ACLU Introduces Legislation to Provide Equal Educational Opportunity

April 11 - 17, 2007 by Maya Harris, The Post Newspaper

On May 17, 2000, the 46th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Northern and Southern California, along with Public Advocates, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and other civil rights organizations, and the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP, filed a class-action lawsuit charging the state of California with violating students' rights by not providing the bare minimum necessities required for an education. Children across California were attending schools without updated text books and in buildings with leaky roofs, mold and vermin.

The case, Williams v. State of California, went on for four years, until August 2004 when we reached a Settlement Agreement that was later approved by the court in March 2005. Among other things, the settlement requires that all students receive instructional materials and have clean and safe schools. Soon after the settlement was reached, five bills implementing the legislative proposals in the Settlement Agreement were signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger. And, over the past couple of years, theagreement has begun to be implemented.

This year, the California affiliates of the ACLU have sponsored new legislation to continue down the path of addressing disparities in education and ensuring that the state provides equal educational opportunity to all California children. The new bill, Senate Bill 405, introduced by Senator Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), helps close the college and workforce opportunity gap facing many public high school students. It seeks to ensure that all students have meaningful access to the college preparatory and career technical course work they need to succeed after graduating from high school.

While all public high school students will benefit from this legislation, state educational data show that the gap in college opportunity and workforce preparedness affects low-income students, students of color, and English-language learners the most.

Specifically, Senate Bill 405 seeks to ensure that:

1. Sufficient numbers of college preparatory courses, the minimum eligibility requirements for admission into a University of California or California State University institution, are offered at every public high school in the state;

2. Career technical education (CTE), formerly referred to as vocational education, courses are sufficiently rigorous and more integrated into college preparatory curriculum;

3. Schools provide enough counselors to advise students of the opportunity to integrate career preparation with college eligibility requirements;

4. Teachers are appropriately trained for the course work they teach, including reinforcing the capacity of CTE and academic teachers to connecttheir particular discipline to academic knowledge or industry- related applications and problems;

5. Data systems are improved so that parents, guardians, policy-makers and the community can access information to assess how well a high school prepares students for college and the workplace, and its completion rates; and

6. External oversight mechanisms are implemented to evaluate school district course offerings for college and workforce preparedness.

Over 50 years since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education—which struck down segregated schools and declared that separate is not equal—we still have much work to do to provide equal educational opportunity to all our children. This legislation will help us keep moving in that direction.

For more information on SB 405, visit www.aclunc.org. Additional information on the Williams case and implementation of the settlement agreement can be found at http://www.decentschools.org.