of opportunity afforded our students, and the progress of the legislature in trying to reach the constitutional goals.
Please email info@aclu-mass.org if further information is required. |
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