In 1968, a group of parents led by Demetrio Rodriguez, a longtime equal rights community activist, filed a lawsuit against the Edgewood Independent School District, a low-income, predominately Latinx district in San Antonio, Texas, and six other school districts, arguing that the state’s school finance system was inequitable. Specifically, the argument at the center of the case was the notion that education is a federal right as it is necessary in order to be an engaged citizen. Moreover, as the Texas state school finance system relied on local property tax for school funding, districts like Edgewood that are located in predominately low-income areas have low tax bases and are therefore underfunded and underresourced, which impacts necessary levels of education provided to students. As a result, children in low-wealth school districts are at an extreme disadvantage as compared to their peers in wealthier school districts. The case eventually made its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where, in a five-four ruling, the justices decided that the system did not violate the Equal Protection Clause as Texas was not refusing to provide education to low-income students and the U.S. Constitution does not specifically state education to be a fundamental right (San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 1973). The Court also stated “whether there is a correlation between expenditures and education quality is not one the federal courts should consider” (Rebell, 2017, p. 186). Since the Rodriguez ruling, there have been seven court cases with Texas school districts suing over the state’s finance system that have reached the Texas Supreme Court and the Edgewood district is still inequitably funded (Swaby & Ura, 2018). In the state’s most recent case, two-thirds of Texas school districts claimed that the current finance system does not meet the adequacy and suitability requirements outlined in the Texas Constitution. In its ruling, the Texas Supreme Court upheld the school funding system with one of thejustice’s stating in the opinion, “Our Byzantine school funding ‘system’ is undeniably imperfect, with immense room for improvement. But it satisfies minimum constitutional requirements” (Morath v. Texas Taxpayer & Student Fairness Coalition, 2016, p. 99). Multiple states have also tried to overturn Rodriguez but have been unsuccessful or the cases remain outstanding (Martin et al., 2018). Show Following the Rodriguez ruling, in 1984 the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a suit on behalf of the Edgewood Independent School arguing that the Texas school finance system and its reliance on local property taxes to fund schools was discriminatory and inequitable. When the case began, there were 21 parents and eight school districts involved; this number grew to 67 additional school districts and several other parents and students (The Texas Politics Project, n.d.). In 1989, the Texas Supreme Court ruled the finance system as unconstitutional, noting that property wealth per student in Edgewood ISD was considerably lower than Alamo Heights Independent School District, one of the wealthiest districts in the same county as Edgewood and the state of Texas. The court ordered the state legislature to devise an equitable system by the 1990-91 school year. The Texas Legislature created a plan that became known as the “Robin Hood” plan, in which money would be redistributed from affluent districts to low-wealth districts in order to equalize funding. While Texas was able to reduce funding disparities between affluent and low-wealth districts, the Robin Hood plan proved unpopular and problematic among Texans. Property-wealthy districts who were set to lose money over the plan argued it was illegal and eventually the court sided with them. In 1993, a new plan was signed into law in which school districts would seek to equalize funding through one of five options:
Over time, as previously stated, there would be many iterations of the Edgewood case argued over equitable, and later on, adequate school funding in Texas. Yet, as state funding for education declined and, as previously mentioned, the Texas Supreme Court eventually ruled that while the system may be “undeniably imperfect” it meets the basic requirements as set forth in the state constitution, disparities continue for students in Edgewood (Swaby & Ura, 2018). Page 2The Abbott v. Burke case began a new wave of approaching school funding issues through an adequacy framework, which in some cases let states off the hook for providing students the bare minimum when it came to per-pupil funding. However, in Abbott, what made the decision considered to be a success was the ability to define the level of funding and resources needed to provide equitable educational opportunity (Martin et al., 2018). In 1981, the New Jersey Education Law Center filed a complaint on behalf of 20 children attending New Jersey public schools across four cities—Camden, East Orange, Irvington, and Jersey City—arguing that the state’s finance system disadvantaged students in these low-income districts and that funding disparities contributed to the districts’ inability to provide an adequate education. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled the finance system to be unconstitutional and directed the state legislature to implement a funding system that would ensure urban districts (31 in total) received funding equivalent to that of wealthier districts. While the initial Abbott ruling and subsequent mandates put New Jersey in the spotlight as the only state to equalize education resources between low-wealth and affluent districts, there would later be numerous motions filed in the court around the timing of the ruling’s implementation and other disagreements (Education Law Center, 2019). However, the court’s consistency in enforcing funding equalization as well as providing more resources to underresourced schools, and even recently focusing on school quality, has assisted in improving conditions in low-income districts (Martin et al., 2018). Rose v. Council for Better EducationWhile the Abbott case saw the beginning of approaching school funding litigation through an adequacy lens, Rose v. Council for Better Education became the leading and most recognized adequacy case in the United States. Indeed, since the Rose decision, adequacy has been a key feature in school funding cases. In 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court found that the state’s finance system was in violation of its constitution and that every student should be provided with an adequate education. The court also acknowledged that education is a fundamental right under the state’s constitution. The decision led to the state completely overhauling its education system. In this new system, the court ruled that the goal should be for students to become “sufficient” in the following:
