Skip to Main Content
NYC Civil Rights History Project Logo
  • About
  • Gallery
  • Timeline
  • Topics
  • Key Concepts
  • Teaching Resources
  • Project History
  • News and Events
  • Search
13. Injustice and inequality in education continue to this day.

  1. Injustice and inequality in education continue to this day.

New York’s students have a right to a “sound, basic education” guaranteed them by the state constitution.1 (Although the US Constitution prohibits discrimination in education based on race or ability, it does not provide a right to education. It leaves that to the states). Despite the fact that each student has a recognized right to education free from discrimination based on race or gender, the reality of schooling in NYC is far from equal. Disabled students and students of color are more likely to attend schools with lower levels of academic achievement and safety, and fewer academic opportunities, than white students and non-disabled students. 2

The Supreme Court began to recognize Disabled people’s rights to education with the 1975 “Education of All Handicapped Children” Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.3 These legal structures created a way for Disabled children and their families to claim access and services that had previously been denied to them. Although disability rights law today emphasizes placing students in the “least restrictive environment” that can provide the services they are entitled to, tens of thousands of NYC students do not attend school alongside non-disabled peers and experience dehumanizing treatment in segregated or inclusive classroom settings. Disabled students, especially those who are Black and Latinx, are suspended and expelled from school at much higher rates than their white and non-disabled peers.4

These continuing inequalities make it clear that even if the law recognizes students’ educational rights, NYC students, and in particular Disabled and Black and Latinx students, do not yet fully experience educational justice.

  1. “Safeguarding Sound Basic Education: Constitutional Violations In New York State,” Teachers College Columbia University, accessed February 8, 2023, http://www.centerforeducationalequity.org/publications/know-your-educational-rights/29767_Know_Your_Rights_128-1.pdf ↩︎

  2. Cheri Fancsali, “Special Education in New York City: Understanding the Landscape” (Research Alliance for NYC Schools at NYU Steinhardt, 2019), https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/research-alliance/research/publications/special-education-new-york-city ↩︎

  3. US Department of Education, “A History of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,” November 18, 2022. ↩︎

  4. Fancsali, “Special Education in New York City.” ↩︎