This work explores the meaning of equality and freedom of education in a global context and their relationship to the universal right to education. It also proposes evaluating school systems according to their achievement of equality and freedom. The author's inter-civilizational analysis of educational rights focuses on four of the world's major civilizations: Confucian, Islamic, Western and Hindu. He begins by considering educational rights as part of the global flow of ideas and the global culture of schooling. He also considers the tension this generates within different civilizational traditions. Next he proceeds to: examine the meaning of educational rights in the Confucian tradition, in the recent history of China and in the Chinese Constitution; look at educational rights in the context of Islamic civilization and as presented in the constitutions of Islamic countries; explore the problems created by the Western natural rights tradition and the eventual acceptance of educational rights as represented in European constitutions; investigate the effect of global culture on India and the blend of Western and Hindu ideas in the Indian consitution.

The "school-to-prison pipeline" is an emerging trend that pushes large numbers of at-risk youth--particularly children of color--out of classrooms and into the juvenile justice system. The policies and practices that contribute to this trend can be seen as a pipeline with many entry points, from under-resourced K-12 public schools, to the over-use of zero-tolerance suspensions and expulsions and to the explosion of policing and arrests in public schools. The confluence of these practices threatens to prepare an entire generation of children for a future of incarceration. In this comprehensive study of the relationship between American law and the school-to-prison pipeline, co-authors Catherine Y. Kim, Daniel J. Losen, and Damon T. Hewitt analyze the current state of the law for each entry point on the pipeline and propose legal theories and remedies to challenge them. Using specific state-based examples and case studies, the authors assert that law can be an effective weapon in the struggle to reduce the number of children caught in the pipeline, address the devastating consequences of the pipeline on families and communities, and ensure that our public schools and juvenile justice system further the goals for which they were created: to provide meaningful, safe opportunities for all the nation's children.