The EdLaw Project

Founded in January 2000, the EdLaw Project is an educational advocacy partnership between the Children's Law Center of Massachusetts, Inc. (CLCM) and the Youth Advocacy Project (YAP). Motivated by the shared belief that educational success is essential for children to thrive, YAP and CLC launched the EdLaw Project with a mission of advocating for the education services that Boston's highest risk children need to succeed.


About EdLaw | EdLaw Resources | Education Statistics | Donate to EdLaw

About EdLaw

The EdLaw Project is an advocacy initiative created to ensure equal opportunity in life achievement for Boston youth by enforcing every child's right to a quality education. Through legal representation, technical assistance, and training to families, youth-serving professionals and attorneys, the EdLaw Project advocates for indigent and low-income children in danger of not receiving appropriate education services.

The project offers direct advocacy to children facing suspension and expulsion, ineffective reintegration into the school system following detention or incarceration, inadequate education while in state custody and children with undetected special needs. The Edlaw Project also offers training to families and youth-serving professionals in education and legal rights. We promote growth and stability in the lives of children and make an impact on education policy through:

• Child-empowered legal representation in matters of school discipline, academic failure, undetected special needs, inadequate education while in state custody, and ineffective reintegration following detention and incarceration;
  
  
• Increasing recognition of indicators of unmet educational needs, the link between academic failure and delinquency, student rights, and available legal and non-legal resources to empower families, youth-serving professionals and educators in their advocacy on behalf of children;
  
  
• Supporting the community-set agenda of improving education by assisting community members, local groups, and statewide organizations in developing effective family-centered and data-driven education policies.

Education Statistics

The EdLaw Project has compiled the following statistics on education and its relationship to the juvenile justice system:

• 62% of learning disabled high school dropouts are arrested within three to five years, compared to 15% of learning disabled graduates. (Citizens for Juvenile Justice: Special Education Reform)
  
  
• 40% of state prisoners can't read and 67% of prison inmates did not have full-time employment when they were arrested. (David Cole, No Equal Justice 4, 1999)



• In Massachusetts, 83.4% of the children involved in the busiest courts have unmet educational needs and 88.5% had school discipline problems yet only 11.2% of the DYS committed population are simultaneously served by the Department of Education as special needs students. (Citizens for Juvenile Justice: Special Education Reform)
  
  
• In Boston, the 2003-2004 high school dropout rate for African American students is two and a half times the rate of white students, while the Latino dropout rate is three times higher. The annual dropout rate for all Boston high schools is more than twice the rate statewide. (Massachusetts Dept. of Education)



• In Massachusetts, 37% of youth expelled in 1997-98 did not receive alternative education in another school or special education program. In 75% of those cases, alternative education was not provided because the school district chose not to do so. (Kim Brooks et al., School House Hype: Two Years Later - Justice Policy Institute Children's Law Center, 2000)

Donate to EdLaw

To make a tax-deductible donation to the EdLaw Project, please send a check payable to the Children's Law Center, to the address below:

Edlaw Project
Ten Malcolm X Boulevard
Roxbury, MA 02119-1776