(7) academic or vocational skills to be able to compete in academics or the job market. (Education Law Center, 2019, n.p.) The Kentucky Legislature responded with the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), a sweeping reform that brought changes to finance, governance, and curriculum. Since KERA was implemented, an additional 26 states have enacted school funding reforms (Lafortune, Rothstein, & Schanzenbach, 2016). Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New YorkIn another case based on adequate funding, in 1993, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a non-profit organization created by parents to protect and promote New York students’ basic educational rights, filed a lawsuit claiming the New York school finance system was unconstitutional due to its underfunding of New York City schools. As a result of the underfunding, students were being denied their right to an “opportunity” for a “sound basic education,” defined as “a meaningful high school education, one which prepares [young people] to function productively as civic participants” under the state constitution {Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York, 2003, p. 26). After 13 years, the Court of Appeals eventually ordered New York to ensure that a funding system was in place to provide students with an adequate education. Yet, the timing of the decision could not have been worse as the U.S. was experiencing an economic crisis due to the Great Recession of 2008. Similar to other states, budget cuts were made in New York that caused school funding to decrease and none of the funds owed under the lawsuit were ever provided. Advocates argue that schools in New York are still owed over $4 billion (Disare, 2018). Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New MexicoOne final, and very recent, school finance case we highlight is the Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico (2018). According to Hinojosa (2016), the Yazzie/Martinez case is different from its predecessors as it takes a more comprehensive approach to challenging inequitable educational opportunity and looking at inequities as they connect to race, ethnicity, and language in addition to arguing for students with more needs. In 2014, families and school districts in New Mexico sued the state’s department of education for not providing a sufficient education system to all children in the state—particularly Native American, English learner (EL), low-income, and students with disabilities— as required by the New Mexico State Constitution and the resources needed to succeed academically (Hinojosa, 2016). Four years later, in July 2018, a New Mexicojudge ruled that the state was failing to comply with the state constitution (New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, 2018). Specifically, the state was found to not be in compliance with state and federal laws around the education of EL and Native American students, including the New Mexico Indian Education Act, Bilingual Multicultural Education Act, and the Hispanic Education Act. The state was also found to not be in compliance with providing students with programs and services to prepare them to be college and career ready, and was not providing the correct oversight of the programs and services. The judge ordered the state to come up with the funding needed to provide New Mexico students with a sufficient education that would help prepare them for college and the workforce (NM Center on Law and Poverty, 2018). The case addresses the numerous systemic issues that prevent students from receiving a sufficient education, including lack of necessary resources and monitoring how funding that was received was spent, as well as curricular issues such as bilingualism and multiculturalism. While past school finance cases have focused more on equity and adequacy of funding and have been successful in increasing resources for students in low-wealth districts, they have been less successful in ensuring that these same students are able to access a high-quality education. Indeed, more school finance cases like Yazzie/Martinez are needed that push the school equity debate beyond just funding and also look at the quality of educational opportunities (Martin et al., 2018). Page 3Baker et al. (2018), in their review of recent research on the relationship between school funding and educational opportunity, found an overwhelming number of benefits, including: • increased school funding leads to greater and more fairly distributed education resources;
Jackson et al. (2016) also found that “improved access to resources can profoundly shape the life outcomes of economically disadvantaged children, and thereby significantly reduce the intergenerational transmission of poverty” (p. 212). Of course, in order for school funding to improve outcomes, it must be spent in effective ways to benefit those most in need. Although we know the many benefits of school funding, such as the ones previously mentioned, and school finance litigation has helped in making progress around economic inequality in U.S., there are still a number of states that have yet to implement finance systems that meet the needs of all students and school funding inequities continue to permeate the education system. Funding itself continues to be unequal among states, ranging from close to $19,000 per student in New York to approximately $6,300 in Idaho (Baker et al., 2018). Moreover, how funding is distributed based on need varies across states with 17 states regressively funding districts in high need, 20 states remaining flat in their funding distribution with no significant differences between funding for high-and low-wealth districts, and only 11 states utilizing a progressive model providing high-need districts with more funding (Baker et al., 2018). Some states have stepped in to compensate for the school-funding imbalance—Vermont and Hawaii (89% each) are the highest, while South Dakota (30%) and Illinois (24%) are the lowest in state school funding sources (McFarland et al., 2019). Yet, states like Vermont and Hawaii tend to be the exceptions as the public investment in schools continues to decline and local property wealth dictates the level of resources school districts have access to. There are efforts being made by some states to try to remedy their current school funding levels. For instance, Illinois has long been the frontrunner as the state with the largest inequality in school funding in the U.S. (Morgan & Amerikaner, 2018). However, in summer 2017, the Illinois state legislature finally concluded a long battle over determining a more equitable school funding formula and came to a compromise on a school funding plan. The new school funding plan calculates the amount each district needs to provide an adequate, quality education, and then compares this amount to how much the district can reasonably raise in property taxes to reach the adequate funding threshold. More than half of the districts in the state are unable to raise even half of what they need to provide an adequate education, but 140 districts have more than 100% of the adequate funding they need due to plentiful property tax sources; some districts even have more than twice the adequate funding (Rhodes, 2018). Thus, with the new funding plan the state will funnel supplemental dollars to districts that are unable to meet this educational adequacy metric, and districts in the greatest need will receive more state dollars. Although school funding experts see Illinois’ new school funding policy as a step in the right direction to funding equalization, and in line with recommendations by scholars such as Darling-Hammond (2019), who encourages states to “focus funding on pupil needs and the costs of meeting the state’s standards” as well as ensuring “flexibility to make locally appropriate, strategic decisions about how to spend resources to achieve results” (p. 24), the metric for this funding formula is adequacy and not equity, and thus may still be insufficient. As we discussed previously, only an adequacy rationale provides the minimum level of funding needed for every school to teach its students. However, due to the long history of policies and structures that denied students of color opportunities to a quality education, it would take more than minimum adequate funding to redress these inequities (Morgan & Amerikaner, 2018; see Rothstein, 2017). Therefore, school funding policies like Illinois are color-evasive because they prioritize a district’s economic inequality and do not consider how a host of racial inequities like racial discrimination in housing, employment, and commerce are key factors contributing to district inequities in financial resources. |
Why did the parents suing the San Antonio Independent School District argue that education was a fundamental right?
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