Law Commons^™

Last Wave: The Rise Of The Contingent School District, The , Aaron J. Saiger

Faculty Scholarship

Spurred in part by state court cases holding that states bear a constitutional duty to educate all children adequately, and making creative use of the arguments of school choice advocates, the states and other policy actors have in recent years recast the problem of deficient schooling as one of government structure rather than one of individual rights. This reorientation has contributed to a dramatic erosion of the traditional role of the local school district as the leading administrative, policymaking, and legal unit of American school government. A new, polyarchic distribution of power has arisen in place of district primacy, bearing …