N.J. Supreme Court Grants States’
Motion to End Abbott Remedies;
Holds that State Must Maintain Funding Levels
Despite Recession and Must Reconsider Cost
Analysis After Three Years
Issuing its 20th decision in the two-decade
old Abbott v. Burke litigation,
the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously
on May 28, 2009 that the state’s new
education funding system, the School Funding
Reform Act of 2008, meets the constitutional
requirement to provide all students a “thorough
and efficient education.” The court’s
order permits the funding system to go into
effect statewide, including in the 32 poor
urban school districts previously covered
by the Abbott orders.
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Hanushek and Lindseth’s
New Book: Purporting to Have All the Answers
Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth, who
in a previous publication declared that
state court judges in educational adequacy
cases “harm our children,” have
just published a new book, Schoolhouses,
Courthouses and Statehouses (Princeton
University Press, 2009), that claims to
solve “the funding-achievement puzzle
in America’s public schools.”
Hanushek is an education economist who has
appeared as a witness for the defense in
more than a dozen education finance litigations.
Lindseth is an attorney who has represented
state defendants in a number of education
adequacy litigations.
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9th Annual Quality Education
Conference: Strengthening Opportunities
to Learn in Challenging Economic Times
Education lawyers, advocates,
educators, policymakers, and organizers
gathered on May 7-8, 2009 at the 9th Annual
Quality Education Conference in Washington,
D.C. Co-sponsored by the National Access
Network, the Education Law Center, and Education
Voters, and supported by Public Advocates,
the Public Education Network, and the Rural
School and Community Trust, this year’s
conference sought to address the impact
of the national recession on educational
opportunities in addition to featuring the
annual round up of the states on developments
in adequacy litigations and advocacy initiatives,
litigators' workshops, and a diverse range
of breakout sessions.
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Read
more about the conference in our
other stories in this newsletter:
•
Blocking Budget Cuts: Constitutional
Perspectives
“Blocking Budget
Cuts: Constitutional Perspectives”
was the topic of the opening address
given by Michael Rebell, Executive
Director of the National Access
Network, and of the Campaign for
Educational Equity at Teachers College,
Columbia University on the first
day of the 9th Annual Quality Education
Conference.
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“Judicial Activism”
is Constitutionally Required: A
Keynote Message by Judge Terry L.
Bullock
“Judicial activism is usually
defined as judges making up the
law as they go along rather than
following existing law. Well, ladies
and gentlemen, this is precisely
what we do and are required to do
by the constitution, because for
half of our cases that we are required
to rule on, there is no clear precedent.
We are required to decide even those
cases where there is no precedent
and we do so by reaching a fair
result consistent with our legal
values.”
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The Federal Stimulus Bill
and ESEA Reauthorization: Pitfalls
and Possibilities
“Is ARRA [the federal stimulus
bill] a threat or an opportunity
for those of us working on adequacy
issues?” asked Baruch Kintisch,
a staff attorney for the Philadelphia-based
Education Law Center, at the panel
discussion on “The Federal
Stimulus Bill and ESEA Reauthorization:
Pitfalls and Possibilities.”
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Reframing the Debate on
Charters and Vouchers
“Proponents of educational
equity cannot be effective as “the
party of ‘no,” was the
theme of the session on charters
and education. The panel of experts—including
Leigh Dingerson, author of Reclaiming
the Education Charter: Ohio’s
Experiment with Charter Schooling,
Susan Nogan, a senior policy researcher
at the National Educators’
Association, and Richard Shapiro,
counsel for the defendant school
districts in Crawford v. Davy—proposed
policy advocacy and public relations
strategies as methods for reframing
the debate over education reform.
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Legal Updates: Illinois and South Dakota
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