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Positive Education Federalism: The Promise Of Equality After The Every Student Succeeds Act, Christian B. Sundquist

Mercer Law Review

The accepted narrative of the American public education system is one of decline, educational "crisis," and systemic failure. Our public schools increasingly are segregated by race and class in the post-Brown era, while fundamental social inequalities persist among schools in regards to educational quality, financing, and outcomes. Long viewed as essential to the economic and democratic development of America's citizenry, our unequal system of universal public education has forsaken the "faces at the bottom of [the] well" in an era of deregulation and decreased social welfare funding. ...

Part I of this Article explores traditional conceptions of federalism as a …