The Enduring Legacy of Rodriguez: Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity

Interesting read relative to the present educational system. The book does provide a hopeful pathway for us to consider in creating equality in education. I was privileged to listen to Dr Kimberly Robinson who teaches at the Richmond Iniversity School of Law present the book, from a personal perspective. Well worth the read!

This is an accessible, insightful, and compelling account of the disparities in educational opportunity left in the wake of a highly contentious 5-4 Supreme Court decision, still reverberating in the law more than 40 years later. The story retold here about Rodriguez and the issues that the decision left unanswered are as infuriating as they are illuminating. The authors chronicle its influence in having facilitated and impeded decades of lawsuits in state courts. The progress made in reducing educational disparities has been hard fought in state courts but alas not as enduring as Rodriguez.Thoroughly researched and well-written, this book will appeal to generalists and specialists alike. A reader unfamiliar with this terrain will find her bearing in confronting the steep challenges to educational equality and adequacy explored at every turn—school funding, teacher quality, curricular standards, racial and social integration. For specialists, the new and diverse ideas and proposed agenda for state and federal reforms by leading education law scholars offer fresh, thought-provoking perspectives.The lasting impression of this well-conceived and much-needed volume is that the legacy of Rodriguez is one of profound discontent with how the law has come to shape educational opportunities in our nation. But these scholars give us hope that renewed attention on the purposes, functions, and principles underlying education rights can ensure that legacy does not endure.