School finance cases in Kansas like others across the country
by HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Kansas lawmakers won't be the only ones in the country struggling this year with how to comply with court decisions that order changes in how public schools are funded.

Widely considered the next generation of civil rights litigation, the type of lawsuit that led to the Kansas ruling is similar to dozens of other cases filed across the country during the past decade. Since 2002, the high courts in Kansas and four other states have sided with the plaintiffs in school funding challenges, with the cases resulting in large education spending increases or proposed increases.

In Kansas, the state Supreme Court has given the Legislature until April 12 to increase funding and make other changes to meet a "constitutional duty" to improve public education.

In Montana, lawmakers are in the same situation after the state Supreme Court in November upheld a lower court's ruling that said the state's system of funding public schools was unconstitutional. A new funding method must be in place by October 2005.

And though the Texas Supreme Court has yet to hear a school funding challenge, lawmakers in the state plan to consider major changes during their upcoming session.

In Arkansas, lawmakers agreed last year to a landmark education overhaul that included school mergers, a revised $2.7 billion school-funding formula and $370 million annually in additional money for schools. The Legislature is making upgrading school facilities and equipment its top priority for the session that starts Monday.

In California, officials agreed in August to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit targeting shoddy facilities, outdated textbooks and unqualified teachers for nearly $1 billion.

The cases are an outgrowth of an experiment that started in the 1970s after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in a Detroit school desegregation case. The plaintiffs wanted to use the suburbs to help integrate the mainly black student body, but the court said no. Without the suburbs, school integration proved elusive, said Chris Hansen, a desegregation attorney for the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.

"At that point, people said let's try something different," Hansen said.

In the place of school desegregation cases, attorneys began to focus on the system of using property taxes to pay for schools. They argued children from low-income families were disadvantaged by the system because property taxes raise more money in wealthy communities than poor communities.

Though the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the argument that the funding disparities violated the federal Constitution, the decision proved only a temporary hurdle. Attorneys began to argue - sometimes successfully - that unequal funding was a violation of state constitutions.

Later, attorneys began to argue that spending an inadequate amount on education also violated state constitutions. Since 1989, plaintiffs have won about 80 percent of cases that used this "adequacy" argument, said Michael Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

"I think the reason plaintiffs tend to be successful is the cases complement standards-based reforms adopted by almost every state," he said.

Standards-based reform is setting guidelines for what students should know and then testing them to make sure they are learning. Sometimes accreditation and funding are tied to student achievement.

"If the state is on one hand making demands but then not providing sufficient resources to meet those standards, then there is a problem," he said.

So while the U.S. Supreme Court has been signaling for the past decade that it wants an end to court oversight of school desegregation cases, the equity and adequacy cases continue to be litigated.

And some states - such as Kansas, which rewrote its school funding formula in 1992 after a similar challenge - are in the midst of their second round of school finance litigation.

The cyclical nature of the cases comes as no surprise to Hansen.

"Someone said no fight is ever completely won or completely lost," he said. "Once states get the funding formula finally straightened out, then some state senator wants to fiddle with it so it helps his constituents, and it gets out of whack."