Legal challenges to public education finance: Equity v. Adequacy

This research examines the nature of public education financing in the United States. When education became a cornerstone of public policy in America, federalism dictated that the responsibility of implementation be delegated to the states, and from the states to the constituent school districts. Oftentimes these districts came to be divided---accidentally or on purpose---along lines of race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status; this led to wide variations in education outcomes. Such after effects have come under greater scrutiny over the past few decades. As a result, concerned parties have sued the states failing to deal with the consequential resource disparity among their respective districts. The purpose of this paper is to review the changes in public education finance laws resulting from various "Equal Protection" lawsuits, and the effects said changes have had. A key theme of this evaluation is in examining the evolution of constitutional arguments juxtaposed to the change in social mores. To this end, metadata has been compiled of relevant statistics sourced form a sample of states. The states chosen represent a diverse socioeconomic cross-section and are among the states that had to change their financing methods. The intent here is to decipher what if any corollary impact the respective changes have had, specifically in terms of demographic-based dropout and freshman graduation rates.