Congress's role in defining and promoting equality of educational opportunity has evolved over the past 55 years since "Brown v. Board of Education." Most recently, all three branches of the federal government have focused more on equality of educational opportunity for "individual" students rather than for protected classes.…

Raising academic standards and eliminating achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students are America's prime national educational goals. Current federal and state policies, however, largely ignore the fact that the childhood poverty rate in the United States is 21%, the highest in the industrialized world, and that poverty…

Discusses the role of the courts in educational policymaking and educational quality improvement. It examines the courts' success in using state constitutions to mandate educational policy, the influence of the Goals 2000 initiative in school financing, the factors attributed to the state's increased legal exposure, and the court's impact in…