In 2005, famed civil rights leader and education activist Robert Moses invited one hundred prominent African American and Latino intellectuals and activists to meet to discuss a proposal for a campaign to guarantee a quality education for all children as a constitutional right-a movement that would "transform current approaches to educational inequity, all of which have failed miserably to yield results for our children." The response was passionate, and the meeting launched a movement.
This book-emerging directly from that effort-reports on what has happened since and calls for a new scale of organizing, legal initiatives, and public definitions of what a quality education is. Essays include

· Robert Moses's historically rooted call for citizens, especially young people, to make the demand for quality education

· Ernesto Cortés's view from decades of work organizing Latino communities in Texas

· Charles Payne's interview with students from the Baltimore Algebra Project, who organized to make historic demands on their district

· Legal scholar Imani Perry's nuanced analysis of the prospects of making a case for quality education as a right guaranteed by the Constitution

· Perspectives from scholars Lisa Delpit and Joan T. Wynne, and by teachers Alicia Caroll and Kim Parker, who provide examples of what quality education is, describing its goal, and how to guide practice in the meantime

Introductions
The Historical and Contemporary Foundations for Robert Moses's Call to Make Quality Education a Constitutionally Guaranteed Right
Theresa Perry

"The Holy Cause of Education": Lessons from the History of a Freedom-Loving People
Linda Mizell

Part I Organizing: The Youth Shall Lead the Way

1. Miss Baker's Grandchildren: An Interview with the Baltimore Algebra Project
Charles M. Payne

Part II Can the Constitution Guarantee Quality Education?

2. Reading, Writing, and Rights: Ruminations on Getting the Law in Line with Educational
Justice Imani Perry

3. Schools That Shock the Conscience: What Williams v. California Reveals about the Struggle for an Education on Equal Terms Fifty Years after Brown
Jeannie Oakes

4. Constitutional Property v. Constitutional People
Robert P. Moses

5. Quality Education as a Civil Right: Reflections
Ernesto Cortés Jr.

Part III Pursuing Excellence in a Context of Inequities

6. Stepping Stories: Creating an African American Community of Readers
Kimberly N. Parker

7. Is This School?
Alicia Carroll

8. Stories of Collaboration and Research within an Algebra Project Context: Offering Quality Education to Students Pushed to the Bottom of Academic Achievement
Joan T. Wynne and Janice Giles

9. Culturally Responsive Pedagogies: Lessons from Teachers
Lisa Delpit

Contributors