The Impact of State Supreme Court Decisions on Public School Finance

hill, sarah a. ; kiewiet, d. roderick;

Beginning with Serrano v. Priest in 1971, equity-based decisions issued by state
supreme courts led to a decrease in cross-district inequality in per pupil
expenditures. In subsequent years, more state supreme courts overturned existing
systems of public school finance for failing to provide adequate education to
students living in poor school districts. Adequacy-based decisions have not
produced measurable changes in cross-district inequality in expenditures, but
have led to higher overall levels of funding for public education. The nationwide
increase in per pupil expenditures over the past several decades is, however,
largely the product of growth in personal incomes and a decline in the relative
size of the cohort of school-age children, and not of court-ordered finance
reforms. In California, after Serrano and the most far-reaching equalization
reforms implemented anywhere in the country, the association between the
wealth of a school district and educational quality remains strong and persistent.
If one�s concern is the quality of education that students receive and not the
amount of money spent on them, the victories that reformers have won in the
courts have been hollow victories