Quality Education As A Constitutional Right

In 2005, legendary civil rights leader and education activist Robert Moses invited 100 prominent African-American and Latino intellectuals and activists to meet to discuss a proposal for a campaign to guarantee a quality education for all children as a civil right-a movement. This groundbreaking book has emerged from that effort.
In 2005, famed civil rights leader and education activist Robert Moses invited one hundred prominent African American and Latino intellectuals and activists to meet to discuss a proposal for a campaign to guarantee a quality education for all children as a constitutional right-a movement that would "transform current approaches to educational inequity, all of which have failed miserably to yield results for our children." The response was passionate, and the meeting launched a movement.

This book-emerging directly from that effort-reports on what has happened since and calls for a new scale of organizing, legal initiatives, and public definitions of what a quality education is. Essays include

Robert Moses's historically rooted call for citizens, especially young people, to make the demand for quality education

Ernesto Cortes's view from decades of work organizing Latino communities in Texas

Charles Payne's interview with students from the Baltimore Algebra Project, who organized to make historic demands on their district

Legal scholar Imani Perry's nuanced analysis of the prospects of making a case for quality education as a right guaranteed by the Constitution

Perspectives from scholars Lisa Delpit and Joan T. Wynne, and by teachers Alicia Caroll and Kim Parker, who provide examples of what quality education is, describing its goal, and how to guide practice in the meantime