Education Press Conference (notes with Mayor Daley)

The Language of the Amendment (H.J. Res. 29):o `SECTION 1. All persons shall enjoy the right to a public education of equal high quality.o `SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce and implement this article by appropr
No American has a citizenship right to a public education of equal high quality in the Constitution.In San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), which was a case on behalf of poor schoolchildren challenging the Texas system of financing public schools based on local property taxes, the Court ruled that the system did not violate the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause because education is not a fundamental right and property is no reason to hold otherwise. This is the cornerstone case establishing that the Constitution contains no right to a public education.

You have access to the best public education made available by your state and local education officials. That varies widely from state to state and school district to school district. Therefore, you have the best education that Illinois, Cook County and Chicago; or Mississippi or California can give you - but together they form a separate and unequal U.S. educational system.

This is because of the 10th Amendment - states' rights. If a right is not explicitly in the Constitution - or established through a Supreme Court interpretation and precedent - it belongs to the individual states.

We don't have an American educational system. We have 50 different state, 3,067 different county, 20,000 different municipal, 14,063 different school districts, 93,000 different schools, for 54.9 million students - all separate and unequal. But the students graduating from these separate and unequal schools are expected to compete equally to get into the university, get the job, get the promotion, receive the contract or get the business opportunity.