Access to Education

(Also available in Spanish)

During the 1940s and 1950s, two court cases changed the face of education in the United States:

• In 1945, Mendez v. Westminster ended segregation of Hispanic school children in Orange County, Calif.; and
• In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation in all public schools.

Despite these changes, discrepancies of equal education rights remained, especially for Hispanic students. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, legislation was passed to address and eliminate barriers to a quality education for all.

• Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in federally funded programs and stated that a student has a right to meaningful and effective instruction.
• The Bilingual Education Act, first passed in 1968, provided supplemental funding for school districts to establish programs that meet the "special education needs" of students with limited English proficiency.
• The Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974 provided definitions of what constituted denial of equal educational opportunity. Among them is "…the failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by students in an instructional program."
• In 1974, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lau v. Nichols that basic English skills are at the core of what public schools teach. "Imposition of a requirement that before a child can effectively participate in the educational program, he must already have acquired those basic skills is to make a mockery of public education."