Source: http://www.childrenslegalrightsjournal.com/childrenslegalrightsjournal/volume_34_issue_1?pg=98
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 18:50:19+00:00

Document:
Cases after Rodriguez also call into question the Court’s refusal to recognize education as a fundamental right. 65 In Ambach v. Norwick (1979), the importance of public education in civic life was the determinative factor in finding that a state may deny resident-aliens teaching certification. 66 The Court upheld the teaching certification restriction, it explained, because some state functions are so critical to democratic self-governance that it is permissible to exclude all those who had “not become part of the process of self-government.” 67 Nevertheless, Justice governed by local boards of education” and that “[l]ocal control of education manifests itself in an American invention, the local school board”). As this Article will demonstrate, however, such deference to the concept of local control is misguided. See infra Part IV-C (arguing that property tax-based funding systems do not give poor school districts any meaningful fiscal control); see also Serrano v. Priest, 487 P.2d 1241, 1259-60 (Cal. 1971) (finding that California’s school funding system failed to provide poor districts with local fiscal control).
58 Rodriguez, 411 U.S. at 58-59. It would take the Texas state legislature more than two decades—and prodding from several state supreme court decisions—before it passed meaningful education funding reform measures. See School Funding Cases in Texas, NAT’L EDUC. ACCESS NETWORK, http://schoolfunding.info/2011/10/school-funding-cases-in-texas/ (last updated Jul. 2013) (summarizing education funding litigation and legislative action in Texas following Rodriguez).
59 Rodriguez, 411 U.S. at 58-59.
60 See, e.g., Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954); Ambach v. Norwick, 441 U.S. 68 (1979); Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982); see Lynch, supra note 14, at 997 (noting that Plyler “conflicts sharply with the Rodriguez court's conclusion that a fundamental right to education does not exist”).
61 Sweatt, 339 U.S. at 634-36.
62 Id. at 632-34 (comparing, unfavorably, the number of faculty members, size of law libraries, existence of moot court teams and law review, professional affiliations, etc. of both schools).
63 See Rodriguez, 411 U.S. at 84 (Marshall, J., dissenting) (arguing that in Sweatt, the Court “acknowledged that inequality in the educational facilities provided to students may be discriminatory state action as contemplated by the Equal Protection Clause”).
64 Brown, 347 U.S. at 493. Brown, of course, was also decided on the basis of equal protection of African American students, and it did not rule on whether education is a fundamental right. Id. Nevertheless, it clearly characterized education as something more than just “important” to American life. See Greg Rubio, Note, Surviving Rodriguez: The Viability of Federal Equal Protection Claims by Underfunded Charter Schools, 2008 U. ILL. L. REV. 1643, 1667 (2008) (arguing that the “remarkably sweeping recognition of the importance of education” in Brown suggested, at least immediately after the ruling, that the Court was ready to recognize a fundamental right to education).
65 See Ambach, 441 U.S. 68; Plyler, 457 U.S. 202.
66 Ambach, 441 U.S. at 74-75. Two foreign nationals, both long-time residents of the U.S. and married to Americans, were denied certification by New York State because they had not attained citizenship. Id. at 71-72.

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