The financing of the American public school system has long been understood as a challenging process and one within which there have been any number of controversies (Podgursky and Springer 32). Like many other states, Missouri has experienced several rounds of school finance litigation, most of which has been focused on questions related to equality and equity or the degree to which the Missouri formula for allocating funds to public schools is fair and just (Podgursky, Smith, and Springer 175).
At issue herein are questions regarding the issue of equality in the financial system used to provide resources to Missouri's public schools. An overview of the issue and its history, an analysis of both sides of the arguments being advanced, and a personal response to the issue will be presented.
The plaintiffs in the recent Missouri litigation are three groups of school districts, 264 in all, that represent about 60 percent of the state's pubic school enrollment (Podgursky et al. 174). Each group of school districts has advanced the argument that the formula used by the state to allocate funds is neither equitable nor equal. The defendants in the 2007 case, which was the most recent in a series of cases, include various state officials and the Missouri Board of Education. Podgursky et al. (175) contend that "in practice, the real defendant was the state legislature, which crafted the school finance law."
The issue of school finance in Missouri is not new. According to Access Quality Education ("Missouri: Historical Background" 1), in 1990, a coalition of school districts, students, and taxpayers filed lawsuits claiming that Missouri's school finance system violated the state constitution's equal protection and educational clauses on both equity an adequacy grounds. A trial court hearing the case brought by a group called the Committee for Educational Equality "declared the funding system unconstitutional and held t...