The lawsuit brought by the ACLU in Michigan is important for several reasons. First, policymakers and education reformers often casually refer to education as a civil right. But now the ACLU is saying that this is more than just rhetoric, that education is a very real right that all students have and action is needed when that right is violated. They make the important argument that students have the “right to read” which provides the fundamental skills and knowledge needed to learn other subjects and succeed in college, careers, and society. Despite spending more than $16,000 per student, only 10 percent of Highland Park School students are proficient in reading. At the heart of this argument is that we haven’t asked too much from our schools, it is that we have settled for too little.

Second, the lawsuit gives a voice to parents and children for whom an entire system has failed. Parents were promised reform and change for years, but little was delivered in terms of real improvement or additional assistance or alternatives. Parent felt frustrated and ignored and students were just passed on from grade to grade. Through this lawsuit, parents are saying “Enough!” It’s time to end the cycle of lost generations because the adults can’t seem to get it right.

The temptation in this debate will be to look for a scapegoat to hold up as the reason for low performance instead of accepting this challenge to transform the system to work for the students. An example of this is the recent Jay Matthews column, which suggested that somehow technology was the cause of the school’s failure.

But that logic doesn’t hold here. First, simply putting computers into a school doesn’t improve it any more than putting computers into a government building improves government. From the descriptions in the lawsuit, Highland Park clearly wasn’t using the technology appropriately. If someone doesn’t take antibiotics in the way a doctor prescribes them, they won’t see the benefits. In such cases we would not say the antibiotic was ineffective. The same is true here. Not using a tool or system in the way it is intended will almost certainly not deliver the intended results.

In this school’s case, the technology system utilized was never intended to replace teaching. In fact, the software system was only supposed to be used for a small percentage of the instructional time, after which students would have customized reading assignments, engage in small group work, and have more one-on-one time with the teacher. The technology was intended to enhance and support teachers, not be a substitute for them.

What could have the results been if the technology had been used as intended? Research of the system suggests schools can see some dramatic improvements in student performance. A number of rigorous studies have found that this technology can help students experience as much as two years growth over a year. The U.S. Department of Education’s own evaluation of Striving Readers found strong results and the What Works Clearinghouse also found positive gains.

What Michigan and many other schools need is a radical transformation where teachers are supported with instructional materials and professional development and held accountable for student results. Principals are required to create a culture of success and high expectations. And we need to allow more, not less, digital learning tools, which when used appropriately can support teaching, provide additional personalized help for students, and offer new models for delivering high quality instruction.

It's quite clear there are too many Americans who don't know the difference between a good idea and an actual right. One signal of a legitimate right is, simply and generally speaking, a natural human quality one possesses which can be secured at no expense to another. (Yes, there's more to a right than just that, but it will due for now).

For example, my right to free speech costs nothing of no one. The same is true with my right to assemble, worship, own property, to be alive, enjoy liberty, etc. If a newly invented "right to read" comes at someone else's expense, then it fundamentally is not a right at all. In this case, it would be properly considered an "entitlement."

The subsequent action government would then presumably take to forcefully acquire the wealth of one American in order to secure someone else's entitlement is properly labeled "legal plunder." Of course, states are capable of legislating such things (education is entirely in their Constitutional domain), and they do it all the time. That still doesn't make it an advisable thing to do.

As Americans, we are especially aware of the self-evident truth that, "all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" among others. As such, it is unquestionably one's right to learn to read. It's certainly not an actual right to expect someone else to pay for a government worker to assist you in your personal ambition to learn to read -- which is what the Detroit situation is really all about.

To be sure, though I have a right to pursue happiness, I have no right whatsoever to expect the state to guarantee my happiness. The government's only natural obligation, in this case, is to preserve my God-given right to pursue happiness. Pursuing and learning are verbs -- action words -- entailing action, which costs you nothing.

Another thing too many Americans don't seem to remember, or perhaps have never learned, in discussions such as these: It is the right and responsibility of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children.

Yes, it has always been, and will always be the natural right and organic responsibility of parents to educate their own children. Public education is fundamentally nothing more than communities of parents, banding together to hire fulltime educators to assist parents in this one parental duty.

