Why are school finance litigators jumping for joy over the imminent passage of President Bush's education plan? In the December Washington Monthly, Siobhan Gorman explains that the detailed test scores that will eventually emerge from the plan - which requires that states annually test students in grades 3 through 8 in reading and math - will be a "potential bonanza" for lawyers hoping to prove that poor schools offer inadequate education to underprivileged kids. For almost thirty years, school finance activists have argued in court that unequal school financing arrangements violate state constitutions, but many plaintiffs have been unable to prove that low-income students were getting a substandard education in their cash-strapped schools. Once all states begin to measure students' progress toward meeting defined standards of performance, lawyers will have the evidence they need - in the form of gaping achievement gaps - to prove that children are being harmed, Gorman writes. Lawyers have already used test scores to convince a New York judge that funding disparities there are unconstitutional. This kind of litigation may reap more money for poor schools in the long run, but using courts to obtain that money has downsides: it's inefficient, it angers voters, and it interferes with real education reform, among other things. It also isn't guaranteed to make schools any better. For details see "Can't Beat 'em? Sue 'em!" by Siobhan Gorman, The Washington Monthly, December 2001.
