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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Runaway Wagon: How Past School Discrimination, Finance, And Adequacy Case Law Warrants A Political Question Approach To Education Reform Litigation, Anthony Bilan
Notre Dame Law Review
Courtroom battles surrounding school finance and adequacy claims are very much alive today, nearly forty years after their progenitor, Serrano v. Priest. In spawning a potential new chapter in this history, a trial court in California struck down its state’s battalion of teacher tenure and employment laws under a legal analysis based in the education quality that those laws provided. This “landmark” case, Vergara, is generating conversation that its results could be duplicated throughout the nation. In a format familiar to school finance litigation, the Vergara court found that the state’s tenure statutes so detrimentally affected teaching that …
The Courts, Educational Policy, And Unintended Consequences, Michael Heise
The Courts, Educational Policy, And Unintended Consequences, Michael Heise
Michael Heise
Recent school finance litigation illustrates yet again how law can generate unintended policy consequences. Seeking to improve student achievement and school accountability, more states now turn to educational standards and assessments. At the same time, a multi-decade school finance litigation effort develops and changes its theoretical base. Recently, educational standards and school finance litigation converged in a way that enables school districts to gain financially from their inability to meet desired achievement levels. Specifically, courts increasingly allow litigants and lawsuits to transform standards and assessments into constitutional entitlements to additional resources. As a consequence, increased legal and financial exposure for …
No Lawsuit Left Behind, Michael Heise
Litigated Learning, Law's Limits, And Urban School Reform Challenges, Michael Heise
Litigated Learning, Law's Limits, And Urban School Reform Challenges, Michael Heise
Michael Heise
This Article assesses the likely efficacy of litigation efforts seeking to enhance equal educational opportunity by improving student academic achievement in the nation's urban public schools. Past education reform litigation efforts focusing on school desegregation and finance met with mixed success. Current litigation efforts seeking to improve student academic achievement promise to be even less successful because student academic achievement involves variables and activities located further from the reach of litigation than such variables as a school's racial composition and per pupil spending levels. Moreover, efforts to improve student achievement in the nation's urban public schools--especially high poverty schools--face additional …
State Constitutions And Individual Rights: Conceptual Convergence In School Finance Litigation, Scott R. Bauries
State Constitutions And Individual Rights: Conceptual Convergence In School Finance Litigation, Scott R. Bauries
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
This Article begins by reviewing Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld's “fundamental conceptions” and expanding his theory to the arena of state constitutional rights, building on recent work by other scholars. From this foundation, it moves to a discussion of the sources of rights to education. The Article then examines the text of relevant state constitutional provisions, as well as the ever-changing landscape of school finance litigation, the principal vehicle through which litigants assert constitutional claims based on ostensible education rights. Next, it systematically analyzes the population of reported cases from the highest state courts to identify Hohfeldian conceptions of education rights held …
Litigated Learning, Law's Limits, And Urban School Reform Challenges, Michael Heise
Litigated Learning, Law's Limits, And Urban School Reform Challenges, Michael Heise
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This Article assesses the likely efficacy of litigation efforts seeking to enhance equal educational opportunity by improving student academic achievement in the nation's urban public schools. Past education reform litigation efforts focusing on school desegregation and finance met with mixed success. Current litigation efforts seeking to improve student academic achievement promise to be even less successful because student academic achievement involves variables and activities located further from the reach of litigation than such variables as a school's racial composition and per pupil spending levels. Moreover, efforts to improve student achievement in the nation's urban public schools--especially high poverty schools--face additional …
No Lawsuit Left Behind, Michael Heise
No Lawsuit Left Behind, Michael Heise
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
The Courts, Educational Policy, And Unintended Consequences, Michael Heise
The Courts, Educational Policy, And Unintended Consequences, Michael Heise
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Recent school finance litigation illustrates yet again how law can generate unintended policy consequences. Seeking to improve student achievement and school accountability, more states now turn to educational standards and assessments. At the same time, a multi-decade school finance litigation effort develops and changes its theoretical base. Recently, educational standards and school finance litigation converged in a way that enables school districts to gain financially from their inability to meet desired achievement levels. Specifically, courts increasingly allow litigants and lawsuits to transform standards and assessments into constitutional entitlements to additional resources. As a consequence, increased legal and financial exposure for …
School Finance Adequacy As Vertical Equity, Julie K. Underwood
School Finance Adequacy As Vertical Equity, Julie K. Underwood
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In this Article, Dean Underwood explains that school finance cases can be divided into three waves of reform. The first wave involved efforts to use the Federal Equal Protection Clause to overturn financing systems. Litigants in the second wave turned to state equal protection and due process clauses. Finally, the third wave involved the utilization of education clauses in state constitutions as the predominant litigation vehicle. These three waves embody two primary approaches to school finance litigation. The first approach involves a challenge to the adequacy of a state's funding system under either the state or federal equal protection clause, …
Establishing Education Program Inadequacy: The Alabama Example, Martha I. Morgan, Adam S. Cohen, Helen Hershkoff
Establishing Education Program Inadequacy: The Alabama Example, Martha I. Morgan, Adam S. Cohen, Helen Hershkoff
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The authors draw on their experience as attorneys for a statewide class of plaintiff school children in the liability phase of ongoing public education reform litigation in Alabama to demonstrate the availability of state and nationally recognized standards concerning educational resources (inputs) and results (outputs) that can serve as evidentiary tools for assessing and for establishing a state public education system's failure to satisfy constitutional mandates of educational adequacy. The Article discusses the usefulness and limitations of using such standards as a starting point in a court's constitutional analysis. It suggests an integrated approach that links input and output standards …
Achieving Equity And Excellence In Kentucky Education, C. Scott Trimble, Andrew C. Forsaith
Achieving Equity And Excellence In Kentucky Education, C. Scott Trimble, Andrew C. Forsaith
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In this Article, Trimble and Forsaith discuss the landmark Kentucky school finance case, Rose v. Council for Better Education, 790 S.W.2d 186 (Ky. 1989), and the school reform efforts it spawned. In Council for Better Education, the Kentucky Supreme Court held that the state had failed its duty under the state constitution to provide all students with an adequate education, which it defined in terms of seven categories of knowledge and skills students should acquire. The State General Assembly responded with the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), which significantly boosted state funding as well as established an ambitious accountability system …
Oklahoma School Finance Litigation: Shifting From Equity To Adequacy, Mark S. Grossman
Oklahoma School Finance Litigation: Shifting From Equity To Adequacy, Mark S. Grossman
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Article traces the history of Oklahoma school finance litigation from the initial challenge based on funding inequity to a recent lawsuit founded on alleged constitutional inadequacies in the state system. Although the legal challenge based on funding inequity was unsuccessful in the courts, the pendency of the suit helped push the state legislature toward some reforms. The threat of a new lawsuit based on alleged inadequacies in the state school system, together with a serious funding shortfall, propelled a comprehensive education reform plan through the state legislature in 1990. The association of local school boards that led the equity …