The U.S. Supreme Court took a major step toward ending a 17-year legal battle today, deciding Arizona has done enough to help students who haven’t learned to speak, read or write English.
The justices reversed the decision of the lower courts and sent the case, known as Flores vs. Arizona, back with instructions to consider improvements the state has made in the way schools teach English learners.
“This is a major step to stop federal trial judges from micromanaging state education systems,” said state schools superintendent Tom Horne, who asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the case. “This affirms that important value that we the people control our government and our elected representatives and not ruled over by an aristocracy of lifetime federal judges.”
The Supreme Court decided the lower courts concentrated too narrowly on how much the state spent to help language learners and allowed that increases in overall school funding could be considered as a boost to help schools take the appropriate action called for in federal law.
The decision did not weaken Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1974, as some civil rights attorneys feared. But the justices’ said simply complying with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 did help to satisfy the requirements in the 1974 law to “take appropriate action” to help students overcome language barriers.