Many issues behind education are being brought to light today in regards to race, uniformity of curriculum, and funding of higher education. Through this group project we look into an important aspect of the Lobato V Colorado case.
Lobato V Colorado was a case that took place here recently, it was heard by the Supreme Court in 2013. The Lobato family and many other concerned parents argued that the funds going to Colorado schools were not equally dispersed. Much of this is because they went off of property taxes in the areas of those schools, so those schools in low-income neighborhoods were getting significantly less funding than those in richer neighborhoods. Unequal funding of these schools causes some schools to have a severe disadvantage in terms of keeping up with technology, educating their students on updated programs used in the world today, and overall they performed lower in test scores which also determines how much they get funded. The Supreme Court ruled that Colorado’s law on school funding was constitutional because it was thorough uniformed, and education is not considered a fundamental right in the constitution.
We wanted to look more into this statement claiming it is not a fundamental right in our constitution, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) clearly states everyone has a right to a fundamental education. The US claims to follow the UDHR, so why do they say education is not a fundamental right?
After searching for a while we found two cases that stuck out to us. The first in chronological order actually answers the question at hand. The case? San Antonio School District V Rodriguez in 1973. How does this case answer the question at hand you might ask? Well it has to do with the reasoning behind the Supreme Court decision. The argument of the case was that the San Antonio School District and the state of Texas as a whole had a funding scheme which did not provide an equal education to every student due to lack of funding in certain areas. If this were the case the scheme would violate the 14th amendment of the constitution. The Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling decided that this funding scheme was not in violation of the 14th amendment stating that education was not in fact a fundamental right under the constitution.
This decision set the precedent that education is not considered a fundamental right under the constitution. Even though this case occurred over 30 years ago it is still important to this day because it establishes the fact that in the United States, education is not in fact a fundamental right protected by the constitution. Therefore making education a sort of “free game” scenario in the country.
We see a similar situation occur in the case of Lujan V Colorado State Board of Education. This case follows the same basic scenario, the scenario being that some schools are receiving inadequate funds to provide an equal education due to a restrictive statewide funding system. Just like in SASD V Rodriguez the Supreme Court rules that this funding system is not in violation of the 14th amendment of the United States. However the Supreme Court has different reasoning for this decision versus the reasoning in the previously stated case. Their reasoning on this decision was based on the matter of equality in regards to education. The Supreme Court ruled that the funding system did not need to provide equal educational services because they felt that equal educational services was not protected under the 14th amendment.
Both this cases are two sides of the same coin. Both essentially say that education is not a fundamental right protected by the constitution, they just happen to say it in different ways. One explicitly states it while the other sends a similar message and sets the precedent that we will later see in Lobato V State.
If we were to declare education a fundamental right and disperse funding equally, how might that look in higher education in regards to colleges in the United State?
Looking at many European countries, we see that they have a slightly different approach to postsecondary education than we do here in the United States. Take Germany for example. Germany views higher education as more of a public benefit as opposed to a private one and now offers a completely free education to native citizens as well as international students. While Germany has always had a history of either not charging or charging very low fees on college education, the German Constitutional Court ruled in 2006 that charging limited fees would not be of harm to the country, allowing states to decide how they would finance postsecondary education. However, most states opted against charging fees and the rule has now been revoked, allowing free education across the country. Germany’s free education is obtainable through their higher taxes, but there are many other countries that have lower education costs without relying so heavily on taxpayers’ money, including Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Brazil.
Australia and New Zealand have a unique system in which tuition and fees are backed with student loan repayment. This repayment is later entirely based off of each individual student’s post-education salary. This is unique in that any student that makes less than $50,000 each year will never pay more than 8% of their income as well as never owe any monthly payments.
If we dispersed this funding in K-12 education, it would make some drastic changes. There isn’t much research how education might change if it was equally dispersed, but it can only make things better if everyone starts off their education on a level playing field.
Jenny Brundin (2013), the author of the article “Lobato Versus Colorado In A National Context” mentioned that school funding in the U.S. is mainly based on local taxes, particularly property taxes. That’s why some school district where a lot of low income people live can’t raise enough money for their schools although they pay same rate taxes as the district where a lot of high income people live. The government should fund more money to the poor districts to make it equal to the wealthy district and someone should monitor if the government is funding it equally. The government can start equally funding it by putting a stop the funding system which based on the property taxes of the area and put all property taxes combined, and disperse it equally.
An educational environment where students can thrive should be provided to all children. The purpose of education is to gain more knowledge so that we can learn about the world we live in, as well as being able to use the knowledge we gain to go forward and find careers that allow us to change the world around us for the better. If we can’t receive adequate education, it becomes difficult to get jobs or we only get jobs which pay cheaper than the people who received higher education. It makes people feel resentful and sometimes commit crimes like stealing, fraud, and shootings. Also if equal education is not guaranteed and the low-income people can’t receive higher education, they can’t get well-paid jobs and they remain poor, then they can’t afford for the high quality schools for their children and it is goes on to the generations so that they can’t get out of this unfortunate cycle. Considering these things, looking at education as a fundamental right is crucial to our nations prosperity.
Less Than Elegant 