Nationwide Movement to Ensure Adequate Education Emerging

Addressing an organizing meeting of the Campaign for a Better Illinois on Wednesday, October 29, in Chicago, Michael A. Rebell, Executive Director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, called the nationwide movement to ensure the opportunity for a decent education for all children a "democratic imperative" and a growing national movement that could potentially benefit all students in all states, whether or not education advocates have prevailed in litigation in those locales.

The Campaign for a Better Illinois is a coalition of several dozen education advocacy, civic, business, and parent groups that is pressing for fair funding, quality, and accountability reforms, reform of the property tax system, and a dramatic increase in the state share of overall education funding. Recently, the Metropolitan Planning Council -- one of the founding members of the Campaign for a Better Illinois -- sponsored a costing-out study that recommended a 22 percent increase in the foundation funding level of the Illinois school funding system. Although plaintiffs have prevailed in fiscal equity and education adequacy litigations in 25 states, as Rebell pointed out, and the trend toward plaintiff victories has accelerated over the past decade, the Illinois Supreme Court in 1995 and 1999 refused to take action to remedy the inequities and inadequacies in Illinois' school funding system.

Noting the similarity between the reforms mandated by New York's highest court and the reform agenda of the Illinois groups, Rebell stated that there is an emerging national movement on the need for specific education funding reforms, which is fueled by civil rights imperatives, the standards-based reform movement, and reactions to the federal "No Child Left Behind" Act. He argued that advocates throughout the country need to pool their experiences and their energies to accelerate these positive trends, and described ways that CFE's ACCESS network is attempting to facilitate communication and joint action among attorneys, advocates, policymakers, and community organizers throughout the United States.

Prepared October 31, 2003