This Saturday, May 17, 2003, will begin the yearlong “Countdown to Brown,” an initiative to bring attention to the disparities that remain in our nation’s public school systems.  Fifty years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all children are deserving of an equal education, our school systems still fail to provide the neediest students with equal educational opportunities.

“A child’s educational opportunity should be based on their dreams, not zip code numbers,” said Dodd.  “This measure helps correct that inequity by ensuring that all children have an equal opportunity to excel on the road to success.”

“After 49 years of lawsuits, presidential commissions, research studies, and countless news stories, poor children in every state are still the least likely to receive a quality education,” said Congressman Fattah.  “The Student Bill of Rights asserts that this national scandal to deprive poor children of a decent education must end now.”

The Dodd-Fattah Student Bill of Rights would hold states accountable for providing resources including highly qualified teachers, challenging curricula, up-to-date textbooks and materials, small classes and guidance counselors to all students who rely on public schools for their education.

“Over the years since the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, when a unanimous United States Supreme Court held that ‘the opportunity of an education…, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms,’ courts in 44 of the States have heard challenges to the establishment, maintenance, and operation of educationally inadequate or inequitable State public school systems,” wrote Congressman Fattah in the Student Bill of Rights.

The Student Bill of Rights has the support of more than 100 Members of Congress and a host of organizations from around the country.  The yearlong push for the passage of The Student Bill of Rights will include grassroots support from organizations including the National PTA, Council of the Great City Schools, National Council of La Raza, NAACP, National Head Start Association, Children’s Defense Fund, American Federation of Teachers, Campaign for Fiscal Equity, and the National Education Association.

                  Currently, the U.S. spends less than 2 percent of its federal budget on elementary and secondary education.  The nation ranks last among developed countries in the difference in the quality of schools available to wealthy and low-income children.