Business partnership with public schools, while holding great promise for educational improvement, is hindered by legal questions about equity. Disagreement on how to apply this value to education has produced much litigation over school finance. Some allege that property tax financing violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth…

In a research note to a nine-volume, six-state study of the impact of school finance reform on minorities and the poor, the author examines methodological issues involved in using statistics to measure the distribution of local fiscal capacity among school districts with different income and ethnic compositions. Using Texas as an example, the…

This paper examines the two conflicting definitions of local control inherent in the majority and minority opinions in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. The author agrees with the minority decision that lack of adequate funds, regardless of the number of legal constraints set down by the…

As part of a nine-volume, six-state study of the impact of school finance reforms on minorities and the poor, the author examines the history and effects of finance reform in Texas. He presents a political and socioeconomic profile of the state and discusses past Texas school financing, the role of the Rodriguez v. San Antonio Independent School…