The Courts and School Finance Reform

based on district wealth and taxation effort. Wealthier school districts receive fewer matching state dollars, and poorer districts receive more. 4. Weighted student plan. Students are weighted in proportion to their special characteristics (for example, special needs, low-income) or special programs (for example, vocational or English for Speakers of Other Languages [ESOL]) to determine the cost of instruction per student. For example, a state might provide $4,000 for each regular student, one and a half times that amount ($6,000) for vocational students, and two times that amount ($8,000) for students with special needs. This plan is often used in conjunction with the foundation plan and at least thirtyseven states employ this approach.26

8-2d the courts and School Finance reform

Efforts to equalize educational opportunities among school districts within a state have been spurred by a series of court decisions that have fundamentally changed the financing of public education in most states. The 1971 landmark decision in Serrano v. Priest radically altered the way California allocated education funds. California, like nearly all the states, depended primarily on local property taxes to support the schools, and plaintiffs argued that this system of financing resulted in unconstitutional disparities in expenditures between wealthy and poor school districts. The California Supreme Court agreed and declared the state’s funding formula unconstitutional.

After the Serrano decision, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1973 in San Antonio v. Rodriguez that expenditure disparities based on differences in local property taxes between school districts in a state were not unconstitutional under the US Constitution but might be unconstitutional under state constitutions. The Rodriguez decision placed the issue of inequities in school finance in the hands of the state courts and legislatures, where many believed it belonged.27

Since Rodriguez, certain state courts have ruled that school financing arrangements are unconstitutional if they result in large disparities in per-pupil expenditures based on wealth differences among school districts. For example, in Rose v. Council for Better Education (1989), the Kentucky Supreme Court declared the entire state educational system, including the method of funding schools with property taxes, unconstitutional. This decision prompted the legislature to hike average education spending some 30 percent and to undertake an extensive plan of educational reform (described in Chapter 16, School Effectiveness and Reform in the United States).28 In all, forty-five of the fifty states have encountered lawsuits challenging state methods of funding public schools.29 The From Preservice to Practice box shows how teachers might be affected by the distribution of money to local school districts in their states.

Recent state court decisions have focused on both adequacy, providing adequate resources to help students meet the call for higher student achievement, and equity, the belief that students in low-income school districts have the right to the same

26“Funding, Formulas, and Fairness,” Education Law Center (February 2013) at www.elc-pa .org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ELC_schoolfundingreport.2013.pdf. 27Camille Walsh, “Erasing Race, Dismissing Class: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez,” Berkeley La Raza Law Journal (March 2011), pp. 133–171. 28David J. Hoff, “The Bottom Line,” Education Week (January 6, 2005), pp. 28–36; and Anne Rebecca Newman, “Transforming a Moral Right into a Legal Right: The Case of School Finance Litigation and the Right to Education,” Philosophy of Education Society (2006), pp. 82–90. 29Allan R. Odden and Lawrence O. Picus, School Finance: A Policy Perspective, 4th ed. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2008), pp. 42–43; and “School Funding Litigation Overview,” Access Quality Education (March 2013) at http://schoolfunding.info/legal-developments/.