Many recent critical reforms in state school finance systems have been catalyzed by the courthouse, not the statehouse. Advocates for equity-focused school finance reforms often consider legal action as the best path to significant policy changes. This brief discusses state-level lawsuits on adequacy and equity grounds and their outcomes.

Background/Context: Urban educational systems have garnered focused examination as bastions of educational inequity, particularly along race and class cleavages. These systems are often cited as inefficient bureaucratic institutions plagued by financial mismanagement and political corruption that produce dismal achievement outcomes. Contemporary…

The Honorable Judge Nathaniel Jones litigated the "Milliken v. Bradley I" case before the U.S. District Court and Supreme Court in 1971 and 1974. Nathaniel Jones was born May 12, 1926 in Youngstown, Ohio, and served as the general counsel for the NAACP from 1969-1979. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter nominated Nathaniel Jones to the U.S.…

The purpose of this study is to use geographic information systems to map the spatial distribution of traditional public school closures and the opening of charter schools in Detroit. To achieve this purpose, we examine the following research questions: (a) How are traditional public school closures and the opening of charter schools spatially…

In "Vergara v. California" (2014), a trial-level court ruled that California laws governing teacher tenure and dismissal were unconstitutional. This study analyzes "Vergara" in light of the shifting use of the courts to promote equal educational opportunities and the changing power bases of educational interest groups,…

As of summer 2012, there are 31 interdistrict magnet schools in the Greater Hartford region of Connecticut, including those at The Learning Corridor (a 14-acre compound with roughly 1,570 students in attendance among an elementary, middle, and two high schools), enrolling about 13,000 students and supported by a mix of state, local, and…

Purpose: This article examines factors that affect school board policy making about student diversity within two southern urban-suburban school districts experiencing changing demographics: Jefferson County Public Schools and the Wake County Public School System. Both districts have a history of voluntary integration efforts, and research shows…

Delaware's history with school desegregation is complicated and contradictory. The state both advanced and impeded the goals of "Brown v. Board of Education." After implementing desegregation plans that were ineffective by design, Delaware was ultimately placed under the first metropolitan, multi-district desegregation court order in the…

Background/Context: At the close of the first decade of the 21st century, the intersection of race, geography and opportunity is increasingly referred to as spatial racism. School quality and resources, municipal services, employment opportunities, accessibility of transportation, exposure to pollution, and tax rates all vary dramatically across a…

Though once a leader in school integration, Massachusetts has regressed over the last two decades as its students of color have experienced intensifying school segregation. This report investigates trends in school segregation in Massachusetts by examining concentration, exposure, and evenness measures by both race and class. First, the report…

This article examines the experiences of 20 students of color who voluntarily attend a racially integrated school. The study draws from the Socio-Cultural dimension of schooling as a framework to understand how the students of color fared on a social, cultural, and environmental level within a predominantly White school. Through a questionnaire,…

Fifty years after the U.S. Supreme Court held in "Brown v. Board of Education" of Topeka, Kansas, that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional the children in America's urban school districts attend schools that predominantly are racial-isolated. In Minneapolis, the student profile is in stark contrast with the racial…

Chapter 21 of a book on school law traces the development of metropolitan interdistrict school desegregation. Historically, the first multidistrict cases were filed to secure the desegregation of intentionally segregated school districts. Subsequently, multidistrict cases were filed in metropolitan areas where there were so few white students…

In 1974, the Supreme Court in "Milliken v. Bradley" blocked a major effort to desegregate isolated urban areas by establishing stringent legal standards that made it very difficult for plaintiffs to include suburbs in desegregation remedies. Three years later a second Milliken decision (Milliken II) authorized lower Federal courts to…

This report examines national, state, and metropolitan trends in the desegregation of U.S. public schools, based on federal enrollment statistics. The data indicate that the White majority is declining, and that Hispanic, Asian, American Indian enrollments are growing rapidly. There has been no overall change in Black segregation on a national…