MANDATORY UNIFORM SCHOOL LAWS

WHEREAS, a free society is dependent upon well informed, independent and educated individual citizens; and

WHEREAS, teachers, both professionally and as citizens, have a special involvement in and commitment to universal egalitarian and stimulating educational experience of high quality for all youngsters; and

WHEREAS, the American Federation of Teachers believes in an open, free, egalitarian and just society for all and intends to continue to make its contribution toward the realization of that idea in the United States; and

WHEREAS, adequate preparations for intelligent exercise of privileges, rights and obligations as citizens of a free democracy require that this society insure good educational opportunities for all children; and

WHEREAS, compulsory attendance laws, certification programs, accreditation procedures and similar devices, uniformly applied, are important tools in assuring that all children have as nearly equal an opportunity to acquire an education of high quality as it is possible for the society to provide, although we recognize that additional tools and more effective use of those in our possession are obviously and pressingly necessary to accomplish the goal; and

WHEREAS, these laws and procedures are currently under attack, on constitutional and policy grounds, in the legislatures and courts of the land, including the petition filed with the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of LeRoy vs. The State of Kansas:

RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers shall intervene in the public debate, in the legislative halls, and in the courts, to add its voice to the maintenance and strengthening of such mandatory and uniform rules, laws and regulations in the belief that the uniform application of such laws is as essential to the education of all children as that education is to the safety, integrity, independence, progress and survival of our nation as a free and open society dependent, in the last analysis upon the enlightened intelligence of its citizens.