Jamarria Hall’s Detroit high school reminded him of a state prison: chains on the doors, disgusting food and dirty water, bathroom stalls without doors. No computers, tablets or SMART Boards. The few books he saw in the school were older than he was.

“Is this really a school? Like, this has to be a movie,” Hall said he thought. “People were getting set up to fail.”

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“It’s not worth it to this student, to the family, to sacrifice another generation of kids in Detroit,” said William Koski, a law professor who runs the Youth and Education Law Project at Stanford University. “The thinking is, ‘The situation really is quite desperate. We’ve got to shake things up somehow. … So let’s go for it.’ “

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Nevertheless, the students’ suit is worth a shot, Koski said.

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“You can’t completely shut kids out of an education,” Koski said.

The Detroit suit focuses on literacy as a minimum threshold for education – a skill that is more relevant to today’s economy than in the past, Koski said. Ultimately, the success of the suit will depend in part on the makeup of the Supreme Court.