Whether a child sufficiently learns to read is categorically a parent's exclusive responsibility.

Should some errant court ever determine it is not the parent's exclusive responsibility to raise and educate their own children, America will have bigger questions to deal with than the potential cost to local school districts. The bigger question would then become; is this still America -- or should we begin going by some different name?

Yes, reading is a civil right, and this notion has been under discussion since at least 2000. Reading is the foundation for all future learning, for most future generation of income, and for being able to engage productively in civic life. And, frankly, at a cost of nearly $12,000 a year for each student, parents, students, and taxpayers should demand that students at least learn to read at a basic level. Is that amount of money enough to turn around the chronic and systemic failings in Michigan (or any state) schools? Unclear. But it is certainly enough to address almost any reading difficulty a student might have. In education, the system has completely failed if this many students attend school on a regular basis and cannot read.

What if Detroit’s Highland Park started to make reading the highest priority? Educators would refocus everything with a single goal in mind – every student reading on grade level within 12 months. Anything that didn’t directly contribute to achieving that goal would be dropped or changed to be on point. This notion might seem radical, but is it any less radical than accepting the current dismal results?

We know how to teach almost every student to read. We don’t even have to do additional research. We just have to make it happen.

So, the children referenced in this lawsuit (and many others) are imprisoned by illiteracy, and a 21st century version of the civil rights movement is now needed to right this wrong.

But, while the goal of the ACLU’s lawsuit to achieve this civil right for students is just, the means to achieve it are laced with irony. The suit states:

“The Highland Park School District is among the lowest performing school districts in the state of Michigan and will remain so unless research based methodologies for improving basic literacy skills and reading proficiency are immediately implemented and rigorously administered by well-trained and supported professionals and monitored strictly according to accepted standards of the profession.”

That language is strikingly familiar - perhaps because the ACLU’s legal goals of accountability and “improving basic literacy” were already established in the bill entitled The No Child Left Behind Act, which passed the House and Senate overwhelmingly a decade ago.

Here is where irony takes center stage. Although the ACLU is taking unprecedented measures to establish civil rights for students, it has campaigned against NCLB and been highly supportive of those who now wish to waive its requirements regarding assessments, free tutoring, reaching reading proficiency, and requiring assistance for students with special needs. These requirements of the law clearly support the ACLU’s current agenda, so why would the ACLU not support continuing a measure that introduced accountability into public education?

Even more illogical is that one of the eight plaintiffs represented by the ACLU in this case, blames her children’s failed education on NCLB, stating “The No Child Left Behind program . . . left kids behind.” Actually, the failed implementation of NCLB policy by many school systems is what “left kids behind.”

All this when the ACLU’s case hinges on the claim that children “who do not pass the fourth-grade and seventh-grade reading tests are entitled to special assistance to bring up their reading levels.” Yet, special assistance, free tutoring and services for students with disabilities are all provided by NCLB. So where is the rally against waiving these requirements?

I support the idea of literary as a fundamental right. Regardless of whether the ACLU’s lawsuit is successful, I hope that organization and its adherents realize that the very thing they are asking for on behalf of disadvantaged students already exists in a piece of legislation they have historically opposed.

The lawsuit brought by the ACLU in Michigan is indeed important, but not so much because its claims are framed around the idea of reading as a civil right. Various courts in prior adequacy cases have framed their opinions and their orders in terms of the state’s responsibility to provide opportunities for reading and other basic learning. In New York, for instance, the constitutionally-required “sound basic education” was declared by the court in 1995 to consist of “the basic literacy, calculating, and verbal skills necessary to enable children to eventually function productively as civic participants capable of voting and serving on a jury.”

Other courts have gone beyond basic literacy in defining the state’s constitutional obligation to educate its children. For example, New Jersey’s Abbott v. Burke accepted the academic standards in all seven core curriculum areas (visual and performing arts, comprehensive health and physical education, language-arts literacy, math, science, social studies, and world language) as the substantive level of education that must be provided to ensure all children are prepared for active citizenship and full participation in the economy.

