| An Educational Bill of Rights for California’s Students |
The Students’ Bill of Rights articulates a public commitment to providing every student in California with a high quality education that prepares him or her for a 4-year university, a living wage job, and active participation in civic life. Many young people, particularly those living in low-income communities of color, do not presently receive such an education. In May 2000, Eliezer Williams and a group of other students in troubled schools around California filed a lawsuit arguing that they deserve schools like those that serve their more affluent peers.
Williams v California holds more promise for promoting educational equity than any California case in the past two decades. Yet, the history of legal advocacy suggests that court decisions alone cannot insure quality or equitable education. Educational justice is born out of larger movements of students, educators, and parents who bring pressure to bear on the political and education system.
This web site, sponsored UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA), invites educators from greater Los Angeles to study and teach about the Students’ Bill of Rights. It seeks to initiate dialogue among teachers and students about the education that every California student deserves. It also provides teachers with curricular materials and pedagogic strategies for engaging their students in studying access and equity in their own communities. Teachers and their students will be encouraged to post the results of these studies, as well as their ideas for guaranteeing students’ rights, in IDEA’s online journal, Teaching to Change LA. In these ways, the web site simultaneously promotes changing teaching and teaching for change.
John Rogers is Associate Director of UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access. |
