SACRAMENTO, California (AP) -- The state agreed to improve its worst schools to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit targeting shoddy facilities, outdated textbooks and unqualified teachers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration said Tuesday. The proposed settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union is aimed at boosting conditions for students in the state's 2,400 lowest-performing schools, concentrated in inner cities, but provides little funding to carry out those goals.
This is fascinating. I had not realized this was going on in California. It's interesting that it would come to the ACLU suing the state to fund the poorest school districts. A more permanent solution than just the payout that will occur as a result of the settlement, would be to overhaul how money is distributed to schools, replacing it with a more equitable system that distributes funds equally among schools in poor and wealthy areas. I hope I am not sounding like some kind of socialist here, but ALL children desrve an equal education. Perhaps such a change would curb the trend of urban flight into wealthy neighborhoods with "goood schools," which effectively segragates--or has segregated-- the population by social status. Things were not always such that the rich lived among the rich and the poor among the poor, you know. Integrated communities are healthy communities.
