An Adequate Education Defined

📖 The Scoop

Court decisions historically have dealt with educational equity; now they are helping to establish "adequacy" as a standard in education. Legislatures, however, have been slow to enact remedies. One debate over education adequacy, though, is settled: Schools are not financed at an adequate level. This fastback is divided into three sections. Section 1 presents state supreme court decisions from West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Wyoming, Ohio, Texas, and Alabama which strongly declare that education in their states is not provided with adequate financial support. Section 2 provides five methods for establishing adequacy: the normative-data model, the desired-results model, the resource model, the education-priority model, and the econometric model. Section 3 provides a program for establishing an exemplary adequate-finance system for education in any state. Adequacy differs from state to state because of historic practices, geographic value of education, legislative action, and economic development; hence this fastback deals with adequacy within states, not among states. It is intended as an aid to legislative bodies, state boards of education, and school finance personnel. The document ends with references, a bibliography of books recently published by the Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, and an order form. (RT)

Genre: Law / Educational Law & Legislation (fancy, right?)