Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Minnesota's School Finance System is Unconstitutional

Welcome to JVonKorff on Education.    Beth Hawkins has recently posted an excellent article on Minnesota's school finance system and referenced this blogsite.    Over the last several years, I've been advocating to anyone who will listen that Minnesota's school finance system is deeply flawed and plainly unconstitutional.    I suspect that the MinnPost article will drive a bit of traffic here, and so I'm posting the following table of contents to some of the postings on this topic here.

The view that we take, here on jvonkorff on education is that Minnesota's constitution should be interpreted in a way that gives it meaning, but that the key to making that clause effective is to require the Governor and legislature to do their job by coming to grips with the cost of the mission that they give to local school districts.   I argue that the decision that comes closest to doing that is Washington's McLeary decision, and for that reason, I've devoted five posts to that decision alone.  

McCleary v State, Washington's Groundbreaking School Finance Decision
 McCleary v. State, Part I   

McCleary v State Requires Legislature to Base Funding on Actual Cost
Jvonkorff on Education McCleary v. State, Part II

McCleary v State and Determining the Cost of Education  Jvonkorff on Education McCleary v. State, Part III

 McCleary v. State: what level of scrutiny is appropriate for legislative funding decisions Jvonkorff on Education McCleary v. State, Part IV

Correlating the cost of education: fund the child.
Jvonkorff on Education  McCleary V. State Part V

Summary of Decision Network for Excellence
Washington Supreme Court Blog  

JvonKorff on Education, The Rose Decision 

Minnesota's School Finance System is Unconstitutional, Part I

Minnesota's School Finance System is Unconstitutional, Part II

Minnesota's School Finance System is Unconstitutional, Part III

Minnesota's School Finance System is Unconstitutional, Part IV

A New Window on School Funding Trends (Part II)

  This post is part of a series on why so many school districts are announcing deficits in a year when the state government ran an historic ...