In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
The words were Chief Justice Earl Warren's in the 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed public school segregation. Now the Brown decision has taken on fresh legal currency for another deprived group—the estimated 1,200,000 school-age children who are classified as retarded. In many school jurisdictions the least able of the retarded youngsters...
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