A description of the Serrano vs. Priest class action suit in California, challenging the system of financing education through property taxes; author touches upon the possibilities for the courts becoming change agents in the struggle for social reform. (SP)

In 1971 the California Supreme Court published America's most significant court decision in recent decades affecting a state's program of funding the operation of its public schools. This was followed by court decisions in Minnesota, Texas, and New Jersey. Lawsuits based on the California case of Serrano v. Priest are being filed in courts…

A refutation of an article published by the Yale Law Journal which reported a study of school finance arrangements in Connecticut and influenced the "Rodiguez" decision. Weaknesses in the statistical arguments and theoretical analysis of that piece are discussed as the need for accepting some type of "Serrano" reform is…

Examination of California's experience with school finance reform was part of a nine-volume, six-state study of the impact of finance reform on poor and minority students. Researchers used correlation coefficients and measures of central tendency and dispersion to analyze data on educational revenues, school district wealth, tax effort, district…

The Serrano case controversy raises the fundamental question: Do differences in school district per pupil expenditures represent cost differences incurred in providing essentially equivalent programs, or do they represent substantial differences in educational offerings? Although the answer is debatable, the California legislature increased…

This research effort examines inequalities in educational input resources among school systems in Texas and California in light of the Rodriguez and Serrano court cases. Low-income families in both states were found to be in districts of low per-pupil-Expenditures and inferior educational services primarily because they are located in districts…