Now that the state Court of Appeals has once and for all settled the New York City school finance lawsuit, state and city officials must soon initiate the next necessary discussion, which should prove much more interesting — about what needs to be done to improve the city's schools.
The 13-year-old Campaign for Fiscal Equity suit — perhaps the most important national case about school finance — claimed that funding of city schools was inadequate to provide a sound basic education.
Op-Ed
New York Post
June 30, 2003 -- THE state of schooling in New York City returned to the news Thursday with the highest court coming down on the side that the city's schools fail to meet constitutional requirements. The court has now turned the spotlight back on the state Legislature to "fix things."
Court decisions on school-finance issues are always expected to be a mixture of constitutional arguments, public-policy views and political cross-currents.
Education Week
By our cultural heritage we are led to believe that the performance of students can be improved by providing more resources to the schools. This would allow schools to provide more individualized instruction, to hire more qualified teachers, and to expand program offerings. But what is often missed in current discussions is that this is exactly the experiment that we have been conducting. School expenditures per pupil, after allowing for inflation, almost doubled between 1960 and 1975.
The Wall Street Journal
The nation is watching to see what happens with New York City school finance. After a dozen years in the courts, the case of Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. New York is now back at the Court of Appeals for a final judgment about the added appropriations that the legislature must send to the city. This judgment is, however, unlikely to be the final statement. If the legislature must come up with an incredible sum of money close to the more than $5 billion currently on the table, it may well balk, precipitating a true constitutional crisis.
Salt Lake Tribune
After the Kansas City experiment, I figured that nobody with a straight face would suggest "throwing money at schools."
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
“Arkansas Student Accountability and Educational Accountability Act of 2003,” Testimony before the Education Committee, House of Representatives, State of Arkansas, March 26, 2003.
Arkansas is following some two dozen other states that have had to respond to a court finding that its current financing system is unconstitutional.
WI Magazine
Between 1992 and 2011, the improvement in achievement by Wisconsin students was the fourth worst of the 41 states for which data are available. In that relatively short time, Wisconsin moved from sixth to 14th in the rankings. This signaled a fundamental set of problems ranging from the future earnings of Wisconsin students to the growth and prosperity of the entire state.