ABSTRACT
The role of civil rights law in promoting educational justice is complex and controversial. This chapter discusses the "for-and-against-rights" debate and to study the role of rights in education as it is reflected in everyday consciousness. Instead of objectively assessing the effects of rights on educational justice, it focuses on the subjective understandings of those who struggle for educational justice. Drawing on legal consciousness theory, the chapter suggests that those subjective understandings constitute the objective reality of rights and their role in educational reform. It describes the ways in which activists view educational injustice under each schema, and demonstrates how they invoke the various schemas to assess the role of rights in education. In the instrumental schema, activists view educational injustice as deprivation of specific resources from disadvantaged students. When activists invoke the instrumental schema they assess the role of civil rights law based on its capacity to provide the concrete needs of disadvantaged students in schools.
