Your education is not an equal opportunity

[alp227]

by Sam Chaltain

(CNN) -- Should your ZIP code determine your access to the American dream? Or is the U.S. Constitution's guarantee to provide "equal protection" a principle we have silently agreed to uphold in theory -- but not in practice?

I'm starting to wonder after reading about Tanya McDowell, the Connecticut mother facing felony charges for lying on her 5-year-old son's registration forms so he could attend a better school. McDowell's story is painfully reminiscent of Kelley Williams-Bolar, the Ohio mother who made a similar choice earlier this year -- and is now a convicted felon.

These two stories of civil disobedience come against the backdrop of an ongoing national conversation about our public school system -- and how it must be improved. They also provide an unsettling irony in lieu of the upcoming 57th anniversary of Thurgood Marshall's historic victory in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that triumphantly reaffirmed a core American principle: "In the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place."

If Marshall were alive today, he would urge us to stop celebrating our symbolic victory in Brown and start accepting our actual responsibility for tolerating a public education system that is, clearly, still separate, and still unequal.

More: CNN.com

Sam Chaltain is an education activist from Washington, D.C. and has written five books including two published this year: We Must Not Be Afraid to be Free: Stories Of Free Expression in America and Faces of Learning: 50 Powerful Stories of Defining Moments in Education.

[newblewtoo]

1. K&R

This might do better in the education forum.

It is amazing the difference in educational opportunity you can find even within the same state. Here in NH we 'cherish' education at very different levels.