Yet what strikes me most about the new Michigan complaint is its focus on a statutory provision and the decision to pursue something called a “Writ of Mandamus.” When a plaintiff petitions a court for such a writ, the contentions are (1) that governmental officials have a non-discretionary (generally called “ministerial”) duty to execute a law, (2) that the officials have neglected that duty, and (3) that the only real remedy available is for the court to order the officials to do their jobs. In this case, the plaintiffs are asking for enforcement of a statutory provision called “MCL 380.1278(8),” which provides as follows:

“Excluding special education pupils, pupils having a learning disability, and pupils with extenuating circumstances as determined by school officials, a pupil who does not score satisfactorily on the 4th or 7th grade Michigan educational assessment program reading test shall be provided special assistance reasonably expected to enable the pupil to bring his or her reading skills to grade level within 12 months” (emphasis added).
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/%28S%28520cd0auhvnthd455vpwqgrp%29%29/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectname=mcl-380-1278

That is, the state legislature passed a law expressly mandating that a proven, effective reading intervention is to be provided for students who show a lack of reading proficiency. Because this is clearly not happening in Highland Park School District, the plaintiffs are asking to court to order state employees to carry out the law.

This is important for several reasons. First, while the language in MCL 380.1278(8) is unique, many states have unenforced laws on the books that set forth obligations to students. Other than shrugging and sighing, not much happens – they just remain unenforced. Second, a lawsuit of this type highlights a key element of successful accountability systems: the accountability runs in multiple directions. It’s ineffective and unfair for the state to hold schools, teachers and students accountable for outcomes if the state itself isn’t accountable for providing legally mandated inputs.

Finally, the lawsuit is important because it brings attention to the idea of opportunities to learn. The students in Highland Park have awful academic results. The typical response nowadays is to blame those at the school sites: the principals, the teachers and the children. But we know that learning follows from opportunities to learn. When schools are unsafe and academic supports are lacking – as the complaint alleges here – the results are sadly predictable. And the primary fault lies with an inequitable system.

How did we get to this point? The Highland Park district, like any other school district, is merely a construct of state law – a convenience set up by the state to carry out state educational obligations. While Michigan has now “taken over” the district, given its fiscal problems and academic underperformance, final responsibility for ensuring constitutional and statutory educational adequacy and equality was never fully delegable – it always remained with the state. The failure to provide basic literacy skills to Highland Park’s children has thus always been the state's failure. This lawsuit is merely an attempt to hold the state accountable for that failure and for its obligations to its children.

Here is a guest post from Sam Chaltain (www.samchaltain.com), a Washington D.C.-based writer and education activist. Read his full blog post with policy recommendations here.

Although this case is the first of its kind, we’ve been having this debate for a loooong time now. For years, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. has tried — and failed — to introduce language for a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution “regarding the right of all citizens of the United States to a public education of equal high quality.”

Then there’s the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, a 1989 gathering that resulted in the first legally binding international treaty and establishment of universally recognized norms and standards for the protection and promotion of children’s rights. By any account it was an overwhelming success; all but three member nations signed on.

The three holdouts? Somalia. South Sudan. And us.

And then there’s the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in response to a group of poor Texas parents who claimed their state’s tolerance of the wide disparity in school resources violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. A state court agreed, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in a narrow 5-4 decision, reversed. “Though education is one of the most important services performed by the state, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution.” If it were, the majority conceded, “virtually every State will not pass muster.”

For Justice Thurgood Marshall, writing in dissent, that was precisely the point. “The Court concludes that public education is not constitutionally guaranteed,” even though “no other state function is so uniformly recognized as an essential element of our society’s well being . . . Education prepares individuals to be self-reliant and self-sufficient participants in society. Both facets of this observation are suggestive of the substantial relationship which education bears to guarantees of our Constitution.”

The fact that the Court’s 1973 decision was 5-4 tells you how closely contested this issue has always been. And yet I can’t help but wonder, why is it so difficult to demand of ourselves a higher set of standards – for learning, for teaching, and for fairness? And what should we do at the federal level to ensure the right to learn of all American children?