ERIC Number: ED198623
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1980-Apr
Pages: 55
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Update on State-Wide School Finance Cases.
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Washington, DC.
This summary provides an overview of developments in school finance litigation since the United States Supreme Court's historic and lamentable 1973 ruling in "San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez" that wealth-based discrimination in educational expenditures does not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution. The failure of the Supreme Court to rule the Texas school finance system unconstitutional shifted school finance litigation to the state courts. The state cases are widely diverse in concept and scope depending on the state constitutional language, the mechanics of the school finance statute involved, and the factual setting. Some cases are broad-based attacks on the inequality of educational opportunity resulting from the systems concerned. Others focus on the state's failure to equalize for the effects of municipal overburden, urban education costs, or geographic concentrations of disadvantaged children. Fourteen pending cases in as many states and 22 terminated cases from 17 states, none decided prior to May 1974, are analyzed. (Author/PGD)
Descriptors: Access to Education, Constitutional Law, Court Litigation, Discriminatory Legislation, Educational Finance, Equal Education, Equal Protection, Equalization Aid, Fiscal Capacity, Foundation Programs, Full State Funding, State Aid, State Courts, State Legislation, Tax Allocation, Tax Effort
School Finance Project, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, 733 15th St., N.W., Suite 520, Washington, DC 20005 ($2.00).
Publication Type: Information Analyses; Legal/Legislative/Regulatory Materials; Opinion Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Washington, DC.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Prepared by the School Finance Project. For a related document, see ED 158 420.