It’s that time of year again: yellow buses rolling down the roads and highways, special sales on notebooks and pens, the morning rush to get the gang out the front door, kids leaving the house that first morning with an empty backpack and trudging home weighted down with books like soldiers on the march.
Whether it’s a senior trooping off to his final year at the public high school, a sixth grade homeschooled student cracking open her Saxon math book, or a mom with a tear in her eye after saying goodbye to her freshman son at college, likely the last thing on anyone’s mind are the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court rulings having to do with education. Yet like state educational guidelines and regulations, the curricula that come and go, and the diverse opinions on what makes up a good education, some cases that appeared before the highest court of the land in the last 75 or so years dramatically changed both our schools and our country.
