December 01, 2006

Excellent essay in Hoover's Education Today on school finance lawsuits, by Josh Dunn and Martha Derthick (via the Manhattan Institute's urban policy blog, Cities on a Hill). Final paragraph:

The successes of the adequacy movement in state courts thus are to be seen as stepping stones to the broader arena of national legislation and litigation. If the adequacy-cum-equity advocates succeed—wedding centralization and judicialization in a regime of a federally guaranteed right to education and federally prescribed school spending—transformation of the traditionally local and democratic governance of schools in the United States, already far advanced, will be complete.