(NEW YORK) MintPress — In a groundbreaking move, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan on Thursday filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of nearly a thousand students in a Detroit area school district.
It charges the state of Michigan, its agencies overseeing public education and the Highland Park School District with failing to adequately educate those attending K-12 public schools and ensure they are functionally literate.
The district has struggled with bad finances and falling enrollment for several years
“This is a first-of-its-kind lawsuit asserting a child’s fundamental right to read. The capacity to learn is deeply rooted in the ability to achieve literacy. A child who cannot read will be disenfranchised in our society and economy for a lifetime,” said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan.
“Highland Park students want to be educated. However, their hopes and dreams for a future are being destroyed by an ineffective system that does not adequately prepare them for life beyond school.”
The complaint is based on a 1993 law that says if public school students are not proficient in reading, as determined by tests given in grades four and seven, they must be provided “special assistance” to bring them to grade level within a year.
Michigan is the only state with this requirement, but others, such as Colorado, have recently passed laws mandating that schools take extra steps to detect and correct early literacy problems.
The lawsuit comes at a time of growing concern across the nation about early literacy. Educators say students who are not reading proficiently by the end of third grade are four times as likely as proficient readers to drop out of high school.
“None of those adults charged with the care of these children…have done their jobs,” asserted Moss.
Dire straits
According to the ACLU, less than 10 percent of the district’s students in grades three-eight are proficient in reading and math, based on Michigan Education Assessment Program (MEAP) scores. By 11th grade, they don’t fare any better, with less than 10 percent scoring proficient in reading or math on the Michigan Merit Exam (MME).
During its investigation of the three-school district, which has a total of 973 students, the ACLU of Michigan found that it has a lack of counselors and assistant principals, students often shared outdated textbooks and had to return them at the end of the day, buildings were typically filthy, unheated and lacked security, and bathrooms had no toilet paper or soap.
“No one can walk through the halls of Highland Park schools and say that this is a suitable and safe environment to learn,” said Michelle Johnson, a lifelong resident whose daughter is entering her junior year but reads between five and seven levels below her grade.
One of the plaintiffs in the suit, a 14-year-old boy named Quentin, just finished seventh grade but reads at a first-grade level, according to an expert hired by the ACLU.
When asked to draft a letter to describe his school, he wrote, “My name is Quemtin…and you can make the school gooder by getting people that will do the jod that is pay for get a football tame for the kinds mybe a baksball tamoe get a other jamtacher for the school get a lot of tacher.”
“No case ever filed anywhere in the U.S. has addressed a school system in such dire straits,” claimed Mark Rosenbaum, University of Michigan Law School professor and ACLU cooperating attorney. “The Highland Park School District is among the lowest achieving school districts in the nation, let alone Michigan.”
Calls for action
The ACLU of Michigan is asking for an immediate remedy by the state, including research-based methods of instruction, highly trained educators and administrators, a process for monitoring progress, new educational materials and textbooks, and a clean and safe learning environment.
A spokeswoman for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) said it was “impossible and imprudent to comment on a lawsuit that we haven’t been served or read yet.”
But she acknowledged that the administration is working to address “a long overdue fiscal and academic crisis that is crippling the district, shortchanging its students and threatening the schools’ very existence.”
“How the State responds to this lawsuit—whether it opposes a right to read for the two-thirds of Highland Park school children who score below proficient on the Michigan reading assessment test—reveals its concern for the fate of these children and their community,” said U of M professor Rosenbaum.
“We only ask that the state fulfill its obligation to our students and provide them with a quality education, which is every child’s right,” maintained the ACLU’s Moss. “The district will continue to hang by a thread with no lifeboat in sight, unless the state acts swiftly and decidedly.”