On The Margins

The Leandro vs. North Carolina lawsuit has become a foundational court case in defining the educational rights of students in North Carolina. In 1994, five rural districts sued the state making the case that they did not have enough resources to provide the constitutionally mandated education. From this litigation, the language of all students being entitled to a "sound basic education" emerged. This case and it's implications continue to reverberate in our present context, as the fulfillment of this mandate remains unresolved. In 2018, Judge David Lee ordered the research organization WestEd to assess North Carolina's progress toward this goal. The WestEd Report, released in December 2019, offers a well-documented evaluation of the State's movement or lack thereof. However, Dr. Cooper argues that although race was not the central consideration in the original case it should be focused upon, and is largely absent from the WestEd Report. In his paper, WestEd's Leandro Report: The Missing Pages he asserts the n