South Carolina Court Orders Preschool through Third-Grade Interventions to Counter Poverty, Declares State Education Funding System Unconstitutional

Adding a major thrust forward to the growing national momentum for preschool and other early education programs, state circuit court judge Thomas W. Cooper, Jr. issued his decision in the Abbeville v. State education “adequacy” case on December 29, 2005. In a lawsuit specifically brought on behalf of low-income students in rural South Carolina, Judge Cooper found that poverty directly causes lower student achievement and that the state constitution imposes an obligation on the state “to create an educational system that overcomes . . . the effects of poverty . . . .” The court concluded that the state “defendants have failed in their constitutional responsibility to provide an opportunity” for even a “minimally adequate” education and “failed to address the . . . reality” faced by children of poverty.

Overcoming Poverty

The court described a “debilitating and destructive cycle” of poverty for low-income students and poor academic achievement “until some outside agency or force interrupts the sequence.” Based on expert testimony from both plaintiffs and defendants, the court concluded that “it is essential to address the impact of poverty as early as possible in the lives of the children affected by it.” Therefore, the court held that

early childhood intervention at the pre-kindergarten level and continuing through at least grade three is necessary to minimize, to the extent possible, the impact and the effect of poverty on the educational abilities and achievements of…children.

Such early intervention not only makes educational and humanitarian sense, it also makes economic sense. The testimony in this record of experts, educators, and legislators alike is that the dollars spent in early childhood intervention are the most effective expenditures in the educational process.

Reactions

“We are ecstatic on behalf of our clients and the children of South Carolina,'' said Laura Hart, a partner with Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, which represented the plaintiffs. “We hope the General Assembly will not appeal this but will choose to go ahead and meet its obligation to the children of this state to provide them with an adequate education. We can't afford to lose a generation” of schoolchildren.

As reported in The State, “Senate Education Committee chair John Courson said he agrees that more must be done in early childhood, especially from pre-kindergarten through third grade. ‘We need to get children, primarily children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, into school earlier,' Courson said.” Other legislators also seemed optimistic about improving early educational opportunities.

The State also reported that education leaders from the low-wealth rural schools were heartened by the decision and its emphasis on early education, including superintendent David Longshore, who said “It must be the most significant example of justice that we've had in a long time.” However, the facilities facet of the ruling dissatisfied some superintendents, who felt the school buildings are “clearly . . . inadequate and not conducive to learning.”

Both the state defendants and the plaintiffs are considering appealing parts of the decision.

Other Court Findings

The standard for a constitutionally acceptable education in South Carolina was defined by the state supreme court in its 1999 Abbeville ruling, when it remanded the case for trial and interpreted the constitution as requiring the opportunity for a “minimally adequate education.” The trial court explained the opportunities described in this ruling as

intended to give each child in South Carolina a chance at life: the opportunity to be a productive citizen, to engage meaningfully in the political process, to be adequately informed to serve intelligently on juries, to know his place in the world and how he can, through education, exercise choices in where to live and perhaps raise a family—in short, to receive the opportunity for an education sufficient to join with all South Carolinians as they progress through school and life with an appreciation of this great state and nation.

This definition could be understood to call for a high-level ‘minimal adequacy', but was not applied in that manner. Although plaintiffs had asked the court to find that school facilities and teaching quality, as well as early educational opportunities, fell below constitutional standards in the plaintiff districts, Judge Cooper concluded that both of these aspects of the students' educational opportunity met the “minimally adequate” standard.

Prepared by Molly A. Hunter, December 30, 2005